Don't Bother to Knock

This is a film constantly playing with fire, full of situations that could ring false but it pulls it off. Sometimes subtle, sometimes blunt, it has a lot of things it wants to explore about the human condition and isn't always sure how to go about it, but it's incredibly successful all the same. Monroe starts off slow, but by the end her performance is great and Widmark is stellar all the way through. There's a genuine melancholy underlying the performances that made them particularly effective

A slow-burn sort of noir, with a palpable sense of sadness. Marilyn Monroe is captivating as a desperate, disturbed, unhinged woman, and Richard Widmark breaks out of type. And you've got some nice songs from Anne Bancroft... perhaps a few too many (four in the first 20 minutes) but they help establish the melancholy mood. Although there's not enough of the noir-style photography I enjoy, the film goes to some pretty dark places. Really creates an unsettling air of psychological danger.

Anyone who thinks Marilyn Monroe can't act should see this, she's genuinely creepy in this thriller.

Despair and loneliness. The final look Monroe gives us nearly broke me.

More a drama than a classic mystery/thriller noir about a woman slowly slipping back into her mental health issues this movie is slow to start, but slowly builds momentum after that when the girl bit by bit unravels more and more. It also a showcase for how good Marilyn Monroe actually could act if she was given a change to be more than just a sex symbol. She does a fantastic job in showing her characters descent into madness, in how she steadily loses more and more grip on reality.

Widmark, more subdued than usual, and noir stable Elisha Cook Jr. are welcome additions, but it's Monroe's pitch-perfect performance that makes this a winner.

May I recommend to you all, the excellent suspense novel on which this film is based, "Mischief" by Charlotte Armstrong. It, and this film, will instantly make you an Armstrong fan. Marilyn Monroe acquits herself very well as the disturbed young woman hired as a babysitter. Every mother of a vulnerable young girl will shudder at this cautionary tale about hiring someone you don't know to entrust with your precious children.

That poor Bunny. She's gonna need therapy. A strong performance from Monroe and good chemistry with Widmark. Bancroft looked different from her appearance in The Graduate that I have imprinted in my mind. I was getting red flags about the cray cray lady the whole time, plus, who would risk their job to allow their recently-released niece to babysit someone? Fav scene: looking at each other across the windows.

The thriller was pretty good but the standout was Marilyn who played a lost, fragile, broken woman in a creepy realistic way.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

For such a short film, this sure does drag. It takes a long time for its disparate pieces to come together, and when they finally do it becomes a sensational psychological portrait worthy of a hard roll of the eyes. A shame, because the combination of talent is nothing to balk at.

Short, sweet & razor-sharp, this is a compact noir-style drama featuring two refreshingly complex lead characters & a strong set of supporting ones, all played by a very solid cast. Marilyn Monroe turns in a genuinely chilling & very strong performance as a severely troubled young woman, while Wildmark is great as an obnoxious lady's man who's way out of his depth. While it perhaps could've ran a little longer & rushes its story a bit, this is a really enjoyable ride that's worth checking out.

This is relatively obscure for a Monroe film and I have no idea why. I went in not knowing much about it other than that Monroe was in it and that it was a thriller of some sort and I am glad I did. It's darker in many ways than many other noirs and films of the period and it features one of Monroe's strongest performances as an actress. The thrills generally work, and it packs itself into very lean runtime at under 80 minutes. Vastly underrated; deserves to be considered among Monroe's best.