[3] Myra Hudson (Crawford) is a successful Broadway playwright who rejects Lester Blaine (Palance) as the lead in her new play.

She forgets to turn the machine off, and later, when Lester and his long-time lover, Irene Neves (Grahame), are in Myra's study, they find the original will, which stipulates that the bulk of her fortune be left to a foundation.

While hiding in Irene's apartment waiting for Lester, Myra catches her reflection in a mirror and is horrified at the sight of herself holding a gun.

She decides to abandon the plan, but it is too late; Lester has learned of her intentions, and after life-and-death shifts in everybody's murderous aims, ultimately ends up chasing Myra in his car through the streets of San Francisco.

And, in his climactic scenes in a darkened apartment and a chase through its precipitous dark alleys and backyards he has managed to project an authentically doom-filled atmosphere.

He wrote: "The scenario...is designed to allow Miss Crawford a wide range of quivering reactions to vicious events, as she passes through the stage of starry-eyed love, terrible disillusionment, fear, hatred, and finally hysteria.

"[5] Village Voice reviewer Melissa Anderson wrote in 2016 that Sudden Fear "fits into and defies different genres, its convention-scrambling partly the result of the fact that the film looks both forward and back.

Joan Crawford has a chance to act out on her hysteria after her happy marriage is unmasked as a charade, and does a fine job of trying to remain calm while knowing her hubby and [his] girlfriend are planning to kill her ...