Bad Girl with a happy ending
For those who have waited for this campy little less-than-a-B classic to make its way to a DVD release, it's here, on the "Bad Girls of Film Noir" set, Vol. 2.
Hugo Haas must have held quite a fasciation for Cleo Moore, and within the first few minutes of the film, it's easy to see why. She's draped across the beach, she walks into a bar to a resounding chorus of wolf whistles and then she spends the rest of the movie in a bullet bra covered by a tight and clinging sweater.
The story is simple and some of the acting is okay. Even better than okay. But the story is so simple, it's even simpler than reading a comic book. And that goes for the direction of the film too. There is something so simple that it's incredibly bad, but there is something going on with some of the acting performances that make it somehow believable and that even make one care about what happens to these characters. And Cleo Moore never lets up, all the way through to the end of the picture!
You gotta see it to believe it!
This is shoestring budget noir on the order of such unbearable stinkers as "Kiss Me Deadly" or half of Sam Fuller's work. But, there's something about this film that is definitely okay. See it, you'll know what I mean.