***SOPILERS**** Steaming hot 1954 film noir drama with Angela Lansbury as the femme fatal Doris Hilman who gets out of work broke and in debt architect Ed Shaw, Keith Andes, to become a partner in her and her husband Gustave's, Douglas Dumbrille, shoddy real estate business.
Needing the money and living on the edge, in cheap hotel rooms and eating out of soap cans, Ed accepts the job as chief of the Shaw/Hilman real-estate company as its chief of operations. Being on the ball and not at all that impressed in the sexy Doris' advances on him Ed still has to play ball with her and Gustave who are bankrolling him. It's when Doris suggests that Ed get himself insured, with the He-man Insurance Company, for a cool 300 G's that he smells a rat in all this of taking him literary out of the gutter and putting him in a 5th Av penthouse!
It's later when Ed runs into Doris barley out of her teens sister Medge, Claudia Barrell, that his worst suspicion about Doris is confirmed! Her previous husband, before Gustave, was also heavily insured by her and ended up plunging down a cliff in the Rockies when his car breaks failed on him! Feeling that he's being set up by Doris & Gustave Ed becomes so paranoid that everyone as well as car on the street he sees he feel is going to do him in by being paid to do it by Doris and Gustave!
***SPOILERS*** It's Doris not Ed who cracks first by falling in love with the strapping and handsome young man and what seems like, the movie never completely make it clear, backs out in the plan she and Gustave cooked up to off Ed. Getting Ed to go to her and Gustaves cottage on top of the Hollywood Hills the trap is set but one of the trappers, Doris, gets cold feet at the very last moment! With Gustave seeing his plan to take out Ed, and get the life insurance money, going down in flames he comes out of the shadows, or was it the closet, to do the job himself! It's then that both Doris and Gustave's cheapness paid off for Ed by them not installing a porch at their house, to step out on and view the scenery, that turned out to be fatal for both of them!
Needing the money and living on the edge, in cheap hotel rooms and eating out of soap cans, Ed accepts the job as chief of the Shaw/Hilman real-estate company as its chief of operations. Being on the ball and not at all that impressed in the sexy Doris' advances on him Ed still has to play ball with her and Gustave who are bankrolling him. It's when Doris suggests that Ed get himself insured, with the He-man Insurance Company, for a cool 300 G's that he smells a rat in all this of taking him literary out of the gutter and putting him in a 5th Av penthouse!
It's later when Ed runs into Doris barley out of her teens sister Medge, Claudia Barrell, that his worst suspicion about Doris is confirmed! Her previous husband, before Gustave, was also heavily insured by her and ended up plunging down a cliff in the Rockies when his car breaks failed on him! Feeling that he's being set up by Doris & Gustave Ed becomes so paranoid that everyone as well as car on the street he sees he feel is going to do him in by being paid to do it by Doris and Gustave!
***SPOILERS*** It's Doris not Ed who cracks first by falling in love with the strapping and handsome young man and what seems like, the movie never completely make it clear, backs out in the plan she and Gustave cooked up to off Ed. Getting Ed to go to her and Gustaves cottage on top of the Hollywood Hills the trap is set but one of the trappers, Doris, gets cold feet at the very last moment! With Gustave seeing his plan to take out Ed, and get the life insurance money, going down in flames he comes out of the shadows, or was it the closet, to do the job himself! It's then that both Doris and Gustave's cheapness paid off for Ed by them not installing a porch at their house, to step out on and view the scenery, that turned out to be fatal for both of them!