dougdoepke On the whole, this cheap little production is better than it ought to be. Sexy Claire (Brooks) is a spider woman, par excellance. She seduces up-scale men, marries them, then kills them. Not exactly the motherly type. Yet the relatively unknown Brooks plays the part in interesting fashion. You can almost see her brain calculating behind an icy exterior. Too bad her career was so brief, confined for whatever reason to the 40's. Paige does well enough as her sometime 'true love'. I'm just wondering if this heart tug was to soften her image for censorship purposes, without it, she's a pretty ruthless case. Also, thin-faced, big-eyed James Griffith excelled at eccentric parts. Here, he sort of mugs it up in semi-humorous fashion, as though he's not taking any of this too seriously. Worse, by implying that he (Al) was ever a romantic interest of Claire's produces a real stretch. The direction by Jack Bernhard is smooth enough, if uninspired. Too bad the production didn't reach for noir lighting since the material is perfect for creepy shadows. Instead, staging and lighting remain conventional, perhaps because of budget constraints. However, I do wish the script had dispensed with the omniscient psychiatrist (Leonard). A lot of films of that period included 'head doctors' and I'm not sure why. I guess he's supposed to bring Claire's behavior within science's grasp. To me, however, it's more intriguing to place some behaviors beyond science.Anyhow, this cheapo remains an interesting little feature. Too bad that with a little more daring and imagination, it could have produced memorable results.

museumofdave There are many ways to rate the quality of a film, and this little Sub-Z noir is a perfect example: it's interesting enough to watch for those of us who love films made on the cheap and will overlook some gross deficiencies. No one, except perhaps for Walter Sande, who plays the understanding newspaper reporter, acquits themselves very well, especially the lead Leslie Brooks, who absolutely lacks the chilly nastiness of the noir femme fatale, whether Stanwyck, Peggy Cummins in the wildly insane Gun Crazy, or Joan Crawford in almost anything post 1940. Brooks is simply not very interesting.The film is only some 70 minutes long, and does pack in several get-outta-my-way murders, but overall the film is pretty flimsy stuff, and not recommended when there are so many really good Icy Dame Flicks around, whether Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gun Crazy, or Woman In The Window; I give it some credit because I like old films I've never seen--but wouldn't subject a good friend to it! Be warned.

Robert J. Maxwell The psychopath is Leslie Brooks. She's young and has the pleasant, even features of a Hollywood actress. She has had several men on the hook in San Francisco but finally marries the richest of them all and then murders him, leaving a staged suicide scene. She's used her former lover, the immortal Robert Paige, as part of her alibi, although he's unwitting and believes her to be innocent of anything beyond a hasty marriage.Brooks takes up with the devoted but slightly dumb Paige again but quickly discovers the possibility of another conquest -- Michael Whalen as a newly elected Congressman, soon to depart the city for Washington. Whalen is even dumber than Paige. He falls for her in a jiffy and announces their marriage. But when Whalen finds out what she's really like, thanks to a presumably perceptive shrink in an underwritten part, he tries to back out of the nuptials. She kills him and frames Paige.So far -- well, if not "so good", at least "so adequate for the purposes". But the movie implodes at the end. Brooks is in her newspaper office, typing one of her last society columns. She has a Niagara of money coming her way once her first husband's estate is out of probate, or whatever it's called. Paige has been successfully framed for Whalen's murder. She has nothing to fear and has shown no sign of guilt or remorse.Yet, it's at this point that the police and the shrink enter her office, she stands up with a big smile, and spills all the beans, including her murder of a third man whose unimportance to the plot justifies his not having been mentioned until now. Hearing her confession, Paige slumps a little and makes a disillusioned remark. "I'll KILL you!", shouts Brooks for no particular reason, grabs a pistol, and is wrestled to the floor as the gun goes off and she's accidentally killed. The scene is just as bad as it sounds here.Brooks is pretty enough but her acting is obvious. Paige isn't called on to do very much except be friendly, trusting, understanding, and a little dense. Walter Sande is a mutual friend and employer of both at the newspaper and he's sympathetic. Most interesting character award goes to James Griffith as a fellow reporter and one of Brook's discarded boy friends. You'll know him when you see him. He's tall, narrow-shouldered, and has the longest neck of anyone in the movie. It has a sizable laryngeal prominence that can actually be seen bobbing up and down when he speaks. He has the best lines too. They're not worth quoting here, nor are any of the other lines, because the screenplay is functional but no more than that. The direction by Jack Bernhard has one or two imaginative moments.The problem is that B features like this were ground out by the hundreds during the 30s and 40s, doomed to second billing, and the budgets were very low. You don't get the production values that might rescue the film. Every scene here seems to be indoors because shooting on a set is cheap and fast. And you don't get the talent. Leslie Brooks is okay, but if you want to see a woman who exploits men the way Brooks does, and who gives a fine performance to boot, watch Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity."

Terrell-4 Claire Cummings, San Francisco society reporter, blonde and gorgeous, is a woman to die for. If you make the mistake of marrying her, you probably will. Claire (Leslie Brooks) goes through men who want to marry her like a sharp knife through your side. She keeps news columnist Les Burns (Robert Paige) handy even when she marries a very wealthy San Francisco businessman. She makes the mistake of letting a letter to Les fall into her husband's hands on their honeymoon. "My darling Les," she writes, "three more weeks until I can see you again, dearest. Poor stupid Carl tries so hard to be a good husband, but he can't get used to an expensive wife." Carl says it will be a divorce. Twenty-four hours later, Carl isn't going to say anything ever again. Blonde Ice lets us tag along as Claire not only goes through her new husband, but through a blackmailer and a new, high social fiancée. She manipulates Les, who loves her, until even he has her number. "I once said I couldn't figure you out," he tells her. "I can now. You're not a normal woman. You're not warm. You're cold...like ice. Yeah, like ice...blonde ice." It might not have been wise to be so frank with Claire because now she plans for him to take the fall for one of her murders. Justice finally comes to Claire, as it must to all bad people in Hollywood movies of that time. Even then, it takes a three-way set-up, some psychoanalysis and a bullet to do the job. The movie is a great example of a low-budget B programmer which just manages to rise a little above the average. The script is okay, the acting is adequate, the story is interesting. What makes it work? Director Jack Bernhard, just as much a journeyman as the actors, keeps the film moving briskly, with little time to let us get bored or impatient. The photography helps quite a bit, with several noirish scenes at night. Also important is Leslie Brooks as Claire. Brooks was an actress that stayed firmly planted as a lead in B movies, with an occasional foray as a second lead in A movies. She's not an actress who would worry the A crowd, but she does a fine job as Claire, the self-centered, manipulative and deadly ice queen. The only really weak part of the movie is the conclusion, when psychiatry is used as an explanation for her behavior. For me, this undercuts her nicely murderous actions; after all, don't we all just want the nice things in life? There are even tips for fine living. What could be a healthier lunch than "martinis, chicken salad for two and coffee, please." Or "four Manhattans, waiter, with half French, half Italian vermouth." Why, that's a Perfect Manhattan.