A greedy, scheming woman is found murdered in her studio, and the police find that there is no shortage of suspects who wanted to see her dead--among them a rich husband she wouldn't divorce unless he paid her a huge settlement, a lover she caused to be fired from his job and an assistant whose fiancé she tried to seduce.
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the leading man is my tpye
This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
Marie Windsor stars as Carolyn Ellenson Grant, a nasty selfish lady. Her husband is desperate to divorce her, but she refuses and lives a completely separate life on his money. She also has a lover who she uses ruthlessly to get what she wants and along the way she decides to destroy a few lives for kicks. Eventually, she is killed and the police think the husband did it...not realizing practically EVERYONE had motives to do it! Can the poor hubby manage to prove his innocence?The first portion of the film is more enjoyable than the last...though it is overall a very good movie. Watching Windsor playing such a conniving and god-awful person is incredibly enjoyable and it's a part that Joan Crawford could have done well in at this time...though Windsor was quite convincing. Worth seeing...and a bit like film noir in many ways.
The wide eyed Marie Windsor has a blast in this deliciously fun B film noir as the long estranged wife of John Archer who refuses his settlement for a divorce when he falls in love with the sweet Nancy Gates. She then sets her eyes on Richard Crane, the hunky boyfriend of her naive assistant Jil Jamyn, utilize zing a fishing trip with him as an excuse for Jamyn to return her engagement ring. Slaps from Archer and a slap for Crane bring out more of the viper in Windsor, setting up plenty of motive for murder! Toss in Patric Knowles as Windsor's slimy art reporter lover, and the number of suspects expands greatly. This mixture of soap opera and film noir (with comic dialog filled with innuendo and bitchy asides) is plenty of fun, fully in tuned with Republic Pictures' ideal of even making the most of their glorious "B" films, the highest grade of programmers in the film industry. Windsor has a field day as this aging seductress, willing to seduce the husband she hates if it served a purpose. I'm grateful that they didn't cast Vera Ralston in the Windsor role as the high rating I give this would have been cut in half. I only wish that there was another 20 minutes of what lead to the separation of Windsor and Archer, but what's there in the 70 minutes is delicious fun.
Remember how the Perry Mason show always started with a drama about a bunch of unfamiliar characters, one of whom went out of his or her way to be nasty to all the others, leaving a nice collection of suspects for the viewer to sort through after he or she was murdered? The beginning of this film, made two years before the Mason show debuted, will bring back memories of those episodes. There's no shrewd defense attorney or even a courtroom scene but, again Mason-like, it was filmed in sunny 1950's L. A. with slick professionalism and an almost anonymous cast, with the exception of renowned noir femme fatale Marie Windsor.As usual in such dramas, the cops set their sights on the wrong suspect. In this case, however, the suspects themselves work out who's the guilty party. In brief, a straightforward well-made little whodunit that moves along briskly and should keep you engaged for eighty minutes or so.
As mysteries go, No Man's Woman runs in the league of those populous puzzles that fueled so many old Perry Mason episodes: a lot of suspects, one of whom will be fingered. But the movie preserves a starring performance by Marie Windsor, one of the all-time great broads of post-war poverty-row movies. She leads in more of them than one might think, most of them obscure (if not vanished) westerns, sci-fi cheapies, and crime programmers. But, top billing or not, we get to see less of Windsor in No Man's Woman that we might like too many people want her dead.Among them: her industrialist husband (John Archer) whom she won't divorce unless he forks over a ruinous settlement; his girlfriend (Jil Jarmyn), whose pleas Windsor coldly rebuffs; Windsor's art critic paramour/business partner (Patric Knowles), who writes puff-pieces for her gallery and gets fired for conflict of interest (today they'd call it `synergy'); her loyal young assistant (Nancy Gates), whose fiancé she blithely tries to steal; and the fiancé (Richard Crane), onto whose boat she invites herself in order to seduce then blackmail him.Windsor, as one exchange between characters goes, is `a witch...whichever way it's spelled.' When her wicked-woman machinations have reached the boil, and just about everyone has indiscreetly remarked how they'd like to see her dead, a 3-a.m. intruder into her studio grants their wishes. And so the search for the murderer is on....Much like the roles Joan Crawford at this juncture in her career was playing in A-productions, Windsor's character is that of an honey-voiced schemer hiding her self-interest beneath a facade of piss-elegance with every petty victory, the huge orbs of her eyes flash with satisfaction. She was more memorable in The Narrow Margin and The Killing (better movies), but what she delivers makes one wonder why she never broke out of the B-movie ghetto.