Overview: Julia Ross secures employment, through a rather nosy employment agency, with a wealthy widow, Mrs. Hughes, and goes to live at her house.

Two days later, she awakens - in a different house, in different clothes, and with a new identity. She's told she is the daughter-in-law of Mrs. Hughes, and has suffered a nervous breakdown.

Is Julia really 'Julia', or, is it true, that she's lost all memory of who she is?

Blu-ray Verdict: A briskly paced and brilliantly stylized mystery that grabs its audience from the start, 'My Name Is Julia Ross' immediately cemented Lewis place in the noir pantheon, and anticipated the elaborate identity-based deceptions found in future classic thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock's infamous 'Vertigo' and Brian De Palma's brilliant 'Obsession'.

For those who think of Dame May Witty as the kindly, slightly batty, old lady from Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, this movie requires an adjustment!

Here, she's anything but kindly or batty. Instead, her son, George Macready is the loony one. Just don't give him a knife, otherwise his eyes light up and no furniture cushion in the house is safe.

Now we know what he has in mind for the trapped Nina Foch if he can just get out from under Mother's domineering hand.

Really tight little woman-in-danger film that keeps the suspense on high throughout. The script never strays from Foch's dilemma. She's held prisoner in a big old Gothic house on the edge of an angry sea. They're going to kill her, but why.

OK, sure, her predicament makes no sense, but that says the tension still mounts as she tries one escape ploy after another; but even strangers seem against her.

So, of course, we also begin to feel her helplessness and mounting paranoia as the world turns away from her.

Director Joseph H. Lewis took a big step toward cult status with this film and understandably so. Then too, watch Foch run subtly through a gamut of emotions without once going over the top.

Witty too shines as a really intimidating matriarch who knows what she wants and how to get it if she can just keep her wacko son in line.

My one reservation is the climax which seems too contrived considering the timing of the events. Nonetheless, it's a good, nerve-wracking way to spend a little over an hour, now re-releases on stunning Blu-ray, and as a Special Edition nonetheless via Arrow Films (UK). This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original uncompressed mono PCM audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
Commentary by noir expert Alan K. Rode
Identity Crisis: Joseph H. Lewis at Columbia - The Nitrate Diva (Nora Fiore) provides the background and an analysis of the film
Theatrical trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Scott Saslow
+ FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by author and critic Adrian Martin