Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds star in this Depression-era shocker set in Hollywood and filled with camp humor and genuine suspense. Adelle and Helen (Debbie and Shelley), tormented by threatening phone calls after their sons are convicted of murder, move from their Iowa home to Hollywood, where they set up a dance school for child stars. But in Hollywood, old guilts can mix with deeply embedded movie star worship to push insecure types--for instance, Helen--off their small-town rockers. Tony Rayns writes for the British journal, Monthly Film Bulletin:
“Harrington's film is a glorious exercise in mise-en-scène, indulging a wholesale camp delight in Thirties decor and lifestyles (from a schoolful of budding Shirley Temples to an outrageous nightclub tango between Adelle and a dreamy Latin would-be lover); his mentor here...is avowedly Josef von Sternberg.... Harrington has embedded within the film's narrative an elaborately developed motif of masks and façades--both visually and thematically.... It is, of course, a tribute to Harrington's savoir-faire that he has managed to imbue such a subject with such precise poetic imagery. To help him bring off the mechanics of the plot he has drawn from Debbie Reynolds her best performance in years, as well as some impeccable ham from Micheál MacLiammóir, and some convincingly tortured ‘method' acting from Shelley Winters.”