Repeat Performance needs urgent rescuing from the black hole it has somehow fallen into. A superior Poverty Row production from Eagle-Lion Studios, it's imaginatively scripted, played with gusto and never less than fascinating – a curio, film noir in a sci-fi time loop.

On New Year's Eve, 1947, Joan Leslie shoots and kills her husband, Louis Hayward. She wishes she hadn't, and her wish comes true – suddenly she's back in New Year's Eve, 1946. This proves to be no mere shuffling around of the narrative; she's been given the year to live over again in hopes of a happier ending. But of course the gimmick serves as a flashback, too, retracing the sequence of events that led (or will lead?) up to the shooting.

The title also drops a clue about the picture's fang-and-claw milieu, New York's theater world. Leslie's a star on the Rialto, having come to prominence in one of her husband's plays. He turned out to be a one-shot wonder, however, resorting to the bottle in resentment of his failure and his wife's success (there are parallels to A Star Is Born and to All About Eve). Other characters in this backstage story include Leslie's producer, Tom Conway; Virginia Field, as a haughty English playwright; Richard Basehart (looking, in his debut, like a young Harrison Ford),as an unhappy poet but loyal friend; and Natalie Schafer, as a viperish patroness of the arts.

When Leslie suddenly finds herself in last year's gown, she tries to renegotiate her way through the year, this time in possession of an advance copy of the script, gingerly avoiding its fatal pitfalls. She comes to learn (as do we all) that destiny writes in cement. Luckily for her, it hasn't quite hardened.

On the first New Year's Eve, Howard's resolution not to drink doesn't even make it to midnight; he turns sullen and abusive. A spring sojourn to sunny California, while shopping for a new vehicle for Leslie, doesn't improve his moods. Her next prospect comes from the pen of Field, and Howard browbeats her into accepting it; he, meanwhile, takes up with its author. Basehart finds himself in the clutches of Schafer, who ends up having him committed to an asylum, while Howard suffers a drunken fall that paralyzes him. As the year winds to its close, Leslie desperately tries to extricate herself from what she knows is to come....

Despite being an unlikely hodge-podge of noirish, soapish and paranormal elements, the movie never seems stretched or thrown together. The less than luminous cast rises to the occasion, with each member allotted a place in the spotlight. Accept the flaw in the warp or weft of the fabric of time, and Repeat Performance zips along smoothly and convincingly. It's buried treasure – proof, albeit obscure, that rough magic could sometimes occur even on the outer fringes of the movie industry.

Terrific soap opera with a twist. A beautiful actress kills her cheating, alcoholic husband on New Year's Eve, but soon finds she's getting the chance to relive the past year of her life all over again! Who among us wouldn't want a chance like this? Fantasy elements in the story are surprisingly subtle, as we realize along with Joan Leslie that some paths can be walked twice, but the outcome is difficult to change. Leslie, who looks like a young Esther Williams, gives a very good performance, aided by some taut dialogue. Neat little item, with plenty of backstage witticisms and show-people with no morals. *** from ****

Sold to me as a minor classic, this is a good (its hard for any film with Tom Conway to be bad) little film about a woman who shoots her husband dead on New Years Eve. She wishes that she could do it all again as the clock strikes midnight and is transported back a year. She now has to see if she will make the same mistakes or change things for the better.

Good little film, I don't think its quite the classic, is worth seeing because its so nicely dark and moody. The cast is the major selling point here with Joan Leslie as the woman, Louis Haywood as the husband we all would gladly shoot, Richard Basehart as a friend of the wife and Tom Conway as a theatrical producer all turning in performances near the top of the game.

This is one to keep an eye out for.