This was directed by Billy Wilder's brother. They weren't that close and it shows.Martha Vickers is very ill -- a few months, perhaps a year -- and has a good deal of money. Without telling her how serious her heart condition is, the doc suggests she take it easy and go to Los Angeles with her friend and companion, Eve Miller. New York City to Los Angeles, to relax. Out of the fire and into the frying pan, as they say.In L.A. they are looked after from time to time by the good doctor Robert Hutton, who is wise to Vicker's terminal condition. In fact, the only person who doesn't know is the patient herself. A very neat sociological analysis of "whether or not to tell the patient" was done by Anselm Strauss, whom the NY Times called "the father of medical sociology." He distinguished between "open" and "closed" awareness, and explored everything in between. Anselm was socially awkward but extremely bright, and a nice, accommodating guy. When he himself was dying of heart failure he continued his seminars at home, lying on his living room couch. (R.I.P.) Anyway, one of the people who is in on the game is the Los Angeles sharpster John Bromfield. He owes everyone money, although he drives what looks like a tinkered-with Jaguar and, salivating over the prospect of getting his hands on her fortune after she gives up the ghost, he takes her to the Scandia restaurant. It was a real restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, very posh, and quite the place to go in the mid-50s, especially if you're fond of what the menu calls gravelax and everybody else calls "lox". It subsequently expired of heart failure and an increasingly shabby milieu.Bromfield manages to marry Vickers, then systematically sets about trying to induce a heart attacks -- dancing, drinking, smoking, tennis, up long flights of stairs, switching sodium bicarbonate for her meds. Perversely, she seems to be improving. She's the incarnation of Rasputin, the Mad Monk. Finally Bromfield has to shoot her and arrange the setting to suggest suicide. There's a big twist at the end -- two or three, in fact -- but I won't give the end away.And, listen, I know this review is discursive and meandering but, believe me, it's at least as entertaining as the movie -- granted that's not saying much.If the expression "B movie" didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it to describe this flick. As an added treat, the music by Manuel Compinsky is atrocious.

When scheming fortune hunter and erstwhile Latin lover Ricardo De Villa learns that a wealthy but sickly widow has terminal heart disease, he seduces and marries the vulnerable millionairess. Playing the part of a faithful and doting husband, he carries on a torrid affair with sexy exotic dancer Fritzi Darvel while avoiding the suspicious eyes of her jealous bongo-playing husband. When his wife's condition seems to go into remission, the impatient De Villa decides on action that will hasten her seemingly inevitable death.The plot sounds awfully racy but these are the 50s.This is sort of a film noir and it's worth a watch, despite the very bad prints that are available.Good story.Good acting.

W. Lee Wilder's THE BIG BLUFF will never be a threat to his brother Billy's genre-defining classic, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, but on its own terms it's a nifty little quickie with a good story and a nice trick ending.When it starts, this film looks so cheap -- I mean, Ed Wood cheap -- you're tempted to hang it up, but stick with it. It improves as it goes along. The writing and cast are perfectly adequate and it's more entertaining than a lot of big budget A pictures.An unusual feature of this film is a reversal of the usual noir femme fatale dynamic. Here it's a sexy guy, an "homme fatal" if you will, who seduces a rich, love-starved widow.Maltin's book (2003) doesn't even list this film, but it's included in the inexpensive 6-CD "Ultimate Film Noir Collection", which I recommend for its intriguing line-up of public domain B-picture rarities, which range from junk to cult classic B's (DETOUR, THE HITCHHIKER) to even a couple great ones (Welles' THE STRANGER).

Sibling rivalry can be a dreadful thing; look at Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland. Sometimes, however, it approaches farce. W. Lee Wilder probably should have stayed in New York making purses, but, no, he had to follow his little brother Billy to Hollywood. And in Hollywood, maybe he could have been a passable producer (two early Anthony Mann movies, The Great Flamarion and Strange Impersonation, bear his credit). But, no, he had to direct, showing the world how vast was the disparity between young Billy's talents and his own inadequacies. Billy, long estranged, used to call him `a dull son of a bitch,' and he was being generous: W. Lee isn't merely dull, he's barely competent.The Big Bluff rehashes a plot that Wilder had used in 1946 for The Glass Alibi. Merry widow Martha Vickers has a bum ticker and only a few months left to live. Off she goes to California with paid companion Eve Miller only to cross paths with slick operator John Bromfield (he brags about business interests in Central America but he's just a gigolo). The prospect of coming into her money at her early death emboldens Bromfield to court and marry her.But there are obstacles. Her secretary/companion and her physician (Robert Hutton) harbor suspicion of Bromfield's motives. And Bromfield's mistress Rosemarie Stack, half of a sultry nightclub act with her jealous husband Eddie Bee, doesn't cotton to his romancing another woman. But the impatient Bromfield, not content with letting nature take its course, starts tampering with Vickers' pill supply. When, paradoxically, she seems to thrive under his care, he concocts a back-up plan, and the movie jutters along to a twist ending, à la Alfred Hitchcock Presents.The plot is hand-me-down James M. Cain, done proud by the cheesiness of its direction (it's like a stock-footage festival). Wilder lets his cast get away with the stiffest readings of the literal-minded script (Martha Vickers would never nab many statuettes, but Howard Hawks goaded her into acting as Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep). Yet every so often there's a dark glint that keeps one watching: Bromfield and Stack plotting in a shadowy hotel staircase; Bromfield and Vickers toasting with schnapps at Scandia or `lo-balls' at La Rue. Something saves The Big Bluff from sinking to the very bottom of the barrel; it sure wasn't Wilder.