Another tale of a shady broad involving an innocent ogler in her scheme to kill her alleged husband. Anne Baxter, having just gone Technicolor in a really bad MGM film noir ("Bedevilled") goes to lowly Allied Artists for this film that rivals "Bedevilled" and "Carnival Story" as truly low class trash that helped turn the former Eve Harrington into a campy, breathy joke. The Oscar Winning actress was very busy at this time with decent westerns and of course her unintentionally funny performance as Nefertiti in "The Ten Commandments", but this one goes into overdrive with its absurd plot and unlikable characters. Baxter's lounging in a tight one piece bathing suit off the Pacific coast of Mexico when Sterling Hayden spots her, ogles her enough to get her to meet him for a drink, then finds out that she is married to the seemingly older, apparently frail John Hoyt. When Hoyt confronts her with a slap while sharing a cocktail with Hayden, he responds in kind, giving Hoyt a slug. It is then we find out that Hoyt isn't a frail looking old man, but still a smarmy con-artist, having blackmailed her into joining him in a series of cons, and wait....they aren't even married! Hoyt prepares to kill Baxter after another row, but she gets the one-upmanship on him, and runs off to be with Hayden. Hoyt, however, is like the bad slug that ends up in a pile of valuable coins, showing up at the wrong time and always with evil intentions. This leads to a supposed final confrontation with Hoyt and another rendezvous with Hayden, but cockroaches are difficult to kill.
While I rank Anne Baxter in my list of favorite actresses, I find that many of her films show her in campier styles that do not stand the test of time as art but make her rather a parody of what she had started to develop after "All About Eve" came out. She is still a looker here, gorgeous in that one piece bathing suit, and while she is still a great actresses, weak scripts such as this one often defeated her. To make matters worse, she's at low grade Allied Artists which, formerly known as Monogram, was the ultimate come-down for veteran movie stars the decade before. By the 1950's, they were still busy making Bowery Boys movies, but their "A" features starring veteran actors like Baxter and Joan Bennett were often quickly written and weakly plotted. This film noir is filled with so many plot holes that if those plot holes were Baxter's bathing suit, she'd need a robe. The characters are all sleazy and unlikable, and the photography is gloomy and maudlin. The only thing I can say about the title that rings true is that every time Hoyt pops up, I had to say, "Oh, come on!". Veteran character actor Jesse White plays an equally sleazy private detective who slithers onto the screen here and there to add more low class to an already slimy tale of fraud, desperation and murder.
While I rank Anne Baxter in my list of favorite actresses, I find that many of her films show her in campier styles that do not stand the test of time as art but make her rather a parody of what she had started to develop after "All About Eve" came out. She is still a looker here, gorgeous in that one piece bathing suit, and while she is still a great actresses, weak scripts such as this one often defeated her. To make matters worse, she's at low grade Allied Artists which, formerly known as Monogram, was the ultimate come-down for veteran movie stars the decade before. By the 1950's, they were still busy making Bowery Boys movies, but their "A" features starring veteran actors like Baxter and Joan Bennett were often quickly written and weakly plotted. This film noir is filled with so many plot holes that if those plot holes were Baxter's bathing suit, she'd need a robe. The characters are all sleazy and unlikable, and the photography is gloomy and maudlin. The only thing I can say about the title that rings true is that every time Hoyt pops up, I had to say, "Oh, come on!". Veteran character actor Jesse White plays an equally sleazy private detective who slithers onto the screen here and there to add more low class to an already slimy tale of fraud, desperation and murder.