The Glass Heart - Marty Holland

Down on his luck Curt Blair is waiting out a rainstorm in a “ritzy hash joint” just outside of Hollywood, USA when he steals a fancy camel hair overcoat then flees intending to sell the coat. It’s how he makes his living these days – ripping off suckers' coats, rifling the pockets for treasures and cash, then selling the ransacked coat. But this time all hell breaks loose and he’s being chased. While hiding from his pursuers he ends up in the backyard of Virginia Block’s home. She mistakes him for the handyman she recently hired from an agency. Curt being the opportunist that he is wisely plays along and learns the job comes with a free room and kitchen privileges. So he accepts the job, gains a cheap salary of $20/week and a place to stay and eat.

Later the same day aspiring actress Lynn York shows up at the boarding house. She is paying $60/month for an upstairs room, but no kitchen privileges for her. Mrs. B is greedy and a miser we soon figure out. Within hours Curt and Lynn are hooking up and doing the dirty deed in the dirty basement where while putting the moves on Lynn Curt is bothered by the irritating sound of a dripping pipe. He vows to fix the leak though that task is not on the insanely long list of arduous work Mrs. Block expects of him.

While dealing with the plumbing problem Curt discovers a gruesome surprise and jumps to conclusions.  A bit of detective work supports his rash theory and he sees dollar signs. He schemes to blackmail his landlady and employer. Soon he finds his paltry salary increased to a cool $1000/week.

And if you haven’t already figured out that the tables will be turned then you don’t know your crime fiction.

Reading The Glass Heart is like travelling back in time to a 1950s movie palace watching a B movie programmer. It’s crammed full of action, double dealing, manipulation, greed, lust and crime. Everyone is out for himself or herself. James M Cain, who penned multiple densely packed novels about two timing lovers and how greed controls their lives admired the book so much he 1. wrote a praiseworthy blurb for the Julian Messner first edition dust cover and 2. wrote a screenplay adaptation that unfortunately was never produced.  Even he recognized the cinematic potential of this hard to resist story.

While it’s not hard to predict that Curt and lovely Lynn will hook up within hours of meeting I doubt many readers will be able to predict the unusual plot twists. Soon a handful of supporting characters descend upon Mrs. Block looking for handouts including Elise, Lynn's future roommate and a member of an evangelical church devoted to enlisting new members and coaxing money out of them to help build their new church.

The story is overloaded with plot and incident. It’s almost like reading two books in one at the same time. There’s almost no time in the action-filled pages to question the often outlandish turn of events. But I did! And frequently. Some of my nagging questions included: Why on earth is Mrs. B such a pushover? Why didn’t she just throw Curt out of her house rather than be bled dry? And why is Lynn so simple minded and easily manipulated? I guess there is no room for common sense in potboiler fiction. The book exists solely to explore crime and base motives (mostly dealing with lust and avarice) but offers no insight into any of the reasons the characters need so desperately what they long for. I wasn’t asking for heightened literary reasons just a few mundane ones.

Late in the book it all turns a bit ridiculous. Elise receives a telegram that her husband was killed in action overseas. She refuses to accept this and in her religious mania keeps praying that hubbie be returned to her. Like a true believers she’s asking for a miracle. One guess as to how that turns out. Because of course every absurd coincidence one can possibly imagine will be crammed into these 192 pages.

Why have one kook when you can have two? Mrs. B is later revealed to be a bit of a loon herself. Lynn spends much of her time eavesdropping throughout the book and hears her landlady talking to herself and singing in a little girl’s high pitched voice. She has conversations with her dead husband, very intimate and revealing conversations. It all leads to a confrontation between the two woman involving a revolver and a golf club that doesn’t end well at all.

Do you think anything will end well in a book of this sort? Think again!

It starts off as noir but some odd detours and intrusive subplots among the minor characters transform the book to a quasi romance. This schizoid state results in a near parody of noir by the time you get to the two climactic moments. Remarkably – almost unbelievably – for something so laden with doom, insanity and murder, both intentional and accidental, it all ends with a cop out finale that includes a wedding and happily ever after honeymoon in New Mexico! I gather that Holland opted for a hearts and flowers finale because she wants the real villain of the piece to be revealed as a vile monster who “deserved” to die. And she seemed to want to make her leads into decent people who were victims themselves. Really strange considering they were crooked and corrupt from the get-go. When the penultimate chapter exposes the villain’s wide ranging schemes of cheating, thievery and mean-spiritedness one wonders if Holland knew a similarly horrible person and this was a revenge piece.

Marty Holland (1919 - 1971)

And yet though I sound like I’m disparaging this book I found it all utterly addictive. The Glass Heart is, I confess, a guilty pleasure. I couldn’t stop reading and had to know where each ludicrous scene would lead and of course how it all would end. It truly is one of the best examples of a genuine B movie on paper. And no wonder – the author Marty Holland was a secretary at Republic Pictures, one of the leading producers of B movie programmers, for many years. She was writing pulp fiction in her spare time, wrote the book that became the classic noir thriller Fallen Angel, and a story treatment for another crime movie classic The File on Thelma Jordan. Typing all those scripts at Republic Pictures taught her well, I guess.

Stark House has reprinted all of Marty Holland’s crime novels over the past year and a half. The Glass Heart is the newest reprint added to that small pile of books. For decades this novel was unavailable to mere mortals like you and me because the few copies for sale were listed by booksellers at unaffordable collector’s prices. It’s wonderful to have Marty Holland’s books all available to the general public in Stark House’s usual handsomely produced editions. For lovers of noir, kooky melodrama and twisty plotting these books are a must have. Highly recommended – even with all the caveats listed above. The Glass Heart is genuine thrill ride that will leave you both gasping in awe and laughing in shock.

NEW STUFF: Eight Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson

This is not a review. This is pretty much a diatribe and a warning to anyone vaguely titillated by the premise of Eight Perfect Murders (2020) by Peter Swanson. I have never read any of Swanson's other books. I was only interested in this because it is yet another contemporary crime novel that is paying homage to classic mystery novels -- or rather books (and one play, later a screenplay) that feature murder. The ostensibly "perfect murders" are found in eight different crime fiction works, only three of them genuine detective novels, spanning seventy years from The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne published in 1922 to 1992's The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

Interesting that last title. Admittedly as far removed from crime fiction as one can get, Tartt's book is an overhyped 'literary novel' that features murder. It's not really a mystery as I define the genre nor is it anything remotely resembling a detective novel. However, the list in which these books appear is not really concerned with genre of any type even if it was composed by Malcolm Kershaw, a mystery bookstore owner and narrator of Swanson's novel. The list plays with the idea of a supposedly perfectly executed murder on paper that could have allowed the culprit to escape justice. In the novel this list appears to be the inspiration for a serial killer who is copying the murder methods from each book on the list. The killer's murders are similarly made to look like accidents or natural deaths and each victim is someone who deserves death for unpunished crimes.

#1 on the list

#2 on the list

My problem with Eight Perfect Murders is that Peter Swanson blatantly disregards one of the tacit rules of paying homage to any work of fiction, but especially a mystery novel. He ruins every one of the eight books by divulging in great detail the endings. He reveals not only the method of each "perfect murder" but the motivations and the identity of each murderer. Essentially, scattered throughout his own story Swanson has written a Cliff Notes of classic crime works.

#3 on the list

#4 on the list

It was not necessary to explain the entire plot of every book, it was quite easy to discuss the murder method without revealing who the killer was. Not only does he spoil these books once – he does so repeatedly. I got the feeling I was reading a old time serial there was so much repetition. The only thing missing was "Previously on..." or "In our last episode..." He tells us the plot of Malice Aforethought about three separate times. He mentions the ending of The Drowner by John D. MacDonald just as many.

[Aside: Where are the editors, BTW? Asleep at the wheel as usual. This is my eternal woeful complaint about contemporary publishing houses for the past 20+ years.]

#5 on the list

#6 on the list

That Swanson chose not to be circumspect in discussing the various killers' identities makes me think that the writer supposedly paying homage to works of the past is contemptuous of, or at least envious of, those writers and their capacity for ingenuity and originality. Who at Morrow and HarperCollins thought this was a cool idea to give away the endings of all these books? I was beyond disappointed with Swanson I was furious with him. Luckily, I was familiar with all of the old books mentioned, even less well known titles like The Drowner and The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford, the latter mentioned only in passing towards the end of the book. [Both of those titles, BTW, are reviewed on my blog.] However, the vast majority of readers will not be familiar with even half of these books. More likely most people will be familiar with the movie and TV versions of five of them.

#7 on the list

#8 on the list

As for Swanson's novel itself? Extremely limited in originality from what is on display here. Since so much of the book is based on the works of more skilled, more interesting, and more imaginative writers Swanson had to surpass all of them in my estimation in order to succeed. He failed. His ideas are pedestrian or derivative of movies and TV shows. The overarching plot and the slow reveal of Malcolm’s true personality is a retread of every damn "unreliable narrator" book (a subgenre I am beginning to grow weary of) published in the past ten years. He even alludes to Gone Girl as a "clue" that Malcolm is just as unreliable as the narrator in that book. And makes it seem like Gillian Flynn invented the concept.

Nothing was surprising at all. The movie-of-the-week style motivations of the protagonist and the horrible secrets of the victims “who deserved to die” (another reprehensible conceit cropping up in modern crime fiction these days) were neither creepy nor spine-chilling. It was all just banal.

Finally, the biggest insult of all. In Malcolm Kershaw the writer has created a bookseller who doesn't read the books he sells, who pretends to have read them when having conversations with his customers and employees. He confesses that he just can't read crime fiction anymore even though this is his chosen profession. Swanson gives an entirely lame reason for Malcolm’s decision to stop reading crime fiction, one that is entirely in conflict with his the bookseller's personality, but tied to his deep, dark secrets in the past. Most readers will figure it all out.

Ultimately, all the twists are mechanical and cliched. Drawing from past writers' plots makes this book nothing more than rehash. As a result the story lacks suspense and the genuinely unexpected events that should be the hallmark of all crime fiction. That most of the rave reviews dismiss the blatant spoilers, Swanson's ballsy borrowing, and focus on what they think is original shows that very few people care about classic crime novels anymore. It's all up for grabs now. It's just a matter of who has the nerve to get there first.

NEW STUFF: Tears Are for Angels - Paul Connolly

Tears Are for Angels by Paul Connolly
A Black Gat Book/Stark House Press
ISBN: 978-1944520922
200 pp. $9.99
Publication date: February 24, 2020

Flashbacks. I like a little time travel in my crime fiction. You get it a lot in mystery fiction, whether it’s a simple telling of a client’s reason for hiring a private eye, or the apparently guilty heir coolly going over his actions the night his wealthy uncle was bashed on the head with a silver plated candlestick. It’s nearly inescapable in the conventional formula of the Q&A style of “Where were you on the night of…?” you get in everything from English manor whodunnits to hard-edged police procedurals to melodramatic courtroom battles. But rarely are flashback techniques used with such stunning effect as in Tears Are for Angels (originally published 1952) the final crime novel Tom Wicker wrote as “Paul Connolly” before he decided to use his own name on his work.

Here's the bare bones story:  The murderous result of a jealous husband’s rage, his insane method of covering up the murder as a suicide, the bizarre self-mutilation done to bolster his claim of self-defense which later leads to amputation and disfigurement, and the subsequent amateur investigation of his wife’s previously unknown friend trying to get at the truth of that violent death.

Wicker uses multiple viewpoints in his detailed flashbacks as both narrative experiment and to create suspense in a story of duplicity, mistrust and hidden desires. There is an element of the unreliable narrator in the storytelling that always leaves the reader questioning which story he should believe. Is anyone telling the truth? Much as we get a tortured confession from Harry London at the outset is he just making it all up? And is Jean, his wife’s supposed good friend from the Big City, to be trusted with her story? Is she too creating a story of her relationship they had as a sympathetic diner customer looking after a lost and needy waitress?

On the surface this novel may seem nothing more than a tawdry tale of revenge, but there is more to this sex and violence tale than a retread of another familiar getting even story. Surprisingly, for a tale that ostensibly seems to be about crime and revenge Tears Are for Angels turns out to be a novel of love and forgiveness, for redemption and rebirth. Wicker has his protagonist come to this eyebrow raising realization:

I had never really loved Lucy [his wife]. What I had thought was love was only conceit, because she had been my property, because I had made her my property.

...now I know what love is, I thought. Now I know. It's what I feel for this woman who lies naked and sleeping beside me. It's something I never knew existed in this world or any other. It's what you feel when you are able to do anything and suffer anything and endure anything and give anything, any time, anywhere, for someone else. Or at least it is for me. That's what love is for me. 

A more lusty and transformative love has rarely been depicted so intensely or unexpectedly as in this compact novel. For all its action oriented scenes, for all the desire captured in passionate and desperate moments this final work as "Paul Connolly" is one of Wicker's most mature works. We still get a shocking climax in which one final plot twist is delivered with a hefty punch, but the ending of what might have been a deeply disturbing noir tale delivers not only redemption for Harry, but for the memory of his dead wife. More importantly, Tears Are for Angels promises a glimmer of light for our two protagonists after a descent into the abyss. This was the book Tom Wicker needed to write in order to pave the way for his later, even richer novels like The Devil Must (1957) which were published under his own name.  here is a minor classic, in my opinion, and one of the few paperback originals that absolutely deserves this new reprint from Black Gat/Stark House.

Highly recommended!  Grab a copy now.

FFB: Dead Reckoning - Bruce Hamilton

"Well written, but most unpleasant tale" -- penciled remark by a Previous Owner left in my copy of Dead Reckoning

THE STORY:Tim Kennedy is a successful dentist and happily married to Esther. Until one evening his vivacious, attractive wife goes chasing after her hat on a busy roadway. She is struck by a car and suffers multiple injuries. Her recovery is a painful and disheartening one. She is left horribly disfigured, crippled on one side of her body, and drained of her lust for life. Taking care of Esther becomes a burden to Tim, his love and devotion dwindling, eventually finding himself drawn to the much younger Alma Shepherd. Tim begins to daydream of how easier his life might be without Esther leading to what he thinks is the perfect murder.

THE CHARACTERS:The original title of Dead Reckoning (1937) in England was Middle Class Murder. That title is a good cue to the kinds of people to expect in its realistic rendering of a dentist, his patients and friends. But it is Hamilton's juxtaposition of mundane homelife and a routine workplace against the secret criminal plotting of our anti-hero that make the book more than just a mainstream novel which in the first half it very much resembles. From the very first page we know Tim Kennedy is planning on killing his wife, one of several half-started, then abandoned plots that will come back to haunt him in the final chapters.

The story is told in third person but everything is viewed through Tim's perspective. He at first seems like an amiable man, well respected in his profession and well liked among his small circle of friends and acquaintances. As the story progresses he gradually transforms into a figure of pathetic desperation. Aching for the sex life he once had, longing to be desired, suffering through the worst kind of middle age crisis and coming to the most heinous decision on how to transcend his depression and unhappiness. Remarkably, it is Hamilton's skill in turning our sympathies toward Tim when he becomes the victim of a nasty blackmail plot that make this book a unique British version of a James M. Cain tale of infidelity and murder.

We know poor Esther is doomed from the start and yet she never becomes sentimentalized. Her recovery is painful to read of while her burgeoning friendship with Alma, Tim's object of desire, is an ironic high point of joy in her brief post-accident life. Tim's business partner Adam, who becomes his nemesis in Book Two, is a fine portrait of a little man attempting to live a life of big dreams yet revealing instead nothing but amoral corruption and small-minded greed. The lack of police throughout the story highlights another world of Hamilton's creation fraught with omnipresent danger, paranoia and near lawlessness.

INNOVATIONS: Hamilton's brother Patrick is best known for his playwriting skills, but Dead Reckoning shows the elder Hamilton to have a similar gift for drama played out in skilled dialogue sequences that reveal character. There is a excellent section devoted to a tennis party ostensibly thrown together for Esther's benefit but in reality a way for Tim to get to see Alma. Hamilton uses the tennis party to introduce a few minor characters who will reappear in other functions in the second half of the novel as well as allowing us to see Esther experience the joy of her former self. The dialogue is cleverly rendered with innuendo between Alma and Tim; we know Tim's thoughts as well as his words, but can only guess at Alma's thoughts and feelings based on ambiguous remarks. A later scene where Tim takes Alma on a private tour of his home leads them to a room with a rocking horse. Alma sits down and rocks herself while Tim continues his veiled flirtation with her. It's a remarkable piece of writing that shows the older man pursuing a younger woman while at the same time ridiculing him as we see her acting in such a childlike manner.

The crime novel features take over in Book Two when Tim finds himself the victim of a blackmail scheme. In eerie anticipation of Robin Maugham's well known novel The Servant Tim finds himself at the mercy of his employee who in effect takes complete control of his life, commandeering his finances and forcing Tim into committing more acts of final desperation. This coupled with some bad news about his supposed property inheritance from Esther sends Tim into a continual downward spiral. It's a chilling portion of the novel. One cannot help side with the hapless dentist and hope that he can turn the tables on the avaricious and amoral Adam. There are some violent action set pieces and an eleventh hour scene where we think Tim may have indeed thwarted the plot to reveal him as Esther's killer.

THINGS I LEARNED: In one of the many dentist office scenes (some of them rather fascinating) Tim runs out of a special mouthwash preparation. He calls his assistant, Adam, to make him some more, but there is no reply. Because the patient is in the chair in mid-surgery he is forced to come up with an alternative: "Eventually he telephoned the chemist (whose boy proved to be out) and made do with lysol." Lysol as a mouthwash? I can't believe that. Hamilton must've intended Listerine and got confused. I looked up the history of Lysol products and it was never used as mouthwash. It was, however, used as a vaginal douche. I'll spare you anymore of my findings.

EASY TO FIND? If you speak and read French you're in luck. The most affordable copies are paperback editions in French (Portrait d'un meurtrier) but there are only five that I could find for sale. No good news for the original English language editions. A single copy of the UK title Middle Class Murder is available if you're willing to pay $324 (£250) while only two US editions are for sale priced at $30 (no DJ) and $250 (with DJ). Looks like your local library may be the best bet.

Polly Put the Kettle On - Joan Fleming

Could this be the only nursery rhyme that Agatha Christie left untouched when she plundered the pages of Mother Goose for inspiration in plots and quaintly ironic titles?  I think it's an unfortunate tongue in cheek choice on Joan Fleming's part. Although there is a character named Polly in Polly Put the Kettle On (1952) and there is a tell-tale kettle left boiling on a stove as a clue to murderous intent the tone of the book does not lend itself to ironic or cutesy titles. This may be why it's one of Fleming's least known books.  It never received a reprint in either her home country or overseas here in the US where nearly all her books were reprinted in easily obtainable paperback editions. Such a shame because not only is it her only locked room detective novel that I have so far encountered, but it also seems to be her homage to James M. Cain.

Derek St. George Sudley has been released from prison in the opening pages of the novel. He intends to stay away from the city where he got himself into trouble and eventually arrested for robbery with violence.  Now having served three years of a five year sentence he's out to make a better life as a laborer. After a few words of advice he learns that Hill Farm may be looking for a new gardener and having spent much of his time tending to the ground of the prison gardens George (as he prefers to call himself) heads to the farm to meet with Eli Edge, his soon-to-be employer.

A gardener is not really what Edge needs. Instead, he offers George a chance to be a farmhand and help out with the cows in the dilapidated barn. Not exactly thrilled with this substitute job George is about to turn him down but when he catches a glimpse of Edge's extremely attractive and much younger wife, Polly, the former prisoner quickly accepts. Hard work might be easier on the hands with such a sight who's so easy on the eyes. And here we enter the territory of Cain with the ex-con trying to make the moves on the brutish husband's wife and the wife doing her best to ignore the hired hand's obvious advances. She's one of those ladies who protests too much and George knows how she really feels. You can bet that no good will come of their trysts in the barn.

But George is not your typical ex-con. He's an exceptionally literate former burglar.  He freely quotes Francis Bacon, Thomas Mallory and John Keats.  In his first person narration he sprinkles literary allusions with the ease of an Oxford don. There's even an ironic reference to George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss which will make sense to anyone familiar with that novel that features quite a bit of repressed sex and sudden bursts of passion in the Yorkshire countryside. With the entrance of Madge Clay, a neighbor who breeds Keeshonds on her nearby farm, we have the addition of another woman interested the virile George.  Madge with her vulgar humor, her lust for life and liquor, and a very forward pursuit of George is an obvious foil for the prim and obedient Polly. But of course it is always the forbidden often married woman that these men would rather pursue and never the single very available and readily willing woman. Madge warns George to stay away from Polly, that Eli is not the dumb farmer George may think he is. Trouble is a brewin', my friends. And it ain't tea Polly will be making when she puts her kettle on.

Unlike Cain, however, Fleming with her inimitable flair for breaking free of crime fiction expectations includes some clever misdirection. George, who is at first presented as nothing more than a Lothario, becomes rather quickly a figure of sympathy. When Eli Edge is removed from the story in a mysterious accidental death by poison gas, and is found in a locked room from which his pet dog Argo seems to have also mysteriously vanished, suspicion inevitably falls on Polly who seems to be the only person who could have tampered with a coal gas burner in the room where her husband died.

The plot is complicated by a series of incidents in which George quite innocently was trying to help improve the farm with plumbing upgrades and by teaching both Eli and Polly to drive the new Land Rover he convinced Eli to purchase. The farmer been very tight with his money for years until George cajoled him into spending money on the improvements and the vehicle.  No reason to live like 19th century country bumpkins with an outhouse and walking miles to fetch water for the cows when they can have modern plumbing.  Fleming, of course, has a few tricks up her sleeve.  Eli proves to be a poor driving student and a variety of accidents befall him and Polly while he is at the wheel and occur in such a way to implicate George as well.  Things do not look good for George when the police learn those accidents occurred only a few days prior to Eli's death. Discovery of a couple of dead cats near the sofa where Eli's body is found also indicate possible foul play.

Rare photo of Joan Fleming (no credit given)

George finds himself a victim of circumstance constantly at odds with the police, Madge and Eyvind, the ex-German POW (with a Norwegian or Icelandic name?) who at one time worked at Hill Farm and returns quite unexpectedly in an attempt to win back his job. George not only tries to prevent everyone from discovering his secret of being a former prisoner but tries to shift all blame to Polly who he no longer trusts. As in Double Indemnity when Walter Huff begins to suspect Phyllis of using him George turns on his paramour. He becomes an amateur sleuth doing his best to solve the mysteries of how the dog got out of the locked room and how Eli was poisoned. But it is Eyvind who will prove to be George's greatest adversary not Inspector Hope, the police inspector who has trained his eye on George as the prime suspect.

Luckily, in this renaissance of vintage crime novel reprinting we are experiencing of late Polly Put the Kettle On has been reissued from Orion Books in a new digital version. But it is only allowed for sale in the UK. Used copies of the briefly reissued paperback (or the original hardcover) might also be available to an assiduous book hunter no matter where you live. With a few clicks of your keyboard you'll soon have your hands on this very fine crime novel that blends both traditional detective novel with the impossible crime novel as well as a noirish thriller that would impress Cain and Highsmith.

*  *  *

Reading Challenge update:  Golden Age card, space O6 - "Woman in the title"  Et voila!  My first Bingo in the O column. I've now officially completed the challenge. But I persevere in my attempt to fill the card!

COOL FLICKS: A Life at Stake (1954)

Crime and noir film devotees know the insurance policy plot is as old as Double Indemnity. Probably even older. A Life at Stake is yet another spin on the hapless mark duped into taking out a life insurance policy and realizing almost too late he's put a bullseye on his back. Just who is being duped in this story is something that is not all that clear at first. Screenwriter Russ Bender provides more than an ample amount of twists to what could have been a tired story.

Angela Lansbury turns in a neat performance as an unlikely temptress. She shows a glimmer of her monstrously manipulative mother soon to be unleashed in The Manchurian Candidate, a performance that earned her a third Academy Award nomination. As Doris Hillman she can flip the switch from sexy dame with dulcet voice and shapely gams to terrible termagant ready to slap a man's face and scream a torrent of abuse.

He-man hunk Keith Andes is Edward, the mark with a love of money and booze. In a gratuitous shirtless scene the viewer knows our hero is a manly man from the get-go. As the movie unfolds we may be watching him slowly wrapped around Doris' fingers but the director wants us to know that though he's weak of mind he's no Casper Milquetoast in the physique department. We also get to watch him fall in love with his framed $1000 bill, a chunk of cash that will come back to haunt him repeatedly.

As Doris' kid sister Madge, Claudia Barrett proves to be the biggest surprise of the movie. At first we think she's just hanging on to the muscular, lantern-jawed hero for a little thrill, stir up some sisterly jealousy. By the midpoint, however, she'll prove to be every bit as wily as Doris and her scheming husband. She adds a double dose of the twists to the plot with schemes of her own. The $1000 is released from its prison of a picture frame transforming itself from prop to a sort of a supporting character.

I liked this movie a lot. The plot seems heavily borrowed from Cain's novel but there's a delicious quirkiness to this movie's self-conscious low budget attitude. Offsetting Andes' mostly wooden monotone acting is the polished and sparkling performance from Lansbury and occasional inspired bits from Barrett combined with several expertly shot noirish scenes that lift A Life at Stake out of the realm of forgettable B flicks to make it something of a cult classic.

Jane Darwell: "He's a weird one. Him and his thousand dollar bill.

Framed like a picture and a-settin' on the table."

Douglass Dumbrille as Gus reminds his wife who's in charge

Other highlights include Jane Darwell in a cameo as a suspicious landlady and Douglass Dumbrille as Doris' urbanely menacing husband Gus. The melodramatic score is by Les Baxter and the clever script by B movie actor turned screenwriter Russ Bender. Another B movie stalwart, Paul Guilfoyle (dozens of character parts in films like The Grapes of Wrath, Mighty Joe Young, The Mark of the Whistler, Mad Miss Manton and White Heat) does a fine job in his directing debut. Guilfoyle teams up with neophyte cameraman Ted Allen (also his debut as Cinematographer) in creating some moody shots heavily influenced by classic noir movies of the 1940s and getting the most out of his capable cast. Maybe Guilfoyle could have cracked the whip a bit more on Andes. His strongman body deserved and could've taken the blows.

There are a couple of absurdities in the story (like a cabin in the woods with French windows that open onto a cliff side deck that was never finished) and the acting sometimes slips over into grandiose scenery chewing and posing for the camera, but it's such an odd film I was willing to overlook the few faults. In fact, by the midpoint when I realized the plot was headed straight into the land of weirdness I almost wanted more of the absurd and surreal. This is a little known movie that deserves full fledged cult status.  It can be seen in its entirety on several streaming websites for free. As it's one of several movies that has slipped into the public domain you should feel no guilt about watching it on YouTube or downloading it as I did. I've watched it about four times in the past few months and as derivative and hokey as it may be I still find things to enjoy about A Life at Stake.

"I feel just luscious. Uh...how much insurance do you have?"

Gus Hillman's coffee will send you to sleep rather than keep you awake.

Madge (Claudia Barrett) and Edward discuss putting to good use his treasured $1000.

Doris asks Edward to admire the view from the porch-less French windows.

That's quite a drop. Hmm...

The battle for Edward between two scheming sisters.