The typically cozy mysteries of Agatha Christie aren’t natural fodder for film noir but Rowland V. Lee’s Love from a Stranger (US: A Night of Terror) does a nice job with the bestselling author’s short story “Philomel Cottage,” scripted by Frances Marion, who had earlier adapted the story for the stage. Superior to its American remake ten years later starring Sylvia Sidney, the film feels like two in one: the first half follows the lovely Carol Howard (Ann Harding) as she celebrates winning the lottery with her best pal Kate Meadows (Binnie Hale) by traveling across Europe and becoming romantically acquainted with the charming Gerald Lovell (Basil Rathbone); the second half takes a very dark and serious turn as Lovell, now wedded  to Carol, takes his new wife to a remote cottage where he becomes possessive (“I wouldn’t think of letting you wander in the garden on your own”), manipulative (“I discovered quite early in life that I could twist women around my little finger”), and downright creepy. Once Carol comes to terms with the fact that her new husband wants to kill her for her lottery fortune, she’s forced to defend herself using both psychological and chemical means (“Women always use poison”). Bruce Seton plays Ronald Bruce, Carol’s erstwhile fiancé who suspects Lovell is up to no good. Harding and Rathbone are extremely impressive in the third act, his mania matched by her circumspection; by the end he’s forcing her to read the reports of his previous murders as fast as she can as he power-walks in circles around her chair.