Gong fatale

Boring boxing melodrama. I don't want to call it a film noir because it doesn't have any film noir style, in my opinion. Dane Clark plays a moody painter who falls in love with a woman (Alexis Smith) who buys one of his paintings. She skips out on him so he follows her to New York, where he discovers she is married to evil cripple Zachary Scott. Then things get weird as Clark decides to become a boxer for Scott. His motivation for this was cloudy, to say the least. He decides to box under the name Mike Angelo (get it -- Michaelangelo -- because he's a painter, you see). From here, a movie with wobbly knees is knocked down for the count. The cast is unimpressive but not terrible. Clark is pretty unlikable in a role tailor-made for John Garfield. Smith is forgettable. Eve Arden is great when she's around, which isn't much. Pretty standard stuff. No surprises.