Other than Virginia Mayo (and lenser Ted McCord), everyone in this tough little crime film were standard B-pic Hollywood journeymen. Director Richard Bare largely did shorts before moving to tv series; scripter William Sackheim penned Bs before his decades as tv-movie producer; plus a cast of also-rans. Happily, a lot of these folks unappreciated journeymen. Particularly leading man Bruce Bennett, consistently interesting as an expendable third-wheel, here getting a showcase assignment as the operator of a classy Manhattan boité with a posh gambling room in the back. Robbed in the opening scene, he can hardly go to the police (they’d shut him down), instead, swallowing his loses, and paying off his guests, he’s the cool head in the room, sending his gang out to get even. Enter Mayo, overstating her losses, she's a society type in decline. These two quickly ‘see each other plain’ and immediately hit it off. And what makes the film work is that Bennett is far from the nice ‘bad guy’ he seems to be, he’s a BAD bad guy. And when Mayo’s kid brother, doctor-in-training Robert Hutton, shows up in town and becomes involved in a revenge murder, everyone’s true colors spill out in deadly fashion. The film’s biggest problem is that Sackheim’s structure needs a strong fourth lead and the film only comes up with three. It makes the ending pretty unsatisfying. Pity. Still worth a look.
DOUBLE-BILL: Next year, M-G-M producer Arthur Freed made one of his rare non-musicals with an A-list example of this sort of thing but with very big stars and an all too tidy Richard Brooks script in ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY/’49.
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