Review – The Bad and the Beautiful

This movie avoids being a standard Tinseltown-behind-the-scenes production by focusing on a low-budget producer (Kirk Douglas) whose biography bears a resemblance to film legend Val Lewton. To be sure, it spends a lot of time on run-of-the-mill Hollywood melodrama. But it packs a clever twist or two along the way. A director, an actress and a writer all hate our hero’s guts because he betrayed each of them in one way or another. But after he asks them to do a movie together to help him make a comeback, they slowly realize how much they actually owe him. If nothing else, the picture is worth it just for the scene in which Lewton’s approach to horror is explained in connection with a Cat-People-esque production. Mildly amusing