Director: Russell Rouse
Cast: Beverly Michaels, Richard Egan, Percy Helton, Evelyn Scott
Have I Seen it Before: Never. I can’t imagine I ever would have, but Circle Cinema ran the thing in 35mm and I’ll go see a garbage fire if it was projected on film as opposed to digital, and it’d be hard to get me to go to something as good as a fathom even for the greatest movies of all time, as the projection used is just the pits.
Did I Like It: And yet, I was kind of on board with this movie for the majority of its blissfully short runtime. It offers exactly what it promises, dimwitted barflies, blondes who can turn the most straight-nosed lug into a makeshift, would-be criminal genius, and enough willfully arch performances to keep things moving. All of this is bound together by a scheme that under no circumstances will ever work, but the secret pleasure in any kind of crime or noir film is to see how everything will completely unravels in the end. Certainly, this is a B picture and every ounce of that reduced budged finds its way onto the screen, but if you can’t have any fun with a B-movie, I really don’t know how to help you.
The ending to this thing, however, is a completely different matter. It was so weak-willed, so sitcom-y in its conclusions. Indeed, one could be forgiven for assuming that this was an abandoned pilot for some series which would see Billie (Michaels) wandering from town-to-town wreaking as much domestic havoc as the Hays Code would allow. A b-movie by its very nature might be forgiven for settling for an unworthy ending, but I think ideally it should go as gonzo as possible with the characters situations unravelling, not bend over backwards (to say nothing of fraud statutes) to put everything back the way it was at the beginning of the film.