Aside from the fact that this movie is peopled with competent actors and sports some adequate film noir lighting effects, it is the bar-none stupidest and most confusing movie i have seen since "Mesa of Lost Women," which puts it way below such classics as "Child Bride of the Ozarks."
You can read other comments here, some of which will tell you that the film is "dreamlike," but that is hooey. It is just a mess, that's all. The ostensible hero -- let's just call him the lead player -- Scotty (Bob Cummings) is gulping prescription pills like candy and is hallucinating on all four cylinders by the time he falls in love with his crime-lord boss's wife, a suicidal maniac with tear-streaked cheeks and an affectless manner so turgid that to watch her emote is like watching glaciers melt. Meanwhile Peter Lorre, not up to the fab menace he projected in "Quicksand" with Mickey Rooney, is phoning in his usual Austrian criminal side-kick grimaces.
Why do we never see the buying of the knife? Why does Lorna change her dress from white to black between suicidal ideations? Why does Scotty's psych doc keep giving him all those happy pills? Did Gino shoot the Russian Chinese shop keeper or just walk away? How does the happy couple get their 2nd pair of tickets? Did Scotty know the cab driver in another lifetime or is he psychic and knew he'd meet him later? Were there any horses hitched to the cab at all? Was the boss as suicidal as his bride? Where does Scotty buy the newspaper about the last two deaths -- and how could it have been published in the middle of the night and then purchased on board a ship? Were there really 3 knives? Was the psych doctor a henchman of the crime lord? Why was this film so SLOW?
If you know the answers to these questions, you haven't watched this film -- because it leaves them all unanswered.
You can read other comments here, some of which will tell you that the film is "dreamlike," but that is hooey. It is just a mess, that's all. The ostensible hero -- let's just call him the lead player -- Scotty (Bob Cummings) is gulping prescription pills like candy and is hallucinating on all four cylinders by the time he falls in love with his crime-lord boss's wife, a suicidal maniac with tear-streaked cheeks and an affectless manner so turgid that to watch her emote is like watching glaciers melt. Meanwhile Peter Lorre, not up to the fab menace he projected in "Quicksand" with Mickey Rooney, is phoning in his usual Austrian criminal side-kick grimaces.
Why do we never see the buying of the knife? Why does Lorna change her dress from white to black between suicidal ideations? Why does Scotty's psych doc keep giving him all those happy pills? Did Gino shoot the Russian Chinese shop keeper or just walk away? How does the happy couple get their 2nd pair of tickets? Did Scotty know the cab driver in another lifetime or is he psychic and knew he'd meet him later? Were there any horses hitched to the cab at all? Was the boss as suicidal as his bride? Where does Scotty buy the newspaper about the last two deaths -- and how could it have been published in the middle of the night and then purchased on board a ship? Were there really 3 knives? Was the psych doctor a henchman of the crime lord? Why was this film so SLOW?
If you know the answers to these questions, you haven't watched this film -- because it leaves them all unanswered.