Whirlpool is a 1950[1][2] American film noir thriller directed by Otto Preminger and written by Ben Hecht and Andrew Solt, adapted from the 1946 novel Methinks the Lady... by Guy Endore.

Owing to anti-British statements screenwriter Hecht had made in the recent past concerning the United Kingdom's involvement in Israel, prints of the film initially circulated in the country replaced his credit with the pseudonym Lester Barstow.

She is saved from scandal by smooth-talking hypnotist David Korvo, who persuades the store officials to put the mermaid pin she stole on her credit account, and not prosecute.

Korvo pressures Ann into coming to lunch with him, and she is relieved when, instead of accepting the blackmail payment she thinks he is after, he tears up her check and the store record of her shoplifting, and promises to help her.

William's theory accounts for Korvo's apparent spike in body temperature observed by the medical personnel on the day of Theresa's murder.

[3] The staff at Variety liked the film and wrote, "Whirlpool is a highly entertaining, exciting melodrama that combines the authentic features of hypnosis.

Ben Hecht and Andrew Solt have tightly woven a screenplay [from a novel by Guy Endore] about the effects of hypnosis on the subconscious, but they, and Otto Preminger in his direction, have eliminated the phoney characteristics that might easily have allowed the picture to slither into becoming just another eerie melodrama.

Mr. Ferrer, the Broadway champion, is the smooth and piercing villain of the piece who mouths Mr. Hecht's silken phrases with acid savor and burns folks with his eyes.

Furthermore, haughty Gene Tierney plays the lady who is slightly off the track and Charles Bickford and Richard Conte are the detective and the husband, respectively.

Luckily, Tierney carries the role of the innocent beauty with ease and has a particularly good line in gliding around blank-faced as if under hypnosis – and in showing her character's subsequent distraught confusion.