The Unholy Wife

I've reviewed a couple of the movies that Diana Dors made in her native Britain, and she was certainly a capable enough actress. Hollywood eventually came calling, but unfortunately she didn't get the best material during her time in Hollywood. One of those Hollywood movies ran on TCM some time back: The Unholy Wife.

The movie starts with Phyllis Hochen (Diana Dors) telling a priest that she knows that according to his book, what she did was wrong. At this point, we get a flashback of exactly what it is she did that was wrong.... Phyllis is in a big house, where she lives with, among other people, her mother-in-law Emma (Beulah Bondi). Emma hears gunshots, and is scared out of her wits. Phyllis suggests that there might be a prowler, and Emma has already called the police.

The "prowler" in question is in fact not a prowler, but a man known to Phyllis named Sam Sanford (Tom Tryon). Sam, as we soon learn, is having a torrid affair with Phyllis, which is a problem since she's already married. A sheriff's deputy comes, bringing along another man, Fr. Stephen Hochen (Arthur Franz). Yes, that's Phyllis' brother-in-law, and Emma's son, who has become a Catholic priest. And despite his vows to be a man of good faith, Fr. Stephen doesn't seem to like Phyllis one bit, thinking that she's out for something. And maybe she is, although that's something we'll have to find out later in the movie.

Phyllis' husband Paul (Rod Steiger) is fairly wealthy, owning a good-sized vineyard and not having to share it with his brother since brother is part of the Catholic clergy. He married Phyllis some time in the past, Phyllis being a widow already with a young son. It's a bit of a difficult marriage since the two seem to have married on impulse and only afterwards discovered that they have some compatibility issues. It's these that lead to Phyllis taking up that affair with Sam, a hired hand on the vineyard.

Eventually, Phyllis comes up with a scheme to get rid of the scheme, involvinv having Sam come back to the house again and act as the prowler since Emma already knows the house is prone to a prowler. Only this time, when Phyllis tries to shoot at the prowler, she's not going to shoot the phony prowler, but her husband. And she'll have a perfect excuse of whom to blame -- that burglar who isn't really a burglar, and whom nobody is going to be able to find for obvious reasons.

Except that when Phyllis shoots, she doesn't shoot Paul, but one of Paul's friends who showed up unannounced at the house knowing that Paul kept the doors unlocked. Phyllis has to think quickly, and comes up with some wacky scheme that will have Paul take the blame, only for it to be found out after the trial that Paul is in fact innocent. Everybody gets off. Well, not quite, of course, since there's that damn pesky Production Code.

The Unholy Wife has multiple flashbacks, which doesn't help the story one bit, making it convoluted and hard to follow, as well as feeling rather contrived. Rod Steiger is much too good for the material, while poor Diana Dors doesn't really get to show what she was capable of the way she had done in the UK to get to Hollywood in the first place.

Still, you may want to watch The Unholy Wife once just to see how Hollywood didn't know how to use Diana Dors properly.