Thirteen Women

Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy) is a half-white, half-Indian girl who a missionary sends to an exclusive finishing school so that she can learn to "pass" as white. But the 13 women in a particular exclusive sorority learn that Ursula is "half caste'", expose her, and as a result she is expelled from the school. If these racial attitudes all sound very archaic it's because they are, but then this film is over 90 years old. So bear with me.

So Ursula has apparently been itching for revenge ever since. And 15 years later she puts her plan into action. One of the girls asks for horoscopes for all 13 from the imminent Swami Yogadachi. His lover happens to be Ursula who has hypnotic powers of her own. Yogadachi casts the horoscopes, which seem at least semi positive. Ursula then puts the Swami in a deep sleep and replaces the horoscopes with her own for each woman, warning of death, prison, insanity, etc. With Yogadachi's usefulness to her finished , she then hypnotizes him so that he runs into the path of a moving train. This woman is NOT a nice person!

But Ursula never seems to finish what she starts. She disposes of only three of the 13 women when they read the horoscopes, become obsessed with the inevitability of their predicted fates, and actually cause their horoscopes to come true. Ursula then becomes oddly focused on Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) who is urging the others to ignore these horoscopes as so much hogwash. She seems determined to break Laura, not because she was particularly cruel to her, but because she is resisting her little game. Complications ensue.

The film does have something to say about the power of the mind over situations. And Ursula is not in the least bit a sympathetic character given that she has no natural affection towards anyone. She has enemies and men she uses to get revenge on those enemies - Those are the only two kinds of relationships she seems to have as an adult.

I'd say the one hokey thing that the film does consists of the special effects. For some reason a bright star appears in the center of the screen every time a sorority sister fulfills her face or Ursula hypnotizes someone to do her bidding. It's short at just under an hour and pretty entertaining.