This is not the worst film ever made. Just one the most confused crime stories ever to reach a movie screen before the advent of Quentin Tarantino. A lovely "ordinary" housewife (Frances Gifford) - who also dresses like Greta Garbo's understudy - finds herself fatally attracted to a fiery-eyed Italian greaseball (John Hodiak) who owns a nightclub. Melodrama ensues... Her husband is a nice, reliable, hunk of manhood, that any woman (of that time) would have given her eyeteeth to bed (George Murphy). Her adorably precocious, pretty and curly-haired nine year old son who has recurring nightmares about chocolate (!) and whose psychological problems provide comic relief (!!) is played by Dean Stockwell. She has a devoted Black maid and her best spinster friend is an amusing wisecracking clotheshorse in eye-popping outfits (played by Eve Arden) who can sniff out "man trouble" a mile away.
So what's wrong with this picture? Everything.
The styles are confused. It's basically a Harlequin-type women's novel (also known as women's porn) that would like to pretend it's also a murder mystery film noir and witty enough to be an Oscar Wilde adaptation by Joseph L. Mankiewicz - with just a touch of "Madame Bovary" thrown in at the last minute for good measure. But the literary pretensions are not what sinks this turkey. Many other elements contribute to the downfall. The fact that the morality of the times transpires at every turn, for instance... The heroine is not guilty of adultery, just of having flirted with the idea of having a life, a career and aspirations to happiness of her own, outside the domination of her boring, all-knowing husband and the prevalent "feminine mystique" which defines her persona, while also lusting for the exoticism of a fling with pencil-mustachioed impudent male Latino flesh. The powder compact she leaves behind at the scene of the crime actually shows more signs of life and expression than she ever does. The Tony Arnelo character is really guilty of being a dirty no-good wop from the wrong side of the tracks in spite of his stated (uppity) obsession for beauty and his highly suspicious fixation on his mother. You have to ask: Is this why he is attracted to this woman? And what about the Dean Stockwell character's equally ambiguous attraction to his own mother? Ms. Gifford treats her Black housemaid worse than any Southern belle would a plantation slave. The couple's friends (as revealed in the nightclub conversation) are all shallow, blasé, effete, snobbish and decadent, which was considered the mark of true intellect (a.k.a. homosexuality and/or communism) in Hollywood circles in those days. Their idea of small talk is simply hair-raising. The gangster's girlfriend is an actress (i.e. another transgressive working female, a.k.a. a whore, which is the only alternative to being a "mother" and a "dried-up old maid" in this universe) who deserves to die and whose only excuse for living is making trouble for everybody else. All non-procreative females are, after all, expandable. The Central Casting police detective chews gum continuously and is thrown leftover lines from every Bogart picture ever made.
This is also the film that put a definitive end to Eve Arden's career as a serious character actress playing funny women and turned her into a prop and the role model for drag queens everywhere, i.e. a frustrated old maid milliner whose financial independence allows her to indulge in extravagant dress, barely controlled nymphomania, tough-girl mannerisms bordering on lesbianism and unfunny deadpan cracks that simply overstay their welcome for lack of substance and meaning, double, single or otherwise.
The men walk like they are afraid to dent or crease the architecturally daunting square-shouldered suits they are expected to macho-posture in and the women are made breathless and dizzy from the repression three-way girdles exercise on their vital organs and cute hats on their brains. The film is without tension and unfurls at a morbid and soporific pace. By the time the Frances Gifford character turns off that horrifically elaborate chrome and lucite monstrosity of a lamp at her bedside, you really wish to God the sleeping pills will take effect and this nightmare will end, even though she has sleep-walked in a near-comatose state all through the film.
So what's wrong with this picture? Everything.
The styles are confused. It's basically a Harlequin-type women's novel (also known as women's porn) that would like to pretend it's also a murder mystery film noir and witty enough to be an Oscar Wilde adaptation by Joseph L. Mankiewicz - with just a touch of "Madame Bovary" thrown in at the last minute for good measure. But the literary pretensions are not what sinks this turkey. Many other elements contribute to the downfall. The fact that the morality of the times transpires at every turn, for instance... The heroine is not guilty of adultery, just of having flirted with the idea of having a life, a career and aspirations to happiness of her own, outside the domination of her boring, all-knowing husband and the prevalent "feminine mystique" which defines her persona, while also lusting for the exoticism of a fling with pencil-mustachioed impudent male Latino flesh. The powder compact she leaves behind at the scene of the crime actually shows more signs of life and expression than she ever does. The Tony Arnelo character is really guilty of being a dirty no-good wop from the wrong side of the tracks in spite of his stated (uppity) obsession for beauty and his highly suspicious fixation on his mother. You have to ask: Is this why he is attracted to this woman? And what about the Dean Stockwell character's equally ambiguous attraction to his own mother? Ms. Gifford treats her Black housemaid worse than any Southern belle would a plantation slave. The couple's friends (as revealed in the nightclub conversation) are all shallow, blasé, effete, snobbish and decadent, which was considered the mark of true intellect (a.k.a. homosexuality and/or communism) in Hollywood circles in those days. Their idea of small talk is simply hair-raising. The gangster's girlfriend is an actress (i.e. another transgressive working female, a.k.a. a whore, which is the only alternative to being a "mother" and a "dried-up old maid" in this universe) who deserves to die and whose only excuse for living is making trouble for everybody else. All non-procreative females are, after all, expandable. The Central Casting police detective chews gum continuously and is thrown leftover lines from every Bogart picture ever made.
This is also the film that put a definitive end to Eve Arden's career as a serious character actress playing funny women and turned her into a prop and the role model for drag queens everywhere, i.e. a frustrated old maid milliner whose financial independence allows her to indulge in extravagant dress, barely controlled nymphomania, tough-girl mannerisms bordering on lesbianism and unfunny deadpan cracks that simply overstay their welcome for lack of substance and meaning, double, single or otherwise.
The men walk like they are afraid to dent or crease the architecturally daunting square-shouldered suits they are expected to macho-posture in and the women are made breathless and dizzy from the repression three-way girdles exercise on their vital organs and cute hats on their brains. The film is without tension and unfurls at a morbid and soporific pace. By the time the Frances Gifford character turns off that horrifically elaborate chrome and lucite monstrosity of a lamp at her bedside, you really wish to God the sleeping pills will take effect and this nightmare will end, even though she has sleep-walked in a near-comatose state all through the film.