After an ingeniously twisted opening sequence, "Roadblock" tells the story of an honest man's descent into criminality before ending with a well-staged car chase that concludes at Los Angeles' concrete riverbed. The man's downfall is caused by his obsession with a woman that he wants so badly that he can't think straight but her only interest is in the finer things in life and the money that's needed to buy them.Having successfully recovered a large sum of stolen money that had been insured by their firm, a couple of L.A. insurance investigators decide to head home separately and when one of them, Joe Peters (Charles McGraw), encounters a sexy brunette at the airport, he's immediately attracted to her. Later, he's surprised to find her sitting next to him on the plane and soon discovers that she'd posed as his wife to get her ticket at half price. When their plane has to make an emergency landing because of a storm, they have to share a hotel room for the night and it quickly becomes apparent that Diane Marley (Joan Dixon) is a gold-digger who sneers at Joe's modest salary and says that he's not in her league. When they land in L.A., Diane re-emphasises her lack of interest in Joe and they go their separate ways.Immediately after his return to work, Joe's assigned to investigate a fur-store robbery and when he's shadowing the prime suspect, local racketeer Kendall Webb (Lowell Gilmore), sees that he's accompanied by Diane who's adorned in an expensive fur stole. She's now Webb's mistress and says that she's working as a model. When Joe learns about a shipment of $1,250,000 in old bills that his company is insuring, he presents Kendall Web with a plan for robbing the train that's due to carry the cash from L.A. to San Francisco and agrees to be paid a one-third share of the loot for his part in the caper. During the Christmas holiday period, when Webb leaves Diane on her own while he goes home to visit his family and she spends time alone in a bar where the barman goes into raptures about the pleasures of family life, she has a change of heart and decides she wants to marry Joe, just as he is.Joe discovers it's too late to back out of his involvement in the robbery and after marrying Diane, is on honeymoon in a mountain cabin when the train heist goes ahead. This seems to provide him with a cast-iron alibi, but complications develop when he's assigned to work as part of the team that's brought together to investigate the crime.With its lively pace, hard-boiled dialogue and gripping story about the dangers of giving in to temptation, this highly entertaining thriller is exciting and interesting from start to finish. Despite its low-budget status, "Roadblock" also has a really good cast with Charles McGraw standing out as the tough guy who trades his integrity and so much more to win the woman he desires so powerfully.

Charles McGraw was the toughest looking star and his gravelly voice was exactly what you would expect, but in this movie he proved he was a big pushover for a dame. The film started in an exciting way with a man witnessing a murder, then being held up. He claims he isn't so innocent and will split robbery proceeds of $100,000 50/50 if he is released. I won't give anything away but the film doesn't let up from there.Money is the theme - the lack of it, wanting it and what it can give you. "Honest" Joe Peters (Charles McGraw) is an insurance investigator who is quite content with his work and his pay - until he meets a beautiful icy stranger, Diane (Joan Dixon) at the airport. In an amusing scene she gets a cheaper ticket by posing as his wife, but it also means they have to share the same hotel room when the plane is stranded, due to bad weather. Diane is a model, and is looking for a man with wealth but there is something about Joe that she likes and he feels the same way about her. The next time they meet she is the mistress of a racketeer but she renews her friendship with Joe. Joe desperately wants to give Diane all the things he thinks she deserves and so approaches Kendall Webb (Lowell Gilmore) with plans he has for a mail robbery - he has inside information due to the insurance company he works for. Meanwhile, in the weakest part of the film Diane has changed her mind and is now content for Joe to be just an "Honest Joe" on a minimum wage. He can't get out of it and he and Diane honeymoon up in a mountain cabin as he awaits his share of the money to be delivered in a fire extinguisher. Somehow mountains and canoeing do not seem to come naturally to Diane, who, all through the film has worn a different fur coat in every scene!!! Joe's partner Harry (Louis Jean Heydt) smells a rat. It is his cabin and he had just bought a new fire extinguisher the year before. The stage is set for a gripping finale in the Los Angeles River (without the water!!!) There is a symbolic last scene as Diane totters away (on high heels) to an unknown future.Joan Dixon, who was an extremely beautiful Gene Tierney look-alike, was a protégé of Howard Hughes, but, alas, one of his failures. She left films in 1952 to marry but it didn't work out and the next year she was back at the studios trying to pick up the pieces - unfortunately she couldn't.

"Detour" is far more famous. And it's probably better. But this strange little movie moves as inexorably to a terrible end as "Detour" does.Charles McGraw was an excellent actor. He is fine here as "Honest Joe" Peters. He encounters Diane, a woman he never ought to have encountered, on a plane ride. He is a straight-arrow insurance investigator. She is looking for a rich man. She knows he isn't rich and she is not really painted as a villain.Joan Dixon plays Diane in a deadpan manner. She is pretty and has a soft, rather high voice. Maybe she was someone's idea of an Elizabeth Taylor lookalike. There are similarities.Everything is understated. Yet it's a tough movie. And it's powerful, and sad.

Do not watch this with anyone you care about. Some movies are good. Some are bad, but among them you can often weave an interesting overlay if you are with someone who can help.But the thing has to give some basic material to work with. Cheap production and bad acting can easily be overcome, but a weak world is insurmountable. Usually, these things inherit a world from noir. That's a world rich in capricious ironies that the slightest nod can activate.This is advertised as noir, and it is as far from that as it can get. With noir, this happen to people as if the gods were playing games and arranging odd circumstances. In this story, a few people simply make mistakes that lead to their downfall.There's some promise in the setup: a floosie pretends to be a man's wife (in order to get a cheap ticket) and ends up as his wife. In between, she was a gangster's whore. The new husband is one of those pseudo-cops the movies invented in the form of "insurance investigators," and he wants to treat his (now reformed) wife to riches. So he teams with the gangster.That's a pretty strong setup, including our hubby as part of the investigative team. Butthis description is twice as interesting as the movie.Ted's Evaluation: 1 of 3 -- You can probably find something better to with this part of your life.