The title means that you've won a game and finally everything in a card or a sports game ;it is a hint at the game Alfred Adam plays with his mates while Henri Vidal is doing very bad things behind his back.Henri Verneuil,the pretentious Nouvelle Vague was always putting down,is the perfect Saturday-night-at-the-movies director.His movies are commercial,for sure ,they are not art house cinema ,but this director,who displayed respect for his audience,never pretended to work any other way,as latter works would show ;they are actually all very entertaining ,and to my eyes , not in the least likely to make me yawn my head off,as it is often the case with Godard's meaningful ,deep,would be masterworks.Henri Vidal ,two years before his death,was the most popular actor of the era ,although addicted to drugs;his Partner,sexy Mylène Demongeot ,appears topless in a brief sequence ;this actress ,who shone in "Les Sorcières De Salem " (from Arthur Miller),got lost into mediocrities in the sixties,when they wanted her to become another Bardot;and Isa Miranda is the wealthy aging woman,prole Vidal marries for her money ;it becomes soon obvious he 'd rather have her secretary (Demongeot) and the lovers decide to get rid of the burdensome woman who enjoys poetry ,unlike his rude uneducated hubby.Vidal's "alibi" is a bit too implausible ,but one cannot deny the suspense is sustained till they find the dead(?) body of the wife;and there's another unexpected twist ,for the hot secretary leads a double life .An user pointed it out,the final scene disappoints a bit,but it is all in all a good thriller with a touch of humor thrown in for good measure.

Henri Verneuil ("The Burglars," "The 25th Hour") displays his finesse with this early accomplishment, 1957's "Killer for a Killer" (AKA: "Une Mannche et la Belle") starring Henri Vidal and Mylene Demongeot (Otto Preminger's "Bonjour Tristesse"). Based on an somewhat obscure novel by James Hadley Chase titled appropriately "The Sucker Punch," the well crafted screenplay by Verneuil, Francois Boyer and Annette Wademmant is so skillfully directed and acted (I am sure audiences would be more familiar with Vidal today as he consistently worked consistently since the forties until he died at the age of forty not long after this film was released. Demongeot may have had more notoriety to her name today, but she amounted to little more than a poor man's Bardot. But they are both good here with Isa Miranda playing the rich older woman they conspire to kill, with several twists and the much fore-shadowed, but devastating "sucker punch" provided by the great handling of the plot. Verneuil is definitely a director to look out as he consistently delivers from what I've seen from him so far. Also outstanding is the music by Paul Durand, cinematography by Christian Matras and the editing by Louisette Hautecoeur. The copy I saw had been provided with a great transfer to DVD by Rene Château Video and Cinedis. A real diamond! But you know they CAN be found "in the rough."

An unscrupulous fortune hunter (Henri Vidal), recently married to a wealthy older woman (Isa Miranda), is seduced by his wife's sexy secretary (Mylène Demongeot) but the lovers' plans for murder soon get complicated by the secrets all three keep in a twisty thriller adapted from James Hadley Chase's "The Sucker Punch". The prolific pulp novelist's work was heavily influenced by James M. Cain and here it's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE skillfully blended with a heavy dose of Billy Wilder's SUNSET BLVD. It's all there; the attractive older woman bringing a gigolo into her rococo mansion and buying him suits, grabbing his hand at a wrestling match, and pulling him down for a vampiric kiss as if Betty Schafer had convinced Joe Gillis to marry and murder Norma Desmond. Despite the familiar plot machinations, there's enough surprises to keep things fresh and the location filming on the French Riviera gives this cold-blooded noir an "evil under the sun" aura. The stunning Mylène Demongeot's lovely but lethal sex kitten is impossible to resist and it's easy to see how any man would kill for this seductive mix of Marilyn Monroe & Brigitte Bardot.

Prolific crime writer, Rene Raymond, wrote over 80 thrillers under the pseudonym, James Hadley Chase. These dime novels were extremely popular in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly in England and France. One of the least known and least promising of Chase's tales would appear to be "The Sucker Punch", but Henri Verneuil turned it into this excellent movie, which not only has the advantage of his engrossing screenplay (written in collaboration with Annette Wademant and Francois Boyer) but his inspired, powerful direction. The acting of the stars, Henri Vidal, Mylene Demongeot, Isa Miranda and Alfred Adam, cannot be faulted; while the photography by Christian Matras is, as we might expect from Matras, absolutely outstanding.