Best movie of this year hands down!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Society lady Kay Francis (Mrs Seymour) runs a canteen for servicemen during WW2 as well as a beauty parlour. Both these businesses are a front for her real money-maker which is marrying off women to servicemen to then collect their allocated pay as a war wife and also to cash in on the insurance if the servicemen die. Women are encouraged to marry several men at a time. One victim of this scam is the friend of Colonel Paul Kelly (Pete Martin) so Kelly agrees to go undercover to smash this organized criminal gang.This film is OK with a good performance by Kay at the centre of things and her sidekick Otto Kruger (Whitey) also does well as the chief heavy. The syndicate leader from Texas Matty Fain (Moranto) also plays his gangster role well. However, the film slips into sentimentality with Kay's teenage daughter Teala Loring (Connie) and the film slows in these sections and gets a bit boring. Another downfall is casting Paul Kelly as the man to crack the case. He can't act.The sound quality isn't too good but you can live with it – there's a background hissing. Allotment wives has nothing to do with gardening as the title suggests – it could have been a film about women meeting at their allotments and engaging in gossip. I'm grateful that it's not about that and I feel I've learnt something about the times depicted. Never crossed my mind that this sort of thing went on.

Tough, Hard-Boiled "Social" Crime Drama from Low-Rent Monogram Pictures. This is one of Their Betters. Starring on the Skids, but not quite on Skid-Row, Kay Francis and the Always Reliable Paul Kelly with some, had been a Star, but not quite a Has-Been Support, from Otto Kruger as what else, a Snakey, but in the End more than just a Bad Guy.It has its Moments of Violence, Melodrama, and Social Commentary and is a Rather Engaging piece of Noirish Business. That of Unscrupulous Women Marrying Military Types by the Handful for not Love but Money. The Head of this 'Syndicate" is a Woman Herself (Miss Francis) who has a Daughter that Figures in quite Heavily in this Heavy Handedness.There are some Memorable Scenes in Bedrooms, Staircases, and Prison Cells that would seem to Fit Easily into Film-Noir, but its Flat and Less than Creative Style, mostly Overlit and Pedestrian, that keeps this one Barely Eligible, but does manage in the End to have Enough of what it Takes to be a Contender.

This was an enjoyable, yet unremarkable, film that deals with a racket of women who marry multiple servicemen in order to collect their allotment benefit checks. It all seems like a rather elaborate way to earn a buck, and easily traceable. Playing the leader of the syndicate is actress Kay Francis in her final role. In the mid '30s she was under a Warner contract and was reportedly the highest paid actress in the world. But unfortunately by the end of that decade she had gotten the reputation of 'box office poison' and she had to finish her career in poverty row b movies like this one. The film also features Otto Kruger who plays his usual suave gentleman villain part, he is number 2 behind Francis at the top of the scheme. Walk, don't run to this one.

In 1945, with offers dwindling, Kay Francis made a last attempt at a film comeback by forming her own producing company with Jeffrey Bernerd. Bernerd was a feisty Englishman who had produced some exploitation movies, including "Where Are Your Children" and "Are These Our Parents". Even though Kay had been associated with studios such as Paramount and Warner Bros., the studio where Kay ended up making her last three movies was lowly Monogram, "the graveyard of burned out stars". Though Bernerd remembered her royal treatment in her heyday he was surprised at her ruthless penny pinching approach which included looking out for low budget stories and with "Allotment Wives" even rewriting the script. The picture had a 10 day shooting schedule with the main objective being to make money. Kay certainly did try to tackle hard hitting subjects, first with "Divorce" and now with "Allotment Wives" which tried to delve into the problem of women who bigamously marry soldiers in order to collect benefits.This movie, which allowed Kay to be totally unsympathetic yet fascinating, starts in an almost documentary fashion, introducing the "Office of Dependency Benefits" which supported the wives of servicemen. When Peter Martin (Paul Kelly) finds that his good friend has killed himself (due to finding out his new bride already has several husbands) he goes under cover and his search leads him to Sheila Seymour (Francis). She runs a canteen that caters for servicemen in more ways than the obvious. She recruits her "hostesses" from her beauty shop which in turn is a front for a "Allotment Wives" syndicate.One of the hostesses, Gladys Smith (Gertrude Michael) recognises Sheila as an old partner in crime. They had both been petty criminals although Sheila mysteriously escaped reform school and now Gladys is out for revenge and she finds it in Connie. Connie (Teala Loring) is Sheila's secret, a rebellious daughter who she has been shielding in an exclusive girl's school but Connie is only too eager to get involved in the high living and bright lights that Gladys introduces her to. Toward the end the movie swings into action with Sheila showing to what lengths she will go to, to protect her daughter. Guns blaze, bodies fall over beds, even Sheila's right hand man, Whitey (Otto Kruger) takes a bullet to protect Connie who doesn't seem a particularly agreeable girl.Gertrude Michael turned up in many programmers during the thirties, always playing elegant types, so she must have hoped a surprising lead in "The Notorious Sophie Lang" (1934) would push her into the big time. Unfortunately she was disappointed and by the early 1940s she was even clinging on to poverty row programmers but she could always be proud of Sophie Lang.