\u201cSorry Wrong Number\u201d is a film noir that starred Barbara Stanwyck as Leona Stevenson and Burt Lancaster as her husband Henry.\u00a0 They have trapped themselves in a relationship that will doom both of them.\u00a0 He is a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks and she is the daughter of James Cotterell, a very wealthy owner of a pharmaceutical company in Chicago.\u00a0 Henry\u2019s life as Leona\u2019s husband consists of working as a flunky for her father and begging for spending money from his demanding and neurotic wife.\u00a0 When he tries to break away and get a job outside of her father\u2019s company Cotterell puts out the word on the street that no one will hire without losing his business.\u00a0 When Henry perseveres to break away Leona has an attack that her father tells him is a dangerous heart condition that could kill her at any time that she becomes excited.<\/p>\n
So, Henry is trapped for good and all so he decides to take advantage of his position in the company by setting up a scheme with a chemist named Waldo Evans to steal extremely valuable drug intermediates and sell them to a gangster named Morano.\u00a0 But he tries to double-cross Morano but when he catches on the gangster tells him that he wants Leona\u2019s life insurance payoff.\u00a0 Apparently, Leona\u2019s doctor has told her she\u2019ll only last a few more days.\u00a0 So, Henry agrees to pay off on the policy within a month.\u00a0 But they go to New York City so that Leona can consult with a heart specialist.\u00a0 And the specialist finds that Leona\u2019s heart is fine, it\u2019s a psychosomatic illness.\u00a0 So Morano is going to have Leona killed but in the meantime the police are closing in on Morano, Evans and Henry.<\/p>\n
All this is learned during flashbacks in the movie during phone calls.\u00a0 The whole movie for Leona is taking place in an expensive apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in a series of phone calls with the other characters.\u00a0 In the opening scene Leona picks up the phone and thinks she\u2019s hearing a crossed line with two other speakers and they are planning to murder a woman that night.\u00a0 For the rest of the movie, she tries to get in touch with Henry to get his help.\u00a0 Leona feels trapped in her bed because of her belief in a heart condition so she stays and becomes more and more hysterical as she calls from place to place looking for him.\u00a0 And along the way she learns, bit by bit, about Henry\u2019s criminal business.\u00a0 But at the very end she finds out about the life insurance plot from Henry and he tells her the call she intercepted was about her own murder.\u00a0 But it\u2019s too late, just as Henry tells her to scream out the window for help the killer comes up the staircase and strangles her.\u00a0 When Henry calls back to Leona the killer says \u201cSorry wrong number.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a pretty clever set up for a movie.\u00a0 Having the whole movie take place in a room gives it a claustrophobic feel.\u00a0 The only problem is that Stanwyck tries so hard to make her character a neurotic shrew that it works too well.\u00a0 Halfway through the movie I wanted to murder Stanwyck myself.\u00a0 The rest of the movie was fine but every time Stanwyck started freaking out I felt like turning the movie off.\u00a0 And when the killer finally strangled her, I felt very relieved and grateful.<\/p>\n
I would only recommend this movie to anyone who isn\u2019t put off by the description I\u2019ve given.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cSorry Wrong Number\u201d is a film noir that starred Barbara Stanwyck as Leona Stevenson and Burt Lancaster as her husband Henry.\u00a0 They have trapped themselves<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[1466,2974,3340],"class_list":["post-16493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-barbara-stanwyck","tag-burt-lancaster","tag-sorry-wrong-number"],"yoast_head":"\n