This bargain-basement,
seventy-three-minute film noir, distributed by Film Classics, opens
with one of the most poorly executed flashbacks I have seen...um...not
seen. We witness young Frances Rafferty standing before the judge as
he passes out her ten-year sentence for being an accessory to robbery
and murder. A reporter makes a call, telling the person on the line
you never know who will get off the next bus. There are no wavy,
ghostly transition film frames to suggest a time shift. What the
viewer actually sees is a bus coming to a stop. Out steps the movie’s
lead, Hugh Beaumont, against type with an out-of-balance personality. One might logically assume it is ten years
later, after Rafferty’s release. Essentially, the movie begins
after the end. Overall, for the mad money spent, the film is not half
bad. More like one-third bad. But do not blame the cast.
The music underlying the
opening scenes with Beaumont, who is convincing in this role, is just
too whimsical. Its use is totally mindless for his character and for
what is about to unfold. The viewer suspects he is up to no good yet
he seems so Cleaverish. After he gets a job as a taxi driver, his
charm flows directly, by pure happenstance, in Rafferty’s
direction. She is burdened by the care for her selfish, bitter aunt
who always moans or fakes an attack of some sort when her niece
attempts to go out. Beaumont wins them both over with Rafferty
becoming his bride in whirlwind fashion. She likes that he seems
different. Not like the others. At about the twenty-five-minute mark
she discovers her husband is psychotic. Absolutely nothing like the
others. He needs a place to hide his unearned cash—two hundred
grand—temporarily held in a bank’s safe deposit box. An old
suitcase in the aunt’s attic is the perfect location for the money
transfer. Thanks to bipolar Beaumont, the aunt comes down with a bout
of death, leaving the estate and an attic surprise in Rafferty’s
inheritance.
When Rafferty meets with
her attorney concerning the will, he senses she is distracted by
something. Still using her maiden name, he unknowingly asks her for
dinner. Every male in town is hitting on this attractive female.
Naturally, Beaumont might take a cleaver to her if he finds out, so
she declines, missing her first chance to escape her torture. As
Beaumont has already reminded her, she cannot testify against her
husband anyway. The attorney later meets with an elderly citizen who
speculates about that taxi driver. This bit of gossip and the
newspaper headline photos of the three robbers have the attorney
wondering if one might be Beaumont, who obviously has had an extreme
makeover since that photo was taken. In suspended disbelief, the
photo is taken to a photo lab and he asks them to remove the
mustache, clean up the pockmarked face, do the eyebrows this way, and
take all the shadows out. This they do. They also changed his lips to
give him a more amused expression and rotated his head slightly. No
extra charge. It all happens in a matter of seconds as the original
photo transforms right before our very eyes in a blurry
“flash-forward” transition. Exactly how a flashback should be
done. Only in reverse.
Beaumont is there to greet one of the robbers with a revolver. Long before Al Pacino, Beaumont refers to his gun as, “My
little friend, here." Before releasing a bullet from the chamber
he has the wife turn up the radio’s volume, apparently with the
belief all three of them will not hear the gunshot inside the house.
Like a young child closing his or her eyes believing they cannot be seen. Beaumont tells his wife to get rid
of the dead man’s car and hands her the keys. Logically, this might
be a great opportunity for her to get out of this nightmare. She
could just keep on driving or go to the police with her story. But
not in any dim-witted Hollywood script. Escape number two is obliterated.
Our mental patient gets
all melancholy after that murder and insists, above all else, he
really loves Rafferty. Sure. When the attorney arrives at the house
of the “happy” couple, Beaumont once again asks his wife to turn
up the volume on the radio ‘cause he’s in a shootin’ mood.
Fortunately, a patrol car happens by and hears the raucous party with
Artie Shaw music. The good news, Beaumont will not have to serve any
time in prison. The bad news, Rafferty is about to start the
beginning of the film.
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