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."

Had this film ended better, I could easily have seen giving it a higher score. But sadly, the movie really caught my attention--only to end in a hasty and unsatisfying scene that should have been so much better. It's a shame, as up until then it was a dandy low-budget film.Leslie Brooks stars as an incredibly conniving and dangerous woman. You get an idea of how conniving as the film begins. Although she's been in love with a co-worker, she marries a rich guy simply because he's rich. But Leslie has no intention of being faithful to her new hubby--and has every desire to pick up with the old boyfriend! When the husband catches her writing love notes to the guy while they are on their honeymoon, he announces that he's divorcing her. Enraged, she kills him--and then concocts a plan to give herself an alibi. The investigators believe her and soon she begins batting her eyes at the D.A.--and her path to riches and the high life appears to be leading directly to him. In the meantime, she STILL keeps the old boyfriend hanging on in hopes that they'll marry. Eventually all this leads to MORE murders and you realize that she's one of the earliest serial killers shown on film. Of course other films featured female murderers but this one repeats itself several times--and it's pretty shocking even for a noir film.This film was made with a shoestring budget--using no-name actors, simple sets and a swift pace. Despite that, it was engaging and well-made....that is, until the end where the woman is confronted and she quickly admits to her murders!!! It's like the end of practically every "Perry Mason" show--where the killer inexplicably shouts out that they did it--even though there was no hard evidence to support this!! This rarely happens in real life--at least on this planet! It's a shame as even a halfway decent ending would have made this movie well worth seeing. As is, it's too disappointing to place it among the better examples of film noir.

.. but this film, perhaps more highly regarded because it was thought to be lost for many years, is pretty ordinary film noir. There are half a dozen or so discernible film noir conventions that define a movie as noir. One is, people are rotten, and women are the rottenest people. Claire Cummings is an archtype for tawdry women: ambitious, completely inner-directed, amoral, oblivious to all except her own desires, conniving, manipulative, a pathological liar .. and gorgeous.Her looks easily ensnare the men around her, and those same looks blind them to what she's capable of until it's too late. What this movie lacks, however, is this requisite corruption in the rest of Claire's universe. The police are honest, even competent; her lovers are mostly straight arrows; the newspaper where she works is not a scandal sheet dishing dirt on the rich and famous. Claire is thoroughly rotten, and there's a blackmailer, who knows what she did and tries to cut himself in on her inheritance .. but these are the only ones. There is none of the overwhelming sense that the whole world was full of Claires that we see in some film noirs.She has one mostly normal relationship with a reporter she works with. He sees her for what she is, but seems unwilling or unable to walk away from her wiles. So, he's a prime candidate for one of the other conventions of film noir, that men are weak and stupid. Claire wraps him around her finger, and keeps him on a leash pretty much throughout. But, even Les comes to his senses when she frames him for one of her murders. "You're not warm. You're ice .. Blonde Ice!" he says at one point. Claire kills to get ahead, or stay ahead. She kills her first husband for his money, becomes engaged to a congressman-elect for the position that will give her, and kills the would-be blackmailer to cover her tracks. We get the idea what kind of babe she is at her wedding where she makes excuses to leave the groom and is kissing Les, the man she still has feelings for, on the terrace.A quick embrace and the thrill of forbidden pleasures is enough to keep the boyfriend interested, and a peck on the cheek with a little smoke and mirrors explanation of how it was just a friendly good-bye kiss is enough to soothe the husband's ruffled feathers. Her charm, her guile and her looks are how she gets through life.Did I mention she was gorgeous?But, there's another rule in film noir: evil schemes *never* succeed. There's always a day of reckoning, even if you're drop-dead gorgeous, and that moment comes for Claire. When it arrives it is weak, frankly, and largely unsatisfying. It involves a psychiatrist, and a lot of 40's psychobabble about the nature of crime that clearly removes this little thriller from any serious contention as film noir.Not bad. I'll watch it again. 6.5 out of 10.

When I tell my friends the title of this movie, most of them say "Oh,is that with Sonia What's-Her-Name?" No, it's not an ice skatingmovie. The blonde in the title is one of the most chilling FemmeFatales you'll ever see on screen. Leslie Brooks is excellent as awoman with a strong hatred of men, based on her fatherÕsdesertion, which made her mother a Òhard workingÓ lady. Thereare times in the film when I wanted to feel sorry for her, but thatemotion quickly turned to fear & dislike. Good all-aroundperformances from a group of familiar faces whose names arejust on the other side of familiar. Russ Vincent could be mistakenfor Lash LaRue, & in a moment of darkness might have beenBogie himself. Fast paced, interesting, & plenty of ice make this awinning suspense film. I believe Blonde Ice has some elementsof Film Noir, but not enough emphasis on darkness & shadows &a lack of snappy dialog (except for about three spots where it getspretty vicious) make it more of a suspense melodrama than a trueFilm Noir. DoesnÕt matter though, try to find it. I rate it 8/10.