Film review: Lured (1947)

That's Lured with an "e", although it could just as well be Lurid, given that the plot involves a serial killer who sends Baudelaire-inspired poetry to the cops before killing his young female victims.  Not to mention that it's directed by Douglas Sirk, who is the byword for melodrama.  However, this is an early work (and black and white, unlike his lush later pictures), and dials down the torrent of feelings a little.  (It's helped in that regard by being set in England and having George "Sher Kahn" Sanders as a male lead.)  The female lead is Lucille Ball, and if that's an odd pairing to you, consider that this also features Boris Karloff!  I don't normally find Ball's mugging that appealing, but she works well in this picture (and isn't as extreme as in her TV work) as Sandra Carpenter, an American dancer who came over to London with a show and got stranded when it folded in a week.  She's working as a taxi-dancer at the start of the film 

when her best friend vanishes and is assumed to be a victim of the killer poet.  She is pursued by Sanders' Robert Fleming, who is taken by her voice on the phone and wants her to audition to be a dancer at one of his nightclubs (and more than that), while also being recruited by Charles Coburn's Inspector Temple of the Yard to be a Lure to catch the killer.  

(Coburn was the Devil in the Devil and Miss Jones, where he showed his comedic chops, while here he gets to try out a (moderately successful) English accent and serious acting as a patrician but dogged head cop.)  Karloff shows up as a false alarm: he's a mad old dress designer who recruits our heroine to model his dresses in front of an imagined audience and snaps and threatens her with a sword.  

(This is played mostly for laughs: this film switches tones on a dime - obviously the basic plot is pretty upsetting, and there are some very tense moments, but any film with Ball in it is going to have some laughs, and it becomes a pretty straight-ahead romance (Sirk's wheelhouse) towards the end.)  After a side plot where Sandra works as a maid in a house where the butler recruits young women to be sold off to South America, 

Robert saves Sandra and and in short order they are engaged to be married, 

but she finds her friend's bracelet (mentioned in the poem sent by the killer before she disappeared) in Robert's desk drawer, and Temple arrests him.  All signs point to his guilt, but Temple is unconvinced and instead focuses on his best friend and business partner (who lives in his house) Julian, who happens to have Baudelaire on his bookshelf.  But then Robert confesses!  And a distraught Sandra turns to Julian for comfort!  How will it end?  Well, it's worth watching to find out.