Alimony

Produced by the obscure Equity Pictures, this tale of woe features a decidedly third-string cast, and a disjointed, unfocused and under-motivated script -- possibly the result of avoiding the wrath of the Breen office, or possibly plain incompetence. Zeisler was one of the more interesting directors working on Poverty Row, and manages to keep the story moving, instilling it with his usual arid fatalism. However, he fails to emphasize some of the key plot developments, and a clever last-minute twist is pretty much wasted. Many of the background details are patently ridiculous; e.g., Beal's overenthusiastic songwriter thumps on the piano all night in his boarding house's salon without eliciting complaint from his fellow boarders, and his girlfriend is absurdly forgiving of his two-timing indiscretions. Martha Vickers, dolled up like a waxworks, makes one of the least alluring femmes fatales in history, Beal must have been a desperation choice for a leading man, and the original songs are incredibly verbose. Despite its shortcomings, B-movie aficionados will be intrigued by the surprisingly overt depiction of unscrupulous women luring unsuspecting husbands into compromising positions to extract alimony. There's some good support from Laurie Lind as the cynical golddigger friend of the lead character, and from Hollywood's favourite stereotype East European eccentric, Leonid Kinskey, as a song plugger.