Two of a Kind

Cinemelodrama often intensifies Hollywood's tendency to picture improbable characters behaving incredibly in impossible situations. Latest examples:

Lightning Strikes Twice (Warner) tells an even unlikelier tale than its title suggests. It all hinges on the fact that a good friend (Mercedes McCambridge) of an accused murderer (Richard Todd) gets a seat on the jury that hears his case.

Thanks to Mercedes' efforts Todd goes free, and he secludes himself bitterly in the Texas countryside. Along comes a vacationing actress (Ruth Roman). Though she is well warned of Todd's reputation as a wife-killer, she determines to clear his name and starts worrying about his character only after she marries him.

The movie's involved story, full of false leads and falser dialogue, manages the difficult trick of getting more preposterous as it goes along. At one stroke the picture also dulls three promising reputations, established by Actress Roman in Champion, Actress McCambridge in All the King's Men, Actor Todd in The Hasty Heart.

The Scarf (Joseph Justman; United Artists) tackles another pressing problem: the plight of a multimillionaire's foster son (John Ireland) who escapes from a desert asylum for the criminal insane to find out whether he really committed the murder that put him there five years before. Mercedes McCambridge gamely turns up again, this time as a singing waitress who helps Ireland recover his lost memory and uncover the true culprit: a madman with a thriving business as a psychologist.

Only Actor James (Tobacco Road) Barton emerges with credit; he gives a salty performance as a turkey-raising hermit who befriends the escaped asylum inmate. Scripter-Director E. A. Dupont garnishes the picture's disjointed hokum with meticulous pictorial compositions that serve as hollow reminders of his eminence as a German director (Variety) in the '20s.

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