NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Film Masters Blu-ray (February 2026): Film Masters have transferred James V. Kern's The Second Woman to Blu-ray. Gregory reviewed the Alpha DVD from 2003 HERE. It is a distinctly modest 1080P transfer derived from a 2K scan of the best surviving 35mm elements. There is an unsightly green bias and it is much darker in spots, but there is more information in the frame (notably left edge) compared to the pubic-domain SD transfer - and is free of the visible damage on the SD. It is watchable but stops well short of HD format-standard quality; the film’s atmospheric beauty is preserved, but sadly not elevated. This requires a film-level restoration as the elements are compromised. Much of The Second Woman was shot on the wild, windswept cliffs of Carmel-by-the-Sea and Monterey, California, where the Pacific pounds against jagged rocks in a ceaseless, almost malevolent rhythm. Towering cypress trees twist like tormented souls against the sky, fog rolls in like a shroud, and the crashing surf becomes a character in its own right - its roar often drowning out dialogue at moments of peak unease. At the heart of this elemental drama stands Hilltop, the sleek, glass-walled modernist house Jeff built for his lost fiancée: all clean lines, plate-glass vistas, and precarious perch on the abyss. Mohr’s camera glides through its sunlit interiors with elegant restraint, then plunges into deep, expressionistic shadow when the psychological storms hit. The famous fading portrait of the dead woman - a surrealist canvas that slowly bleaches of color under sabotage - is a masterstroke of visual metaphor, while the frequent wide shots of the coastline give the picture an almost Gothic grandeur that belies its B-budget origins. This HD presentation leaves a lot to be desired but is a welcome advancement over the very rough DVDs that have been available to date.

NOTE: We have added 82 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Film Masters use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (16-bit) in the original English language. The Joseph Nussbaum’s (S.O.S. Tidal Wave,) score, built around Tchaikovsky themes swells with romantic melancholy, heightening the sense that love itself is under siege. It’s lush, emotional, and unapologetically old-fashioned in the best way - sweeping strings and turbulent brass that swell during moments of romantic longing or mounting dread, perfectly mirroring the story’s blend of passion and paranoia. The music never overwhelms; instead, it pulses beneath the surface like the ocean itself, heightening the sense that love and madness are two sides of the same coin. Subtle sound design adds to the immersion: the relentless crash of waves, the creak of floorboards in the empty house, the distant cry of gulls - all contribute to an atmosphere of elegant unease. Like the video a modest but welcome improvement via the lossless. Film Masters offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Film Masters Blu-ray offers nothing in terms of extras. True to the Archive Collection ethos, the disc is entirely bare-bones. There are no audio commentaries, no featurettes, no trailers, and no booklet or liner notes beyond the most basic on-screen menu. The only supplemental material is a set of static chapter stops and a brief, text-only essay on the back cover that offers little more than a plot synopsis and cast list.

James V. Kern's The Second Woman is a sleek, underappreciated psychological thriller that blends film noir, Gothic romance, and mid-century domestic suspense into a haunting coastal reverie. Often dismissed as a B-picture or a pale echo of Hitchcock, it actually anticipates the postwar "woman’s picture" strain of noir - think Rebecca (1940) refracted through the lens of Gaslight (1944) and Spellbound (1945) - while quietly subverting the genre’s usual fatalism with a surprisingly affirmative ending. At its core is the tension between modern rationality and irrational dread, embodied in the gleaming, cliff-perched modernist house called Hilltop, which stands as both sanctuary and trap. For much of its 90 minutes, the audience is kept in the same fog as Ellen: is Jeff a tragic victim, a guilt-ridden madman, or something worse? The screenplay doles out red herrings with precision - jealous colleagues, a caddish rival (John Sutton - My Cousin Rachel, 5 Fingers, Payment on Demand, Captain from Castile, The Hour Before the Dawn, Hudson's Bay, The Sea Hawk, Tower of London, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,) a sinister business partner - while Hal Mohr’s (Captain Blood, Underworld U.S.A., The Gun Runners, The Lineup, The Wild One, Rancho Notorious, Woman on the Run, An Act of Murder, Destry Rides Again, Bullets or Ballots, The Walking Dead) luminous black-and-white cinematography turns the rugged California coastline into a character unto itself. Towering waves crash against jagged rocks, claw-like cypress trees silhouette against the sky, and the modernist house, all clean lines and plate glass, feels eerily vulnerable perched on the edge of the abyss. Robert Young (The Enchanted Cottage, They Won't Believe Me, Crossfire, The Bride Comes Home, Secret of the Incas, The Bride Comes Home, The Guilty Generation,) usually the genial everyman, gives one of his most restrained performances: quiet, interior, almost somnambulant, conveying a man whose grief has hollowed him out. Betsy Drake (Intent to Kill, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, wrote Houseboat) in what may be her finest screen role, is the film’s true engine - intelligent, persistent, and refreshingly un-neurotic. She brings a 1950s version of Nancy Drew energy to the role: a career woman who weaponizes logic against the irrational. Their chemistry feels lived-in rather than manufactured, and the film quietly celebrates her agency without ever turning her into a superheroine. The deeper themes emerge in the final act, when the villain is revealed to be Ben Sheppard (Henry O’Neill - North by Northwest, Convicted, No Man of Her Own, The Reckless Moment, Alias Nick Beal, Johnny Eager, Shadow of the Thin Man, They Drive by Night, Calling Philo Vance, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Dodge City, Jezebel, Bullets or Ballots, The Walking Dead, The Petrified Forest), Vivian’s father and Jeff’s architectural partner. Consumed by grief and misplaced blame, he has orchestrated the campaign of psychological warfare to drive Jeff to suicide or institutionalization. The twist is both shocking and thematically rich: the real threat comes not from the supernatural or the subconscious, but from patriarchal rage and the destructive power of unresolved mourning. The fading painting - a modernist portrait of Vivian that slowly loses its color - becomes a perfect metaphor for memory itself eroding under the weight of guilt and sabotage. The house, symbol of Jeff’s creative ambition and romantic ideal, is literally reduced to ashes, forcing a confrontation with the past. The Second Woman is less a conventional noir than a melancholy valentine to resilience. Where many films of the era punish their characters for daring to love again, this one allows healing. Jeff and Ellen walk away from the ruins together, the sea still roaring behind them, but the storm has passed. It’s a small, elegant miracle of a movie - one that deserves to be rescued from the shadows of its more famous cousins and given the cult following its eerie beauty and emotional intelligence have long warranted. After wrapping his moody 1950 psychological thriller The Second Woman - his last significant feature-film credit - James V. Kern made a decisive and highly successful pivot to television, where he became one of the most prolific and reliable house directors of the 1950s and 1960s. Over the next 16 years he directed hundreds of episodes - I Love Lucy (1953–1956), 99 episodes of My Three Sons (1964–1967), 83 episodes of The Joey Bishop Show (1962–1965), 22 episodes of The Ann Sothern Show, 6 episodes of My Favorite Martian, and solid runs on 77 Sunset Strip, Bourbon Street Beat, Maverick, Pete and Gladys, The Gale Storm Show, and The Jack Benny Program. The Second Woman in any high-definition format like the Film Masters Blu-ray is welcome, if tempered by its bare-bones status and modest a/v. The picture and sound are good enough to let the film’s hypnotic coastal mood and elegant performances shine through, yet the lack of extras and the unpolished technical presentation keep it from feeling like a true celebration. At its current price point it’s an easy recommendation for completists and noir enthusiasts, but anyone hoping for a deluxe treatment will have to keep waiting. The Second Woman is one of the most elegantly haunting and quietly devastating psychological thrillers of the 1950s, a forgotten jewel where sunlit modernist beauty and gathering coastal dread create a surreal atmosphere that lingers like sea mist long after the final frame. See this one!

Gary Tooze