Grade-Z cult director Edgar G. Ulmer, Poverty Row’s poet of the peculiar, started his symbiotic association with ultra-low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation with this typically odd, atypically half-baked project. Later PRC films (BLUEBEARD/’44; DETOUR/’45) show what he was going after; not so much here. Jean Peters’ prodigal daughter, home after dropping out of college, gets an unwelcome reception from Pop at his minimally functioning desert diner, kept afloat by renting out sheds to black marketeer/casino owner Ricardo Cortez (the only reason to have a look).* Called ‘Ghost’ for having survived various attempted rubouts, he makes a fast move on Peters; she’s initially interested, but already spoken for by soldier boy William Marshall. You can see the possibilities, especially when a rival gang goes after Cortez and a jolting montage of gun play snaps him into madness. But the script is just too risibly blunt, the multi-branched storyline never comes together, and a bit of WWII patriotism slapped on as coda pure desperation.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Who could possibly be frequenting Cortez’s upscale desert nightspot in the middle of nowhere? Then again, Las Vegas was raising early casinos at about this time, so maybe.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Better Ulmer from this period, BLUEBEARD; DETOUR; or with a near normal budget & legit cast, RUTHLESS/’48, something of a discount CITIZEN KANE. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/detour-1945.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/ruthless-1948.html
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