In the earliest days of TV, local channels used to fill up all their excess time with low-budget films from indie companies, as the 'majors' initially refused to sell or lease their product to what they considered (at the time) a mortal enemy - the small screen, which threatened to keep their regular customers at home. So for those of us who grew up during the fifties, much of our evening time was spent watching the cheaply made films from the thirties and forties, which - for all we knew at the time - were the important releases of that era. One of the most oft telecast films was Too Late For Tears, a turgid but in many ways fascinating B-budget noir that can't compare to the classics of that genre (this is no Big Sleep, mind you) but never fails to interest a viewer. Perhaps that's because the plot is so unique. Ordinarily, as in The Maltese Falcon and dozens of other noirs, the femme fatale is up to no good from the moment we meet here, and hails from a strange netherworld of dirty money and tawdry eroticism. Here, Lizabeth Scott plays a normal everyday suburban style woman who likely has never even received a parking ticket. But when she an her husband (Arthur Kennedy) find themselves on a lonely stretch of highway at night, a car zips buy and throws a bag of money into theirs - the passerby was expecting someone else, and tossed the loot into the wrong car. The husband wants to turn the money over to the police, but something ignites in the woman - she literally explodes before our eyes into the most deadly femme fatale of all, made all the more alluring by Scott's butch/androgynous sex appeal. The casting is all wrong - Don De Fore, who shows up as a tough guy, should've been the husband, with Arthur Kennedy in Don's role - but there's a great part for Dan Duryea as a sleazy character who falls under Liz's hypnotic spell. A contrived ending hurts the impact, but for noir completists, this is one you have (despite its flaws) to see.