Cobra Woman (1944) DVD

A lush score, glorious Technicolor, and Maria Montez times two are the main ingredients in this, the quintessential romantic Montez-John Hall melodrama. Never mind that the stunning Maria plays the good twin with permanently quivering lips and the evil one with all the hauteur of a chorus girl, that the screenplay sometimes becomes an exercise in tedium, or that Universal's back lot and on-location scenes filmed near Pacific Coast Highway look just like that -- a studio back lot and the Pacific Coast highway. This, after all, is Hollywood escapism at its zenith, a time capsule of moviegoing during the darkest days of World War II and a glorious testament to mind over matter.