“Wow, it’s a precipice!” gasps intense thespian Jack Palance as he measures the murderous potential of the cliffside second home of San Francisco heiress Joan Crawford, in one of many perilous distances explored in this cracked noir gem. The other distances are described through class and written by San Francisco born and raised screenwriter Lenore Coffee, known for bringing new complexity to the woman’s picture. Sudden Fear provides an ideal vehicle for Crawford, once again as an indomitable yet fragile heroine, while also giving striking access to her interior life. Many tropes of the San Francisco film serve dramatic narrative purposes in Sudden Fear: dangerous heights, furtive conversations secretly recorded, doppelgängers and even romantic excursions to redwood forests.