Thirteen Women (DVD)

Shortly before shedding her snakeskin vamp persona for good by wrapping herself in the ermine confines of Nora Charles, Myrna Loy terrified and terrorized as the murderous mesmerist Ursula Georgi in the pre-Code horror show Thirteen Women. Following a racist sorority's cruel rebuff, half-caste Ursula embarks on a blood-thirsty trail of deceit and murder until only one woman (Irene Dunne) is left to face her. Aside from the allure and interest of it's two leading ladies - each on the cusp of their ascension into cinema legend - Thirteen Women's delights are rather more diabolical and devastating than the more domestic concerns of a traditional "Women's Picture." from it's breathless and terrifying (and arrestingly staged) opening aerial atrocity through it's stabbings, suicides and hidden bombs, Thirteen Women's relentless pace startles and astonishes, ever driven by Loy's portrayal of Ursula's unalloyed and unapologetic evil.

Starring: Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez, Jill Esmond, Myrna Loy, Florence Eldridge, C. Henry Gordon, Peg Entwistle, Harriet Hagman, Edward Pawley, Blanche Friderici, Wally Albright, Elsie Prescott, Mary Duncan, Kay Johnson, Julie Haydon, Marjorie Gateson, Lloyd Ingraham, Edward Le Saint, Kenneth Thomson, Leon Waycoff, Clarence Geldert, Violet Seaton