Anyone else like this better than 'Rear Window'?

I liked this movie...but I loved Rear Window. To me...it's not ever close...RW was a much better movie imho. Although I initially thought of RW...but for the last half of the movie I was reminded of another movie because of all the gaslighting...but I can't remember the name of it...lol.

I saw this several years ago and forgot all about it. Now it's come back to me.

This movie seems to bear a striking resemblance to the forties noir "The Window", I think.

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Jim Hutton: talented gorgeous hot hunk; adorable as ElleryQueen; SEXIEST ACTOR EVER

No, a lot of stuff didn't make sense here:
-why she keeps going to Larry when he's just going to disbelieve her
-why she runs up a dead end of a tower
-how the police can get a typewriter from her flat w/o a search warrant
-how a police chief can put someone in a sanatorium for a few days w/o even a signature of next of kin, or at least a judge
-how police can be so incompetent
-etc.

In a Hitchcock film there might be things that don't make sense either, but because he's playing at a whole 'nother psychological level, you don't care.

But the funny comments -- almost meta-comments -- of Larry's partner were great.

This film had so much potential. I'd watch Barbara Stanwyck in anything. I dislike most of Hitchcock's films and particularly dislike Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. But "Rear Window" is the better film.

The sad thing about so many old filmes noir is that their plots have originality to spare, but that their directors or producers chose not to develop their frequently startlingly modern themes. The unexpected love interest with the detective was fantastic, but at the end we don't know if the detective regards Ms. Draper as a specimen to be studied, a woman who eventually will deserve institutionalizing, or a courageous, frank woman. The German-spy trope is so been-there, done-that--even for the era--but the vacant next apartment provided some great investigative possibilities for the Maytag man, Jesse White. These possibilities are introduced, but then dropped.

The greatest Stanwyck disappointment for me is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, fundamentally because her marriage is much more interesting than the Van Heflin subplot. I'd rank "Witness to Murder" as below that movie, but also far below the best Stanwyck noir: "No Man of Her Own."

As you wrote some time ago, there are only a few similarities. In Rear Window, the star was frequently looking in on various neighbors and saw some suspicious things that made him think a murder MIGHT have been committed.

Here, the star happened to glance out just as a murder was clearly committed.

I think the above is what made Rear Window far superior. There, we look through the field glasses with George Bailey wondering if Perry Mason really did murder his wife. More time is spent trying to find some clues.

In Witness to Murder, almost no effort seems spent to seek clues after the first two minutes of the police searching his apartment. In fact, that was done off camera while the main detective chatted with the man. All they did was look for a body, not scenes of a fight.

I found myself, after the beginning, wishing Cheryl would stumble on a real clue that would convince her detective/boyfriend that something is wrong and they would work together to obtain more evidence.

Instead, we focused on her sanity and that was where this film lost a point or two on my reviewing scale. She never thought she was going insane but we had the protracted scene in the "observation ward," that just seemed to clog up the script.

Rear Window was all about what did the suspect actually do, while this film had repeated scenes where Cheryl confronted the known killer. It was clear he was going to try to kill her at some point, but the way she kept giving him chances--letting him into her place, visiting him at his place--just bothered me.

Don't get me wrong. I liked Witness to Murder overall. But it was nowhere as tense or interesting as Rear Window, a true film classic.

I think if I saw 'Witness to Murder' often enough, I could easily get to like it more than the classic 'Rear Window.' Barbara Stanwyck and George Sanders have got more charisma than the two leads in the other film. And it has the creepiest scene. In the mental institution. I think that this deserves to be more known than it is. And it is a good film to compare with 'Rear Window.' If anything, the story in 'Witness to Murder' is more believable. I must try to get a copy of this film.

I can see why you compare the two movies, and the plot differences don't matter to me. It's more about the emotions than the symbols, as someone once said. Personally I liked them both for different reasons. Rear Window was much more frightening to me, so in that way it was more effective, but but that also means that it can't be fun. This movie was more fun to watch because there were other elements such as the romance, style, fashion, furniture, creative lighting, and of course Barbara Stanwyck!

Why does it always have to be "this one or that one???"

I like both, they both bring to the table a similar situation with some different elements and they both do it pretty well.