Beat the Devil (1953)

Beat the Devil boasts an extraordinarily impressive cast, a clever and witty script (by Truman Capote) and a fine director in John Huston. The story combines adventure, romance and comedy in exotic settings. With those ingredients you’d think this movie couldn’t possibly go wrong, but it bombed at the box-office.

In fact it’s a terrific movie. Its commercial failure at the time may have been due to the fact that it wasn’t the movie that audiences expected, given the title. Rather than a straightforward adventure movie it’s an offbeat comedy. And perhaps it wasn’t what audiences expected from Bogart. Bogart in the 1950s was trying very hard to escape from stereotyped tough guy roles with movies like The African Queen (which gained him an Oscar), The Caine Mutiny (which earned him another Oscar nomination), The Barefoot Contessa and Sabrina. Beat the Devil is as good as any of these movies and better than most but the fact is audiences at the time just didn’t go for it. Its reputation has grown steadily since then.



The plot concerns an assortment of crooks who intend to get rich from buying up land in East Africa containing rich uranium deposits. Whether the uranium actually exists seems uncertain but it doesn’t matter since it’s purely a McGuffin.

Billy Dannreuther (Bogart) is penniless but he’s full of stories about the riches he used to possess. His wife Maria (Gina Lollobrigida) claims to be spiritually English and has tea and crumpets every afternoon. They’re perhaps not quite out-and-out crooks but they’re certainly possessed of flexible ethics. Petersen (Robert Morley) and his three associates are most definitely out-and-out crooks. They’re killing time in a small Italin port city waiting for the ship to Africa. Also en route to Africa are Harry and Gwendolen Chelm. Harry claims to be landed gentry from Gloucestershire. He is in fact an outrageous liar, as is his wife. But then all the other characters in the movie are outrageous liars.



Maria Dannreuther is soon conducting an illicit love affair with Harry Chelm while Harry’s wife Gwendolen is carrying on with Billy. Everyone else is waiting for an opportunity to double-cross someone. Things get even more confused once the ship actually departs, and it all culminates in a shipwreck leaving our assorted crooks stranded in the custody of an Arab governor with a Rita Hayworth obsession.

It was apparently originally going to be a straight adventure film until Huston decided that would be boring and called in Capote to rewrite the script as a comedy. He also decided that if Peter Lorre (as one of the crooks, a German named O’Hara) and Robert Morley wanted to make things up as they went along that was fine by him. That’s what he was doing as director.



All this could be a recipe for disaster. It works because the actors are superb and they’re all in fine form and striking sparks off one another. This is very much an acting ensemble piece. Robert Morley is magnificent but Jennifer Jones is every bit as good as the delightfully eccentric and breathtakingly dishonest Gwendolen Chelm. Bogart gives a free and easy performance and shows he can handle comedy without any problems. Edward Underdown as Harry isn’t the least bit intimidated by the bevy of stars surrounding him and gleefully chews the scenery, as does Ivor Barnard as a murderous British Indian Army officer.

The basic premise is of course very close to that of the movie that established John Huston as a director, The Maltese Falcon, but played purely for comedy this time.



The movie is one that has fallen into the public domain which is both good news and bad news, the good news being that it can be picked up very cheaply on various DVD releases, the bad news being that none of these DVD editions is exactly a pristine transfer. I have the Alpha Video version. Picture quality is fairly rough and there’s a definite lack of contrast but it’s watchable. It’s such a fabulous movie that it would be a great pity to be put off by the lack of a premium DVD edition. On the other hand this is a movie that really deserves a restoration and a good DVD release.

This is an immensely enjoyable romp, and very much a must-see movie.

The Big Night (1951)

The Big Night was one of Joseph Losey’s last films in Hollywood before he relocated to England. And it’s one of no less three Losey films released in 1951. Unfortunately it’s far from being a classic.

It’s usually described as a film noir but really it’s a borderline case. It’s more of a coming-of-age movie.

A teenaged boy witnesses his father getting a savage beating at the hands of famed sports columnist Al Judge. He is disturbed not just by the brutality of the beating but also by his father’s unwillingness to offer any resistance. Being a dumb teenager he doesn’t bother to find out what was behind the attack. He merely steals his father’s gun and sets off to get revenge.



Just before the assault on his father we had seen the son (George La Main, played by John Drew Barrymore) being taunted by other teenagers. The reactions of various adults to the beating are curious and suggest that the father (Andy La Main, played by Preston Foster) is perhaps regarded as the sort of man who would not fight back. The boy’s determination to exact revenge may therefore be motivated by a concern about perception of both his and his father’s manhood or lack thereof. One suspects a bit of a Freudian influence on the script here.

George sets out for the fights, hoping to find Al Judge. He encounters an amiable drunk, Dr Lloyd Cooper. He’s not a medical doctor but a teacher of journalism. George meets Cooper’s girlfriend Julie and later meets Julie’s sister Marion (Joan Lorring). Young George (we’re presumably expected to believe he’s around 16 or 17 although Barrymore was 19 when the film was made) is attracted to Marion. It’s the whole teenaged boy falling for sophisticated older woman thing.



George does eventually track down Al Judge, only to discover that the situation was not at all what he thought it was and that Judge had his reasons for administering the beating (and Andy had his reasons for not resisting). The meeting does not go well, as you’d expect when you have an impulsive distraught teenager running around with a gun.

The ending brings both tragedy and understanding.



The biggest problem I had with this movie was that it seemed very stagey.Stanley Ellin and Losey co-wrote the screenplay, based on a novel by Ellin. The screenplay is very very talky and not terribly convincing.

Some fairly bad acting performances don’t help. John Drew Barrymore, billed here as John Barrymore Jr, was the son of the great John Barrymore (and the father of Drew Barrymore) but his career was undistinguished and it’s not hard to see why. I wasn’t impressed by Preston Foster either but it could be argued the script didn’t give him much of a chance.



Coming-of-age movies have about the same appeal for me as social message movies - in other words no appeal at all. If you enjoy these sorts of movies you might be more forgiving of this movie.

It must seem like I’m conducting a vendetta against Joseph Losey after not liking The Prowler either. I do like Losey’s 1960s British movies a great deal but his early American noir films just don’t do it for me.



The Australian DVD release is an all-region PAL disc without any extras. Picture quality is acceptable.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)

Otto Preminger’s movies of the 60s are a rather varied bunch. He was starting to take major risks and do offbeat movies and Bunny Lake Is Missing certainly qualifies as offbeat.

It was made in England in 1965, with Preminger as usual producing and directing and with a script by John and Penelope Mortimer. It was shot in Cinemascope and black-and-white, a slightly odd choice for a film by a major director in the mid-60s but it suits the oddball nature of the movie.

It starts out appearing to be a fairly straightforward police procedural about a missing child. It doesn’t take very long for the first subtle signs of oddness to appear and then it keeps getting stranger until finally it becomes quite bizarre.



Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) is a young American woman who has just arrived in London from the US. She’s enrolled her daughter Bunny in a nursery school. The school is a little disorganised on that day owing to the fact that the headmistress is away and Elvira (Anna Massey) has been left in charge and is just barely coping. Ann leaves Bunny in the charge of the school’s cook for a few minutes while she tries to locate her teacher, and then has to rush off to let the removalists into her new flat. When she returns to the school Bunny is nowhere to be found.

Ann is of course rather upset and immediately phones her husband Steven (Keir Dullea). At least we assume from the way they behave that he’s her husband but later we discover that he is actually her brother. The police are called and Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) takes charge of the investigation.



The curious thing is that nobody at the school can recall seeing Bunny at all. The school has no record of her enrolment. Nobody anywhere has seen her, and the audience hasn’t seen her either. Superintendent Newhouse is clearly puzzled by this case.

I’m not going to reveal any more of the plot, but there are many twists and turns to come and some of these twists are very strange indeed.



Preminger’s style of directing avoids gimmickry. He favoured long takes and liked to take the time to allow characters to develop and to gradually reveal their inner natures. This approach works extremely well here, forming a nice understated contrast to the steadily growing weirdness of the story. The movie is always visually impressive (as were all of Preminger’s movies) but without being intrusive or distracting.

Carol Lynley has had a very long career but never quite achieved the breakthrough to major stardom. Keir Dullea’s career followed a similar pattern. They’re both reasonably effective in this film. Laurence Olivier does not chew a single piece if scenery in this movie, an amazing feat of self-restraint. His subdued performance works well since it doesn’t distract us from the things we should be watching whilst still managing to make Newhouse a believable and interesting figure.



Adding his own touch of oddness to the proceedings is Noël Coward as Ann’s eccentric alcoholic and lecherous landlord. And even more oddness is provided by Martita Hunt as Ada Ford, one of the founders of the school and now retired and somewhat mad and still living at the school. Anna Massey is also excellent, as always. There’s also Finlay Currie as the proprietor of a very creepy doll’s hospital.

This is a movie that often threatens to run off the rails but Preminger manages to hold it all together even as the weirdness grows and grows. A fascinating off-kilter masterpiece and
highly recommended.



Columbia’s Region 2 DVD is barebones but looks stunning.

Flying Down to Rio (1933)

Flying Down to Rio was the first of the RKO Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies, although in fact it’s not really a true Astaire-Rogers picture since they’re strictly supporting players. But it did bring together the most famous dance team in movie history and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable slice of nonsense.

It’s also important as being one of the two pre-code Fred and Ginger films, along with The Gay Divorcee.

The actual leads are Dolores del Rio and Gene Raymond but they’re overshadowed by Fred and Ginger who made such an impression that RKO recognised their potential immediately and the rest is history.



Gene Raymond plays band leader Roger Bond. He’s fairly successful apart from his penchant for chasing the ladies, a habit that ends up getting the band fired from just about every gig they manage to land. His latest obsession is a South American beauty named Belinha de Rezende. And sure enough, he gets them fired again.

They quickly land another job, performing at the opening of the Hotel Atlantico in Rio de Janeiro. What they don’t know is that Belinha is also on her way back to Rio so their paths will certainly cross again. In fact Roger discovers this interesting piece of information before departure and offers to give Belinha a lift in his aeroplane (aviation being his other obsession).



The plane mysteriously develops engine trouble just as they’re flying over a deserted island with a convenient beach. Roger puts the plane down safely. The engine requires only very minor repairs but Roger decides that if he’s marooned on a tropical island with the lady of his dreams then it would be a pity to waste the opportunity so he pretends to be unable to fix the motor until the following day.

Their arrival at the hotel in Rio brings complications. It tuns out that Belinha is the fiancée of Roger’s old pal Julio Ribeira (Raul Roulien). Now both men are rivals for her affections. There’s also some kind of conspiracy by evil bankers to wreck the hotel’s grand opening. That’s pretty much it for the plot but lighthearted fluff like this doesn’t require much more.



So what are Fred and Ginger doing all this time? Fred is Roger’s right-hand man in the band while Ginger is their delightfully brassy singer Honey Hale, and they’re busy stealing every scene they’re in.

This movie is not all that highly regarded by Fred and Ginger aficionados. They only have one dance duet together and it’s not as elaborate as the dance routines in their later pictures. The movie has one other major problem. Gene Raymond is a less than exciting male lead and there is absolutely zero chemistry between Raymond and del Rio.



The movie does offer compensations however. Fred and Ginger do have the necessary chemistry and it’s already apparent. There’s a totally outrageous finale as the Aviators’ Club in Rio puts on a show to support the opening of the Hotel Atlantico, a show featuring not one but dozens of young ladies doing wing-walking stunts in rather revealing costumes. It’s spectacular and bizarre and it’s worth the price of admission on its own.

There’s also a great deal of very risque pre-code dialogue, plus there’s Ginger Rogers singing Music Makes Me while wearing a gown that leaves little to the imagination. It turns out that the things music makes her do are not exactly suitable for family viewing. Ginger is in fact pretty steamy indeed in this movie.



The music is great, there’s plenty of humour and it’s all great fun. And we even get an airborne wedding. It’s a movie that would obviously have benefited from having more of Astaire and Rogers but it’s still thoroughly enjoyable.

The Warner Home Video DVD is reasonably good although there is some minor print damage.

When Strangers Marry (1944)

In the 50s William Castle would become one of the great B-movie showmen, his low-budget horror films benefitting from his genius for publicity and his extraordinary talent for coming up with gimmicks. Before that he’d directed the usual quotas of B-movies, including the highly regarded 1944 film noir When Strangers Marry.

The second lead in this picture was a young actor called Bob Mitchum. By the time it was re-released in the early 50s (under the less relevant but unquestionably more noir title Betrayed) Robert Mitchum was a huge star and he was hastily promoted to top billing.



It starts with a murder in a Philadelphia hotel. A man has been boasting that he is carrying $10,000 on him and he pays the price for his folly. He is found strangled with a silk stocking.

The scene then switches to New York where we’re introduced to a young woman named Mildred Baxter (Kim Hunter) who has just married, and it’s been the proverbial whirlwind romance. She knows he’s a salesman but she doesn’t even know the name of the company he works for. After one day of marriage he left on a business trip and she hasn’t seen him since. Now, a month later, she receives a cable from him in Philadelphia informing her that he will meet her at the Sherwin Hotel in New York.



He doesn’t show up, but as luck would have it she runs into an old friend (in fact an old flame), Fred Graham (Robert Mitchum). He’s very supportive and suggests she should go to the police and he even persuades Lieutenant Blake of the Homicide Squad to give the matter his personal attention. You might be wondering why a homicide cop would be interested in a routine missing persons case but Blake does in fact have his reasons, and those reasons are connected with the murder case in Philadelphia.

Mildred does eventually find her husband Paul (Dean Jagger) but he seems nervous and secretive. Mildred starts to suspect that something is very wrong, and that it may have something to do with Philadelphia. Then Paul announces he has to leave again, but this time it’s no business trip.



The plot will keep you guessing for about 30 seconds. This is definitely a minor noir B-movie (it was released by Monogram) and it’s not as good as its reputation would suggest. Still, it does have some atmospheric noirish moments and it has a solid cast.

Mitchum seems a little tentative. He would of course improve very rapidly but this is not one of his more memorable roles. Kim Hunter is fine and her character is the emotional centre of the movie. Dean Jagger was always pretty reliable and delivers an excellent performance. Neil Hamilton (best known as Commissioner Gordon in the 1960s Batman TV series) makes a good homicide cop. He’s a decent guy and a good cop.



Considering the deficiencies of the screenplay Castle has made a reasonably entertaining and fast-moving noir thriller and it’s interesting to see Robert Mitchum at a time when he was still learning the ropes and his film persona was not yet solidified. Just don’t expect too much.

Castle’s later horror movies were essentially lighthearted tongue-in-cheek exercises but When Strangers Marry doesn’t show any real evidence of this tendency.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD-R is of perfectly acceptable quality.

The Kiss (1929)

The Kiss was Greta Garbo’s final silent movie. Actually it’s a hybrid, since it has a soundtrack that includes music and sound effects, but no dialogue.

For some reason MGM had convinced themselves that they were going to have a problem with Garbo’s voice in talking pictures. In fact of course her voice turned out to be an asset - not only did she have a fine speaking voice but she had an accent that was exotic and sexy and that complemented her onscreen image perfectly.

The Kiss was helmed by Jacques Feyder, who would go on to direct her first talking picture, Anna Christie. It’s a romantic melodrama and it’s a classic Garbo picture - she plays a woman for whom love is everything.



Irene Guarry (Garbo) is married to a middle-aged industrialist, Charles Guarry. She’s been having an affair with André Dubail (Conrad Nagel) but the lovers have decided they must break it off.

Irene has also attracted the attention of Pierre Lassalle, the 18-year-old son of a friend and business partner of her husband’s. Irene considers him to be a mere boy but she is reluctant to hurt him and assumes that he will soon get over his infatuation. He’s a harmless young man and his belief that he is in love with her is the sort of thing that boys of his age do. She is after all a very beautiful and very sophisticated older woman, and he’s lucky enough to have chosen a woman who is willing to humour him while taking care to ensure he doesn’t get hurt.



Unfortunately her calculations are upset when a harmless incident is misinterpreted. She has agreed to give young Pierre a photograph of herself and when he calls at her house she allows him to kiss her. This is the fateful kiss of the movie’s title, fateful because at that exact moment her husband arrives home and flies into a jealous rage. The upshot of this is that her husband ends up dead, the victim of a gunshot wound.

Irene is accused of murder and stands trial. But what really happened at her home on that fatal night?



Lew Ayres, soon to become a major star, plays the naïve but well-meaning Pierre Lassalle. Conrad Nagel is Irene’s lover, André. Both give performances that are effective and, by the standards of silent movies, restrained and lacking in the exaggerated qualities that so many people find off-putting in silent cinema. Garbo of course was always naturalistic in her performances. The understated acting makes this a good movie for anyone new to the attractions of silent film.

There are some nice art deco-influenced interiors. William H. Daniels became more or less Garbo’s personal cinematographer, working on no less than twenty-one of her films. He always knew exactly how to photograph her and she always trusted him implicitly. It was one of the great partnerships between a cinematographer and a star and it’s one of the strengths of this movie.



The Warner Archive DVD-R look reasonably good but it appears to be the same severely truncated print that has been shown on TCM. It runs for just 62 minutes whereas the original film (according to the IMDb) ran for 89 minutes, and it feels like a movie that has been savagely cut. One assumes however that this is the only cut of the movie that has survived. It’s not a great print by any mean but it’s watchable.

This is one of Garbo’s more overlooked movies and it’s well worth a look.

Pitfall (1948)

Pitfall is certainly a film noir and although it mostly lacks the characteristic noir visual style it manages very effectively to convey the necessary mood of paranoia and doom.

It was directed by André De Toth, produced by an outfit called Regal Films and released through United artists in 1948.

The basis of the plot is that one small mistake is all it takes to turn a perfectly happy life into a waking nightmare. Johnny Forbes (Dick Powell) works for an insurance company. He has a lovely wife and he has a son and they live in a comfortable suburban house and his life is placid and well-organised. It’s so well-organised that when he leaves for work he can tell his wife he’ll be home at exactly 5.50 pm.



It’s an idyllic life but it’s the sort of life that a man can easily take for granted. Johnny’s problem is that he’s basically quite happy but he doesn’t realise it. He thinks he’s bored. Today we’d probably say he was having mid-life crisis.

The conviction that his life is dull and routine hits him with special force when he meets Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott). Mona’s boyfriend Bill Smiley has been imprisoned for embezzlement and Johnny’s company had to pay out as a result. Johnny’s job is to try to get some of the money back. Smiley had stolen the money to buy expensive presents for Mona.



Mona seems to represent what’s missing from Johnny’s life. She’s sexy and exciting and she’s bad. Or at least she looks like she’s bad. Johnny loses his head completely. Unfortunately he’s not the only one who’s fallen under Mona’s spell. J. B. McDonald (Raymond Burr) is a private investigator who does work for the insurance company from time to time and he’s well and truly obsessed by her. He’s also completely mad, dangerously violent and entirely untroubled by a conscience.

Johnny and Mona on the other hand are very much troubled by pangs of conscience. Mona immediately breaks off their affair when she finds out that Johnny is married. While she looks like a femme fatale and she has the effect of a femme fatale on Johnny’s life she’s actually not bad after all. She never wanted poor Smiley to steal for her and she has no intention of wrecking Johnny’s marriage. But she just can’t help being the sort of woman who makes men crazy.



Johnny has been badly frightened by the whole thing and just wants to go back to being a respectable family man again but McDonald is getting crazier and crazier and he’s not going to leave either Mona or Johnny in peace.

Johnny really hasn’t done very much wrong. The affair with Mona was extremely brief. In the whole of his married life he’s misbehaved for a day or two; all the rest of the time he’s been a devoted husband and father. He has never inhabited the world of film noir. His life has been lived in the sunshine, a life of neatly maintained lawns and duty and responsibility. But that one misstep has changed everything and his orderly life has been plunged into chaos and violence and ultimately murder. He can be accused at most of weakness and poor judgment.



Mona has also done very little wrong. If she has a fault it’s simply that she’s not a very good judge of men. She certainly doesn’t deserve the nightmare that her life becomes.

Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott are terrific, giving nicely understated performances. Powell is convincing as a nice guy who can’t believe that one little mistake really can destroy his life. Raymond Burr on the other hand goes totally over-the-top, giving us a memorable portrayal of evil and obsession. Jane Wyatt has the relatively thankless role of Johnny’s devoted wife but she does a fine job.



The relative lack of overt noir visuals works to the film’s advantage. This is a nightmare played out in broad daylight and bright sunshine. The ending is where a lot of very good film noirs fall apart but Karl Kamb’s screenplay shows a sure touch in this department - it manages to be both downbeat and hopeful. There is tragedy and there is a price to be paid but there’s no cheap nihilism. These are grownups not teenagers and they don’t have the luxury of adolescent nihilism.

One thing I found amusing was a review describing this as a subversive noir. In fact it’s quite the opposite in most ways. It’s very pro-marriage and the message is that respectability and duty lead to happiness. And I really don’t think this message is intended to be ironic. The lesson Johnny learns is that accepting adult responsibilities is more conducive to happiness than chasing glamorous blondes.

Synergy’s DVD presentation has attracted a lot of negative comment but I have no idea why. It’s a perfectly decent print.

This is film noir at its best. Highly recommended.

The Golden Salamander (1950)

The Golden Salamander is the sort of movie the British film industry used to do supremely well - a solid unpretentious but well-crafted and highly entertaining thriller benefitting from a superb cast. This one has the added bonus of some great location shooting in Tunisia.

Trevor Howard plays David Redfern, an English archaeologist who has been despatched to Tunisia to retrieve a collection of Etruscan artifacts belonging to a British museum. The collection had been salvaged from a sinking ship and are now in the home of the wealthy and mysterious Serafis in a small Tunisian village. On the way to the village Redfern finds the road blocked by a landslide and has to abandon his car and continue the journey on foot in darkness and driving rain. He’s not the only one having problems - he passes a lorry that has ditched. And, fatefully, he accidentally discovers the cargo the lorry was carrying - guns. He has stumbled upon an international gun-running operation.



Redfern has no wish to become involved and pretends to have seen nothing. Unfortunately the two men running the arms smuggling operation, Max (Jacques Sernas) and Rankl (Herbert Lom), are certain that he spotted them. And Rankl is a sinister and rather frightening figure.

Redfern finds that apart from the collection that he has to catalogue prior to its shipment to the UK the village has other distractions that are perhaps even more enticing. Most notable among these is a young and beautiful Frenchwoman, Anna (played by Anouk Aimée who at that stage of her career was known simply as Anouk). The attraction is mutual, although the situation is complicated by the fact that Anna and Max have been lifelong friends. Redfern is, against his will, finding that he cannot avoid taking some sort of stand in relation to the gun-running that Max is mixed up in. He tries to find an easy solution that will get Max off the hook, keep Anna out of the situation altogether, and clear the decks for his gradually blossoming romance with Anna. He will soon discover that there are no easy solutions, and finds he has become involved with murder as well as smuggling.



Now Redfern can no longer avoid taking a moral stand but he has no idea of the scale of the criminal activity and corruption that he has inadvertently wandered into. And the gun-runners have decided that the meddling English archaeologist must be eliminated. For David Redfern the challenge now is to stay alive.

Director Ronald Neame had a long and varied career as a writer, cinematographer and director. He did not direct a huge number of films but his output included some remarkably interesting projects. He handles the directing duties on this film with considerable skill.



Trevor Howard was of course one of the greats and he’s excellent as a man who is very reluctant indeed to become a hero, a man who thought he could go through life successfully ignoring things that were unpleasant or inconvenient. When he’s pushed too far he discovers within himself the strength to fight back.

Anouk Aimée is an engaging enough heroine. Herbert Lom gives one of his trademark vicious thug performances and he’s terrific as always. Miles Malleson as the village’s French policeman, Walter Rilla as the smooth but villainous Serafis and the always delightful Wilfred Hyde-White as a seedy but good-natured barfly round out the impressive cast.



This is a movie that succeeds admirably in what it sets out to do - to be an entertaining thriller. And that’s enough.

Odeon have released this one in their Best of British DVD series which includes a multitude of lesser known but intriguing British movies. The DVD is all-region and the transfer is quite acceptable.

The Prowler (1951)

It has been said that there is no such thing as a bad film noir, that even the weakest noirs have something going for them. I used to believe that, until I saw Joseph Losey’s The Prowler.

Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) calls the cops when she spots a prowler outside her bathroom window. One of the cops is Officer Webb Garwood (Van Heflin). Right from the start we know there is something creepy about Garwood. He’s inclined to be dismissive of the woman’s claims but some time later he calls at her house again, alone, telling her that it’s a routine check. The fact that it’s four in the morning and her husband works nights and she’s all alone in the house might have something to do with his call.



Susan is obviously not all that happily married, and she’s just as obviously keen for male company. Especially when her husband’s not home. It’s not long before she and Officer Garwood get to know each other really well. His nocturnal visits become a regular arrangement. Garwood wants to take things further. It’s not so much Susan he wants though. Snooping around her house he discovers her husband’s will - she stands to inherit a great deal of money if something happens to hubby. The money would be enough to set Garwood and Susan up in a motel. That’s always been Webb Garwood’s dream. He even has the motel picked out, on the road to Las Vegas.

If only Susan’s husband were to meet with an accident Garwood and Susan would be on easy street.



So far it sounds like a Double Indemnity rip-off, which it pretty much is, the difference being that both protagonists in Double Indemnity are equally corrupt and equally guilty (and equally sleazy) whereas in this case Susan could be seen as more or less an innocent party. Perhaps not innocent, but certainly less guilty than Garwood.

Everything would be swell except for one problem, and it’s a big problem. Susan is pregnant, and there’s some awkwardness about the timing. Garwood’s fool-proof plan relies on the fact that their affair has been kept secret. If it were to become obvious that they’d been sleeping together since well before her husband’s unfortunate accident then that might raise very inconvenient questions about this remarkably convenient accident. And the baby can’t be her husband’s since it’s an open secret that he couldn’t have kids.



Now the trap starts to close in.

This really is a horrendous mess of a film. The major problem is Dalton Trumbo’s script. It’s frankly ludicrous. Too many things that don’t add up, that aren’t remotely plausible, too many plot holes where events develop in the way the script requires them to do so even though it doesn’t make any sense. We have to believe that the moment someone realises Susan is pregnant then the whole dirty scheme will be revealed whereas in fact it would certainly take quite a while for anyone to connect up all the dots. As the plot unwinds things get sillier and sillier.



There are problems with the characterisations as well. Susan is all over the place and her abrupt emotional transitions are unconvincing. Whether the blame lies mostly with Evelyn Keyes’ acting or Trumbo’s script is difficult to say. Van Heflin is somewhat better as Garwood but the character is so crudely drawn that it’s hard to take him too seriously. The supporting performances are hammy and embarrassing.

On the plus side it’s a visually impressive film with Arthur C. Miller’s cinematography giving it a nicely paranoid edge.



It’s certainly a sleazy little film. The relationship between Garwood and Susan is perverse to an extreme. He’s so obviously a psycho that no sane person could possibly be taken in by him so we have to conclude that Susan is excited by the idea of carrying on a relationship with a dangerous madman.

Thee are good moments in the movie if you can overlook the extreme silliness of the plot. I suspect this movie has been wildly overpraised because both Trumbo and Losey were targeted by the blacklist thus making them automatically heroes in the eyes of the film school crowd.



VCI have done a splendid job presenting this movie on DVD. The transfer is good and there are extras aplenty. If you’re a connoisseur of bad movies then it’s worth a look.