Truly Dreadful Film

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

A generally annoying film from start to finish.It suffers from a wretched screenplay which is intent on assuming that the audience is either stupid or not paying attention... The acting and direction are stilted and unimaginative and sometimes just don't make sense. The awkwardly inserted stock footage of people water-skiing in Hawaii doesn't help!The story itself revolves around a rich merry widow in New York with a dodgy ticker and not much time to live... and most of the scenes are focused on a mysteriously ever-present doctor and an overly-protective close chum who cares way too much! Unfortunately, the victim herself hasn't been told she's on the way out and carries on living her life. She meets a detestable spiv in Los Angeles and incredibly decides to marry him. But this bloke is just after the cash and a silly scene in an art gallery hammers the point home. (For a bloke who is constantly in need of cash infusions, he drives a bloody nice car!)His real girlfriend (a married dancer at a nightclub) helps him to try and bump off the wife but incredibly 'er indoors seems to be actually getting better! What could have been a brilliant twist at the end is played out with such ham-fisted incompetence that it can be seen charging towards the viewer way before even the cast has time to figure it out.Dreadful mess.

***SPOILERS*** The sleaze ball con artist lady killer Ricardo De Villa, John Bromfield, and his unstable and jealous girlfriend Fritzie Darvel, Rosemarie Stack, get it and gets it real good in the end to trying to take advantage of heart patient and loaded with cash Valerie Bancroft, Martha Vickers, whom the sleaze ball, Ricardo, romanced off her feet and later married. Knowing that Valerie doesn't have long to live because of her heart condition that's being kept from her by her doctor Tom Harrison, Robert Bice, she's encouraged to living wild life of drinking smoking and partying by Ricardo hoping it will end her life a lot sooner then expected. So with her kicking off he and Fritzie can collect Valerie's millions when she's finally put to rest.It's Valerie's good friend Marsha Jordan, Eve Miller, who sees through Ricardo & Fritzie's sinister plans and tries to warn Valerie that her husband is not only no good, by cheating on her behind her back, but planning to do her in as well. No matter what Marsha does she can't convince Valerie that dreamboat Ricardo Is no good and even ends up getting kicked out of the beach house, only for a few days at most, by an outraged Valerie. That in her feeling that by breaking her and Ricardo up Marsha can get a crack at lover boy Ricardo so she can be his girlfriend. Still Ricardo can't wait for Valerie, despite everything he does to make it happen, to drop dead before her time which is about a year which Dr. Harrison gave her.***SPOILERS*** Planning to jump the gun in Valerie's impending death Ricardo comes up with this plan to murder her, real smart of his part, and then make it look like it was the result of a home invasion. That while he plants evidence that while that happened he was shacked up with Fritzie in some motel 100 miles away! It just happened that Fritzie's estranged husband and former dance partner Don, Eddie Bee, got wind of his wife's double crossing him for another man, Ricardo, and took matters as well as Fritzie's throat into his own hands making Ricardo's plan fall flat on its face. It's the very fact that Ricardo had an alibi of not being at the scene of Valerie's murder that, in his trying to cover his a**, convicted him of another murder that he in fact didn't commit!

When scheming fortune hunter and erstwhile Latin lover Ricardo De Villa learns that a wealthy but sickly widow has terminal heart disease, he seduces and marries the vulnerable millionairess. Playing the part of a faithful and doting husband, he carries on a torrid affair with sexy exotic dancer Fritzi Darvel while avoiding the suspicious eyes of her jealous bongo-playing husband. When his wife's condition seems to go into remission, the impatient De Villa decides on action that will hasten her seemingly inevitable death.The plot sounds awfully racy but these are the 50s.This is sort of a film noir and it's worth a watch, despite the very bad prints that are available.Good story.Good acting.

W. Lee Wilder's THE BIG BLUFF will never be a threat to his brother Billy's genre-defining classic, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, but on its own terms it's a nifty little quickie with a good story and a nice trick ending.When it starts, this film looks so cheap -- I mean, Ed Wood cheap -- you're tempted to hang it up, but stick with it. It improves as it goes along. The writing and cast are perfectly adequate and it's more entertaining than a lot of big budget A pictures.An unusual feature of this film is a reversal of the usual noir femme fatale dynamic. Here it's a sexy guy, an "homme fatal" if you will, who seduces a rich, love-starved widow.Maltin's book (2003) doesn't even list this film, but it's included in the inexpensive 6-CD "Ultimate Film Noir Collection", which I recommend for its intriguing line-up of public domain B-picture rarities, which range from junk to cult classic B's (DETOUR, THE HITCHHIKER) to even a couple great ones (Welles' THE STRANGER).