Martin Mooney

Leslie Brooks plays Claire Cummings, a society columnist who marries rich and keeps moving up, leaving a trail of dead husbands and a psychologist, played by Robert Paige, who realizes too late what she is. A cold-blooded B noir from poverty-row distributor Film Classics, the film runs its femme fatale premise harder than most A-pictures dared: Claire kills without remorse and without a mitigating backstory. Brooks, usually a musical-comedy blonde, is the whole show here, and director Jack Bernhard keeps the melodrama lean and mean. Neglected for decades, it has since been reclaimed as a minor noir classic. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Noir · Crime · Drama