Other than Jennifer Jones in Ruby Gentry have I ever seen a film which had more members of the male species in heat than in Blonde Ice where Leslie Brooks has every member of the cast with testosterone panting after her with the possible exception of police captain Emory Parnell. The cops are very interested in Brooks, she's killing men all over the place who threaten her position on the social scale and her efforts to improve same.There's a body count of three, a rich society guy, a wealthy attorney who gets elected to Congress but doesn't live long enough to even claim victory and a blackmailing pilot played by John Holland, Michael Whalen and Russ Vincent. Brooks started as a Suzy Knickerbocker type society columnist who wants to do more than write about the rich and privileged.David Leonard a criminal psychologist has her pegged from the beginning and does she hate him. Another reporter James Griffith has the hots for her, but she's rejected him and fashioned on to Robert Paige. He's the one that rings her chimes, but he's not rich and privileged.Blonde Ice was an interesting film though it got way too melodramatic toward the end. Noir fans should give it a look.

Much as I love the film noir genre, a lot of so called noir do turn out to be little more than 'B' movie filler. Every now and again though one turns up to surprise you. This is nothing incredible but is very watchable indeed with a fantastic ice cool blonde central performance from Leslie Brooks. She seems to have had a decent career but I don't recall her taking the lead in anything else I've seen - gangster's moll more like. Based on the book by Whitman Chambers ('Once Too Often', although interestingly, 'Manhandled' on my own copy, which is a bit misleading because this lady doesn't get manhandled by anyone). The film lacks those deep dark shadows and night time location shooting, it even lacks any real baddies, unless you count the aspiring politician, but it does have a femme fatale. And what a performance Leslie Brooks gives as the most convincing ruthless ice maiden who does all the killing herself. Bit slow to start and seems to be slipping into screwball territory at one point but once on track this smokes.

This is an obscure noir film which is seldom seen but will show up at film festivals that celebrate the "B" productions of the 1940s and '50s. That's where I got the chance to see Leslie Brooks weave cinema magic as the coldest babe in town. Her performance ranks right up there with the wonderful Ann Savage's Vera in the greatest "B" of all times, "Detour".Brooks plays a newspaper columnist who goes from one wealthy victim to another, kills, inherits the money and moves on. A blackmailer gets in her way so she dispatches him as well. All the while, her ex-boyfriend, played by Robert Paige, a familiar face to movie buffs,is hanging around on the fringes of her life. He becomes the main suspect in the murders and complications arise.Brooks should have gone on to bigger and better things but, here again, her career mirrors the aforementioned Ann Savage. The low budget films were not always a stepping stone to stardom.This is an unusual film with a totally unrepentant and psychologically twisted main character who, in a word, is a bitch. The supporting cast is strong and the cinematography is quite good. Now that I have said that, I must admit that this is definitely a "B" film and can sometimes be rather hard going. But it is Leslie Brooks that makes it worthwhile. The film was made by Film Classics, originally a releasing company, which tried it's hand at it's own productions, with some limited success. The company disappeared early in the 1950s, as did most of the Poverty Row studios, much to the chagrin of all aficionados of the genre. "Blonde Ice" is one of the stars in the crown of low budget film making due to Brooks. Make an effort to find it.

.. 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.