Posted by Solomon
on 10/7/2009, 5:10 pm
71.251.172.126
A short note is necessary to dispel the poor reviews that this film has received on IMDb. This movie is quite captivating! Robert Shayne, Paul Langton, and Barbara Payton all handle the business well. Supporting roles are well done too. Tracey Roberts plays a shapely and hard brunette. Roy Gordon and Selena Royale play an upper middle class couple pulled down by the husband's dalliance with Payton and several blackmailers. Those reviewers who say this is not noir don't know what they're talking about.
Ulmer did not try to make more of this than what it is, or lay it on too thick. He gave it a straightfoward reading, which can be quite effective as in the Bill Elliott detective stories and the Lee Marvin M-squads, and all of this kind of approach occurred around 1955.
This story has its share of seedy locations. It has a noir narration and flashback in places. It has a respectable couple each committing separate murders without knowing it. It has Payton convicted for a murder she did not commit and Langton driven both by passion and the fact that he could not live with sending the wrong person to her death.
The blizzard/mountain location is somehow engrossing with Langton trudging 4 miles in real snow to get to an isolated cabin.
A train is used to good effect.
Sure, the budget was limited and Ulmer did not trot out the bells and whistles photographically. That was becoming typical of the flatter noir style.
All in all, a piece of noir is better than no noir. I'm glad the Mystery channel showed this some years back and that the faithful recorder caught it.
Responses: