The film was banned in Ohio due to its sordid, sadistic presentation of brutality and its detailed stages in the commission of criminal acts.
Both of the ingenues, Barbara Payton and Helena Carter, ended their movie careers in the early-to-mid 1950s. Carter left the industry on her own terms in 1953 to marry and raise a family, and died of natural causes in 1997. Payton's career unfortunately ended in 1955 in a morass of alcoholism, arrests for such crimes as passing bad checks, public intoxication and prostitution. She died of heart and liver failure in 1967, brought about by years of heavy drinking.
This is film that Phil Spector and Lana Clarkson were watching in Spector's chauffeured car on the way to his Alhambra (CA) mansion the night of her murder.
This film has often been compared to--and found wanting--James Cagney's legendary film noir classic White Heat (1949). However, it has lately gained a reputation as a genuine film noir in its own right. The noir ingredients include two opposing gun molls, sparse yet spitfire dialogue, double-crosses, twists and turns and a relatively low budget.
Barton MacLane and Ward Bond played a team of police officers in the 1941 production of "The Maltese Falcon".