Double Jeopardy

It's a noir all right, but you can feel the increasing hollowness of the decline and impending fall of the noirs, at least of the great noirs. This is a small aftermath, and although well directed and well acted with terrific music as well, the classic enthusiasm and atmosphere of the noirs is gone, as the television was taking over the attention of the audiences, and the companies were getting broke from lack of audiences, having little left to afford for great noirs. The greatest actor here is Gale Robbins as the woman spider at the centre of the web, causing all the intrigues. She is perfectly lovely, you can't resist her charm, and you can well understand the obsession with her of both her men, her miserable drinking husband and her young dashing lover. The film is worth watching for her sake, and the intrigue could have been made into something by someone like Hitchcock, but here time and money truncate the possibilities.

Robert ("King Kong") Armstrong gets this very dull Republic Pictures movie off to a promising start playing a drunken low-life who gives his wife Gale Robbins a hard time. Unfortunately, it's all downhill after that opening reel.

The script by Don Martin (when I see that name I immediately think of the great Mad Magazine cartoonist, but this writer offers nothing in the way of entertainment) is bland, with an uninteresting central premise of John Litel as a real estate developer with a dark secret. His daughter is played by the great B-movie superstar Allison Hayes, who should be cast as a femme fatale but is wasted here as a "good girl".

She's going to marry lawyer Rod Cameron. Instead of a film noir hero, he is almost a Dudley Do-Right goody two-shoes hero, so boring I simply was waiting for him to earn his paycheck with a tiny bit of acting. Worse yet, Jack Kelly as a one-dimensional bad guy is preposterous casting of that so likable future Maverick who did so many cool & smooth leading roles on TV for series like Kraft Suspense Theatre.

The "who cares?" quotient for this picture is nearly 100%.

Not in the top 10 of classic film noir but worth watching for 75 minutes.

No cell phones.

The women were not only sensual and elegant but beautiful in those days.

Robert Armstrong is a drunk ex-con. He's getting $500 every month from real estate developer John Litel. Armstrong is married to floozy Gale Robbins, who's carrying on with Jack Kelly. Kelly and Miss Robbins want to run to Mexico, so she persuades Armstrong to get ten grand from his mysterious benefactor; the lovers will take the money and run. However, when Litel meets with Armstrong, he says there will be no more money and leaves. Kelly, who's been watching, comes up to Armstrong and tries to take the money he thinks he has, then kills him. Soon enough, the police trace Litel's connection to the dead man and arrest him. Now it's up to Litel's attorney, Rod Cameron, to try to prove him innocent.

It's certainly sleazy enough and complicated enough for a film noir, even though R.G. Springsteen directs it more for speed than atmosphere. The fine cast - which also includes Allison Hayes as Litel's daughter/Cameron's girlfriend and Minerva Urecal as a Marjorie-Main-style landlady, give solid performances. Armstrong is quite convincing as a drunk, Litel as a plutocrat. While CMeron looks a bit too much like a muscular half-back, and the resolution seems a little abrupt, this it a solid little movie.

Actress PAULA KYLE, who was originally from Toronto, Canada, moved to Hollywood and became a star...or at least she thought she was. After leaving Canada in her XKE Jag, she landed many small roles and fizzled away in obscurity like so many other "B" grade actresses. Fabulous legs and blonde hair made her a natural for a career in modelling and some movies. Larry Anderson.