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Interesting B-Movie noir (in colour) written by Maxwell Shane with uncredited contributions by director Karlson and star Payne. All three have respectable film noir credits so it was relatively easy to construct a story out of genre clichés : take the basic premise from THE MALTESE FALCON, a self-serving femme fatale, a fat man villain in a wheelchair, a fallen hero and a voice over etc. etc. But Karlson was an effective director back in the 1950's and Payne worked well with him on several minor noir classics, so the whole thing moves along nicely without offering any real surprises but never getting boring. Rating **
