Mainlining Christmas

"Beware, My Lovely" is a sold noir bordering on horror with proto-slasher elements. It does a fantastic job building suspense and empathy for its heroine, played by Ida Lupino, who also produced the film (through her company, The Filmakers) and took over directing when  Harry Horner had to step away due to his wife's illness and passing. All of which should be interest to anyone curious about the history and evolution of horror, women directors, and this era of Hollywood. I'll touch on some of that later in this review, but first... Uh... Holy shit, this is a Christmas home invasion proto-slasher from 1952. That's more than twenty years before Black Christmas  and significantly older than any other holiday film I've found employing similar tropes to tell the extended story of a woman trying to survive an encounter with a dangerously unstable man in a claustrophobic setting. Hell, it's two years older than the Vault of Horror story, "And All Through th...