Thirteen Women

1932

Action / Crime / Drama / Horror / Mystery

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 39% · 10 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 39% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.2/10 10 2232 2.2K

bullying horoscope slasher train trapeze pre-code

Plot summary

Thirteen women who were schoolmates ask a swami to cast their horoscopes. The news they receive is not good for any of them.

Director

George Archainbaud Photo
George Archainbaud

Top cast

Phyllis Fraser Photo
Phyllis Fraser as Twelfth Woman
Florence Eldridge Photo
Florence Eldridge as Grace Coombs
Betty Furness Photo
Betty Furness as Thirteenth Woman
Blanche Friderici Photo
Blanche Friderici as Miss Kirsten
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
546.33 MB
956*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
12 hr 59 min
Seeds ...
1014.16 MB
1424*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
12 hr 59 min
Seeds 8

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by AlsExGal 7 / 10

Malevolent Myrna

Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy) is a half-white, half-Indian girl who a missionary sends to an exclusive finishing school so that she can learn to "pass" as white. But the 13 women in a particular exclusive sorority learn that Ursula is "half caste'", expose her, and as a result she is expelled from the school. If these racial attitudes all sound very archaic it's because they are, but then this film is over 90 years old. So bear with me.So Ursula has apparently been itching for revenge ever since. And 15 years later she puts her plan into action. One of the girls asks for horoscopes for all 13 from the imminent Swami Yogadachi. His lover happens to be Ursula who has hypnotic powers of her own. Yogadachi casts the horoscopes, which seem at least semi positive. Ursula then puts the Swami in a deep sleep and replaces the horoscopes with her own for each woman, warning of death, prison, insanity, etc. With Yogadachi's usefulness to her finished , she then hypnotizes him so that he runs into the path of a moving train. This woman is NOT a nice person!But Ursula never seems to finish what she starts. She disposes of only three of the 13 women when they read the horoscopes, become obsessed with the inevitability of their predicted fates, and actually cause their horoscopes to come true. Ursula then becomes oddly focused on Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) who is urging the others to ignore these horoscopes as so much hogwash. She seems determined to break Laura, not because she was particularly cruel to her, but because she is resisting her little game. Complications ensue.The film does have something to say about the power of the mind over situations. And Ursula is not in the least bit a sympathetic character given that she has no natural affection towards anyone. She has enemies and men she uses to get revenge on those enemies - Those are the only two kinds of relationships she seems to have as an adult.I'd say the one hokey thing that the film does consists of the special effects. For some reason a bright star appears in the center of the screen every time a sorority sister fulfills her face or Ursula hypnotizes someone to do her bidding. It's short at just under an hour and pretty entertaining.
Reviewed by jjnxn-1 6 / 10

See it for the cast

Spiritualism was a craze at the time this was made and hypnosis not really understood by the public at large something of which the scriptwriters took advantage. They concocted this wildly dated, at times preposterous and overwrought meller that if nothing else spotlights a couple of soon to be top stars.This silly junk was one of Myrna's final Eurasian villainess roles. It's interesting after years of exposure to her as the perfect wife or the level headed, spunky All-American woman to see her in a role that was typical of her pre-stardom days, that of the foreign mantrap. She looks great but is far better than the part deserves. She is noticeably understated while most of the other performers over emote. Made when sound was in its relative infancy many of the performers are still reliant on over-sized, distracting stage gestures. Irene Dunne starts the picture in subdued fashion but ends up as over the top as everyone else, she's been much better elsewhere. Same goes for Florence Eldridge, a very fine actress usually though she's overblown in this. Full of actresses of note for one reason or another. Besides Myrna and Irene there is Jill Esmond, first wife of Laurence Olivier, Kay Johnson, a DeMille favorite and the mother of respected character actor James Cromwell and Peg Entwistle, the infamous and tragic actress who threw herself from the Hollywood sign in despair a few days after this film premiered, it's her only film credit. Except for the two leading ladies each only get a scene or two to make an impression.Fun in a ludicrous way but aside from the cast this is a routine, if outlandish, programmer that were it not for them would be utter forgotten.
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