Douglas Sirk's Rediscovered Thriller

Before he revolutionized the women's film with such gleefully melodramatic works as Written on the Wind and Magnigicent Obsession, director Douglas Sirk made a series of glossy thrillers flavored by European settings (shortly after his emigration to the U.S. from Germany).

Like the films for which he would become famous, Lured revels in the glamour and romance that Hollywood had honed to perfection, and plays every scene -- every coy glance, every deadly encounter -- the melodramatic hilt.

In Lured, a serial killer terrorized London, trapping his prey through personal ads in the newspaper and taunting the police with gruesome poems. A Scotland Yard detective (Charles Coburn) enlists the aid of a feisty American redhead (a truly captivating Lucille Ball) to draw the murderer into the dragnet, and leads her across the paths of a variety of peculiar suspects -- including a demented clothing designer (Boris Karloff) and an international playboy (George Saunders) -- all of whom seem to have designs on the Yard's most delectable decoy.