A great movie for those of you who still believe the "Mad Men" series was an exaggeration of the times (it wasn't) or if you have a fetish for redheads; otherwise, this 1956 detective pic is spoiled by 1950's sensibilities with it's clean, vibrant production and very white cast. It skirts around grittier issues but the story is more soap opera then film noir. The lead is a fixer of sorts (think 'Ray Donovan' but in a Botany 500 suit) and driven by his own selfish interests. Is he just a crook or an anti-hero worth rooting for? Two cleavage driven sisters (one good, one bad) help you decide. It's tricky and the acting is strong enough that you might want to sit through the whole thing to find out. But then again... The great Helen Hayes plays a house maid.

A crime boss gets mixed up with two red-headed sisters, one of whom steals for thrills.Here B-movie material is given A-movie treatment in typical 50's style. Check out the candy-box colors, lavish interiors, and abundant sexual posturing that typify Hollywood's war on TV. Overall, the results can be called noir, but those results are a long way from the dour look of the classic 1940's.It's still a pretty good flick. Payne makes an interestingly ambiguous lead, while Dahl gets to practice wanton sexuality from about every camera angle, leaving the lovely Fleming in the less flamboyant role of the sensible sister. Sorting out this odd triangle makes up the story's main thread. But there's also the plot's criminal angle where Ben (Payne) takes over Solly's (de Corsia) big operation, and we wonder whether we should be rooting for a crime boss who also corrupts the cops. The story gets pretty complicated at times, while Ben's motives are sometimes pretty murky. To me, what really holds the movie together is June's (Fleming) genuine concern for her wacko sister's (Dahl) well-being. The two actresses really work that angle effectively.The ending, however, borrows heavily from a similar ploy used in Kiss of Death (1947) and unfortunately is no more persuasive. Just how a guy can survive multiple gunshots at point blank range remains more than just a stretch. Here it's not clear, but judging from June's actions, Ben survives.All in all, it's an interesting production, especially for viewers concerned with the trajectory of film noir in the TV challenged 1950's.(In passing—I can't help noticing that the fine supporting actor Frank Gerstle {Chief Dietz} is left off the movie's credit list even though he has much more dialog and screen time than Buddy Baer {hoodlum} who is credited. That's probably because Baer's brother was heavyweight boxing champion, while Gerstle is merely one of those grunts who carry the movies on their back.)

Noir is by definition loopy; dead protagonists narrating from inside a pool, or showing up in a police station to report their own murder, the genre usually tangles its narratives in the steaming bedsheets of an emotional hotbed. We just writhe with them. In the best noirs, we writhe with them in the effort to disentangle ourselves from the cosmic strings that pull us.This is seriously loopy stuff, albeit awkwardly incompetent compared to the searing visions of Sunset Blvd. There is a protagonist who starts out a henchman of the evil kingpin, redeems himself, only to assume his place. Eventually he runs off like a scoundrel - he just isn't carrying this in any way.There is the convoluted plot about scheming and political intrigue in sunny California. Greed and ambition, the tropes. It's a far-fetched, dimestore thing, the kind of which James Ellroy would later simply obliterate as perversely glamorous background against senseless violence.Two things that strike some spark, one is the the two flaming redheads, sisters looking through sex for an entry into the world of money and standing. One is a kleptomaniac fresh out of prison, who wants to steal the other's man. They both sizzle in skimpy shorts and revealing dresses, sultry and dangerous like cutouts from the pages of a pinup comic.And there is the architecture that upends everything and nullifies it. Two houses, impossibly large and drowned in extravagant decoration. One of them is kept by a secretary, a really curious place to be sustained at a secretary's salary. But it's precisely this that is the movie's token, the candy-colored movie fantasy where everything is so simplistically possible and the small nuance of life is sacrificed for the sake of blistering outbursts. The wild colors, curtesy of famous DP John Alton, abet the artificial passions and overwrought cruelties.

Two red-headed sisters, wild colors everywhere (?), no nonsense gangster pol lets himself be dragged around by the manic nympho sister (he dates the busty mature book-on-her-head walkin' sister). Camp, would do well restaged by a drag group (if it hasn't been already) except that I don't think too many people know the original. Arlene DAHL was never like this! No filmic nympho is quite as fruity as she. It's a rare sister vs. sister pre Baby Jane. It's a scream-with-laughter surprise of a film -- please watch it with a bunch of friends. It has been shown on AMC; don't know if it's on tape.