She Blogged By Night

"The Unholy Wife" proves that Diana Dors could, in a pinch, act. It also proves she needed a strong director and a good story, both of which are sadly lacking in TUW.


The poster tagline -- "HALF-ANGEL, HALF-DEVIL, she made him HALF-A-MAN!" -- is pretty much a lie. You see nothing of Phyllis (Dors) to indicate she's an angel at all. However, what makes her a "devil" is nothing more than her rejection of a checklist of stereotypical female traits. She doesn't really like kids, she won't care for her elderly nutball mother-in-law (Beulah Bondi), she doesn't like being married to a man who apparently had his whatsit shot off in the war (Rod Steiger)... and it's that issue with his whatsit that makes him "half a man", not his wife Phyllis.


Oh, and she murders someone. This was all kinds of confusing, but allow me to try to explain: The film opens with Phyllis just randomly shooting a gun to scare her mother in law. She pretends there was an intruder in what I assume was part of a cunning plan. Mom-in-law Emma calls the cops. They arrive coincidentally along with Phyllis' brother-in-law, a priest. The cops are satisfied with Phyllis' story, priest goes home, Emma goes back to bed, then Phyllis' boyfriend on the side shows up. They kiss and argue and kiss and he sneaks out, but Phyllis' young son sees them.

Now, the part that confuses me is that some time passes before Phyllis' plan goes into action, and I'm not sure if she was wickedly cunning or if she just shot the wrong guy. A businessman wants to buy her husband Paul's vineyard, but he won't sell. His neighbor and best friend Gino wants to sell his vineyard, and Paul gets into a huge fight with him about it.




But first, backstory! Paul and Gino were war buddies in the Big City for a conference or something when they met two slightly gold digging dames in a bar, Phyllis and Gwen. Paul hooked up with Phyllis, Gino with Gwen, and they eventually marry. Gino and Gwen are a nice couple, while Paul and Phyllis ... wait, I just realized their names start with the same letter. Uuuuuugggghhhhh. That's worse than color-coding the outfits of people in a movie so you "subconsciously" know that they'll eventually end up together. All right, okay, fine, moving along: Paul and Phyllis don't get along. He's nice and sweet to her but she's a dragon woman who doesn't love his home and his family like she's obligated to. Also, he likes her little son from a previous marriage/dalliance/something, but she just wants to be fabulous and has no time for kids.



Back in the present day, Gino and Paul make up after the fistfight. Gino heads to Paul's house for a talk or a drink or something. When he comes in, Phyllis shoots him, I guess because she thought he was Paul. It's hard to tell because her face registers no expression. Paul takes the blame for the murder, saying it was an accident.

Phyllis very helpfully gets confused on the stand to try to get Paul "accidentally" convicted. Meanwhile, she's banging her boyfriend on the side in the wine cellar, which is underground and red and EVIL! OH HAY, DID I MENTION THIS WAS THE UNHOLY WIFE, BECAUSE THIS WINE CELLAR WHERE SHE'S MEETING WITH HER LOVER LOOKS A LOT LIKE HELL. IT'S KIND OF A METAPHOR OR SOMETHING.




Director John Farrow is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Paul loves children, his mother, apple pie and baseball; his brother is a priest; he lost his wang in the war. HE'S HOLY, I TELLS YA! HOLY! I'm waving a small American flag right now!

I was so disappointed in this. Farrow directed "Where Danger Lives" and "The Big Clock," so you know he knows what noir is supposed to be. He even directed one of my favorite Saint films, "The Saint Strikes Back." Unfortunately, TUW was just sloppy and poorly thought out and trite. The print TCM showed was rotten, too, impossibly dark with something very suspicious going on with the blues and the reds.

Diana was pretty good for the most part, especially the courtroom scenes and the final scene with the mother-in-law in her sick bed. Solid character actors Marie Windsor and Joe de Santis were excellent. But Arthur Franz, the guy who played the priest? Don't talk to me about Arthur Franz. And I'm a little miffed at Beulah, too, to be honest.

P.S. I'm exaggerating about Paul's pole. He confesses toward the end of the film that the Army doctors said he might not be able to have kids again, which I'm sure means injury, not complete loss of, the unit in question.