In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

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

Tired of his hum-drum life, insurance executive Dick Powell falls for Lizabeth Scott, whose boyfriend embezzled funds so that she could live a high-style life. Imprisoned now, he soon learns from Raymond Burr, a private detective who has really fallen for the Scott character, that Powell and Scott have been carrying on. Truth be told, Scott still has deep feelings for her boyfriend, loathes Burr and breaks off with Powell when she sees he is married with a child.What ensues is one tragic event after another leading to justifiable homicide on the part of Powell and Scott killing Burr for giving her newly freed boyfriend a gun to kill Powell.Jane Wyatt plays an almost Father Knows Best character mother in what turns out to be a tale of only having the good life and not getting involved.Powell's performance is rather restrained but effective and Burr steals the scenes he is in-a brutal person who shall stop at nothing to get the Scott character. Femme fatale? Scott is an innocent person drawn into this situation by circumstances, even beyond her control.

Why are descriptions of this movie so damned inaccurate? Forget film noir. This is *not* film noir. What this is, really, is a stalker movie. One of the first ones ever. Dick Powell has a lovely family but he's bored, so he goes and has a brief but intense fling with Lizbeth Scott. Raymond Burr, who loves Scott, tries to scare him away, then he starts stalking her. Constantly. Then he befriends Scott's former boyfriend, a volatile ex-con, and fills his ears with poison so he'll murder Dick Powell. The guy doesn't succeed, but that doesn't mean things don't end tragically for all concerned. Hardy a perfect crime film, but still worth seeing.

A crime drama with Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Burr (who got billed 4th, but plays the 2nd lead as a psychotic detective), and directed by Toth, and the foremost highlight is the style in which the leading character is played, an acting style which very much grounds the events and balances the story; the character's initial sloth doesn't involve despair and hopelessness, so that the two types of characters, the settled bourgeois and the feverish oddballs (the mistress and the detective) don't reach each other _innerly. But this isn't inadvertent and also suits the plot's realism, as the nascent liaison is crippled, disrupted, repressed, almost like stillborn. Burr provides an astonishing performance (that makes Mitchum's otherwise deservedly celebrated pair of kindred roles seem childish and harmless by comparison).Acknowledging the awesomeness of Toth's crime movie, the decisiveness of Burr's input has to be championed as well; his performance earns him a special merit. He makes this movie what it is. His handsomeness benefited of intelligence, burliness and glamour. He takes part in making this movie a masterpiece from the standpoint of enjoyment.The movie has a small cast, and the characters define each other: how Burr and Powell are defined by the woman, how she's defined by the detective. The characters are defined mutually: the weird detective, by the woman; the leading character, also by her. And she's defined by the detective. The actors' interplay has been as challenging as it's enthralling.Powell reminded me of B. Willis, with his playful, amused, lightly ironic behavior, as in the family breakfast scene, or the evening reading; he brings his ease so that the character seems good-_natured rather than bored, he makes an almost cheerful bourgeois, more impassible than resigned (his avowal that he lacks ease would of suited more a character played by Stewart or G. Peck or someone abler of gloom). The acting styles are highly contrasting: Powell's initial calm and temperate sloth, then his indecisiveness, irresoluteness after wishing to confess that he has a family, and Lizabeth Scott and Burr's feverishness, his with that sharp artistic intelligence that made meaningful each role he has ever got. Here, his role is quite large.The direction is masterly, and gives the movie its timelessness; Toth was one of the masters of the B cinema, revered by some, and his movies are the reward of the true movie buffs. The highlight scene to me is the lovers' meeting after he has recovered from the blows and she has found out that he has a family, that scene is so reasonably treated.The cast choice proved refreshing, mainly by the unconventional lead. The romance seems a whim rather than a doomed liaison. The plot may seem a bourgeois misadventure, like in 'Cape Fear', with a bourgeois confronting the underworld, meeting and facing the disinherited, and indeed the romance remains crippled in a nascent phase, begins and is stifled, gets crippled, crushed, repressed, and perhaps this makes the emotional drive so true and effective.

Potentially interesting film noir about a married man who falls for a sexy blonde is ruined by the miscast Lizabeth Scott. I'm not a fan of Scott's. I don't find her attractive or alluring and this role calls for both. When the movie's plot revolves around men going gaga over a lady, it's kind of important that lady be the type you could see men going gaga over. Like Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth. Not a woman with masculine bone structure and a voice like an emphysemic septuagenarian. So yeah I don't get it. I don't get the appeal of Lizabeth Scott and I fail to see how any man who has a young Jane Wyatt waiting at home would rather hang out with her. Beyond the sex appeal issue, Scott delivers her lines like she's reading them off cue cards. There are some noticeably punchy lines in this script that a better actress would have made work. But when Scott delivers them it's just dreadful.On the other hand we have Dick Powell and he's great. Unfortunately he has zero chemistry with Scott. Since that is a pivotal part of the plot, the whole thing falls apart. We also have Raymond Burr as a heavy who, quite bafflingly to me, is also enamored with Scott. Like I said I just don't get it. A better actress in this part with real sex appeal that I can buy men desiring and this movie becomes so much better. Obviously my opinion is in the minority. This film currently has a good rating on IMDb for a film this old. Clearly others don't have the issues with Lizabeth Scott that I do. So take that into account and decide for yourself whether this film is worth a shot or not.