Repeat Performance (1947), directed by Alfred L. Werker. Kanopy Streaming at movie night on Monday, February 6.

OK, look, it was movie night and we wanted noir. Flicker Alley, UCLA and the Film Noir Foundation restored this one, about a woman who kills her husband and then, for reasons unknown, is shot back in time one year before this event, and can redo this pivotal 12 months and maybe change fate. It takes place over Christmas and New Year’s and might have been a prime candidate for next year’s Coal or Candy, the Heights’ holiday program featuring movies celebrating or sending up the season.

Repeat Performance is awful. I’m not going to go into why it doesn’t work, except to say that at no point does it work. Not that the script is bad–it is awful–but everything is off. The lighting is bad, the sets dull, the actors perfunctory, and the characters are all just terrible people or idiots. There’s some stuff in the film that is at least laughably bad, but that’s it.

It’s not a surprise that Eagle-Lion studios, one of the “great” poverty row studios, made this movie–they were pumping out B pictures, they needed content, there’s a reason their movies don’t hold up, for the most part, and that’s because they didn’t pay to get quality filmmakers. What’s surprising is that teams of intelligent people saw this turd and thought, “yes, let’s spend money to restore it.” Honestly, this is the type of thing that screens at noir festivals (a newly restored “lost” noir) that only makes audiences get frustrated because it’s exhausting to watch good movies all day and then sit through this tedious flick.