Overview: 'The Strange Woman' follows beautiful Jenny Hager (Hedy Lamarr) as she grows up to become an equally heartless and manipulative young woman, finding she can always get what she wants from the men in the 1820 s port of Bangor, Maine.

DVD Verdict: For a generation hooked on special effects, and mostly shoddy updates of very old film cliches, 'The Strange Woman' must seem like a very dated movie. Of course, that largely depends on generational film tastes.

A good story; good if sometimes uneven performances, and of course Hedy Lamarr; one of Hollywood's best kept secrets. Poor Hedy usually got the short end of the stick, as most of the critical acclaim went to very over-rated actresses, who were not nearly as beautiful as Hedy. Critics could never get past her phenomenal beauty, and more often rewarded Bergman, Turner, Davis, and Crawford, because they looked like ordinary everyday people.

Oh! the simple minded, one-dimensional critics who imposed their bland tastes on a public, that just craved good entertainment. Hedy as Jenny Hager represents a daring stretch for Hedy; and she delivers a somewhat hammy, but nevertheless engaging performance. George Sanders is excellent as usual, in one of his lesser roles, and the cinematography is first rate. This is a melodramatic melodrama folks!

Indeed, it simply represents a bygone era in movie-making; when movies were made to entertain, sometimes most effectively in black and white, very often with modest budgets, and without mindboggling effects, extremely loud soundtracks.

One of the best lines given is by Jenny Hager: "I wanted so many things. I wanted the whole world, but ... it was really only you!" For sure, they don't make them like this any more. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.