Above average murder mystery about a greedy, scheming woman who 'gets it' and the cops think the husband did it.Nothing original, but the film is a sprint from start to finish so you shouldn't get bored. For a supposedly 'B movie', this has an excellent cast of players. Lots of pretty girls, weather beaten cops and a hunk or two for the womenfolk... Marie Windsor is particularly fun to watch playing the manipulative wife... which she did twice, a year later, in Kubrick's 'The Killing' and Corman's 'Swamp Women'. (I wonder what she was like in real life!)The first half of the movie presents the case for 'offing' the nasty woman and the second half is spent finding out who-dunnit. The running time of just over an hour goes by quickly, there's not a moment wasted. You won't be disappointed in this 'Perry Mason' style caper.

***SPOILERS***Marie Windsor as gold digger Carolyn Grant is at her very best or better yet worst as she ends up destroying the lives of everyone that she comes in contact with before the laws of Karma-What comes around goes around- ends up catching with her and thus destroying her own. No one spills any tears over Carolyn's demise but it's up to the police lead the Capt. Hostedder played my the Morris Ankrum, the legendary "Eternal Colonel" himself, to find her killer who, in how meany people's lives that she wrecked, can be anyone within the city limits of L.A. We get to see Carolyn in action destroying the lives of those closes to her including Carolyn's long suffering husband Harlow, John Archer, whom she refuses to grant a divorce more to torture the poor guy then getting her greedy hands on his money whom he'd gladly give her just to get out of his life.As a side light Carolyn later destroys the warn and loving relationship of young Betty Allen,Jil Jamlym, and her fisherman boyfriend Dick Sawyer, Richard Crane, by tricking Dick, who tried his best to resist her advances, to take her on his boat as he left Betty out in the cold. It' later the Carolyn was gunned down that things in the movie really started popping. There was so many suspects in her murder that it made Capt.Hostedder's attempt of finding her killer an almost impossible task. That until the killer, someone else who got royally screwed by her, himself got a bit careless in retrieving a number of artifacts he left in her art studio that would have exposed him to the police.***SPOILERS***It at first was Mr. Grant that was the prime suspect in Carolyn's murder in that he told everyone he came in contact with including bartender Sandy,Paul Bryar,how he would love to knock her off even if it would end up with him being strapped in the San Quentin gas chamber. The guy didn't even have an alibi in where he was at the time of Carolyn's murder! He claimed that he was asleep dead drunk in his car parked outside his favorite bar. As things turned out the person who in fact murdered Carolyn should have been easy to spot by the police in that off all the people that she screwed out of everything important to them he ended up getting the very worst of it.

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.

Windsor plays a conniving, unfaithful wife whose fed up husband wants to marry a "nice" girl and is willing to make her a fair offer in exchange for a divorce. She makes an exorbitant demand and ups the price by 100 grand after he responds by throwing a drink in her face. This is followed by her shocked father-in-law's remark "no matter how you look at it, that woman is a witch!" To which his son replies "no matter how you spell it either." A good example of some of the clever (not to mention funny) pseudo-profanity and "no-no" innuendo script writers had to develop back then.As usual, Windsor plays her part to the hilt and makes a very credible villain. Unfortunately, the script writers went overboard with her character, almost making her a caricature of herself. They exaggerate her "W" or "B"ness to such a degree that it becomes unrealistic and even comical. What self-respecting cold, calculating gold-digger would publicly commit adultery with her secretary's fiancée before she was done squeezing her husband? Windsor herself seems to display an inner grin even with her nastiest facial expressions. She no doubt realized how ridiculous some of the script was. In the movie, she owns and lives in an art gallery. Since the real Marie Windsor was a multi-talented individual who achieved some success as a painter and sculptress, I wonder if this is simply coincidental.I guess one purpose served by making her such a larger than life meanie is to make all the suspects seem equally likely to have killed her.A mix of true "noir" and standard "whodunit" hurt by overdone melodramatics, yet still worth seeing.