Shortly before she is to be married, a young woman gets a visit from her fiancé's wife, who had been missing for seven years and presumed dead. Soon both the girl and her fiancé find themselves mixed up with a crooked nightclub owner, gangsters and murder.It's a nifty little very low budget film.Will keep your interest more or less.Not sure why they cant make these sorts of movies today. With video being so cheap it should be a shoe in.Guess no one is writing this stuff anymore.Best part -- the guy who played the father on the TV show Dennis the Menance is in it!

Okay, not much can be expected from quickie director Sam Newfield or an independent outfit like Alexander-Stern. Then too, the production never does rise above bare-bones status. However, the script does show imaginative twists plus dashes of snappy dialog. In short, the 60- minutes manages to be better than expected, even if the lighting bill couldn't exceed a buck fifty. So who killed meanie wife Norma, who, all in all, should have stayed dead. That's the whodunit part. But, in a neat twist, the last part turns unexpectedly into a nail-biting suspenser.Got to admit I didn't recognize cult favorite Hughes in dark hair and even, surprise, surprise, playing a good girl, which she does well. Then too, there's Beaver Cleaver's dad, Beaumont, playing what else but somebody's husband. At least, he doesn't have a couple kids to amusingly cope with. Anyhow, kudos to the writers for rising above the usual formula, and maybe to Newfield for noirish direction. All in all, the little flick's a cut better than the standard programmer.

I rarely give these programmers (especially PRC) more than a five or six rating, but this one rises a notch above on the strength of a decent plot and some twists that keep you guessing. Unfortunately, the biggest puzzler of the story is dispensed with in the first five minutes. Where WAS Norma Craig for the past seven years? If you dwell on that bit of information you'll wind up too distracted for the rest of the story.I've seen a few flicks with Hugh Beaumont before he became Mr. Cleaver, and if that's the only thing you know him by, this one will probably shock you. He turns out to be every woman's worst nightmare once you fall out of his favor, and he usually sends his regrets by wire. I thought he did a pretty good job of playing the drunk in the early going. Did you notice how he slurred his speech and kind of bobbled around when he walked? Just the way I get when I've had one too many, which makes me think he might have actually been lubricated when he did those scenes.On the flip side, Lucky Brandon (Edmund MacDonald) wasn't such a bad guy after all when you think about it. However isn't it just a bit too convenient that he goes to repay Norma the ten grand she loaned him on the night she was killed? So what happened with the dough? That's what I want to know.You know, the Captain (Emmett Vogan) made a point of stating that Larry Craig's (Beaumont) alibi was just a little too perfect a couple of times and for the sake of the story it was. However you really have to suspend some disbelief over the idea that Larry woke up out of his drunken stupor, went over to Norma's place to kill her, and then returned to the 7-11 Club to go to sleep all over again. Seems to me like the adrenaline would have kicked in by then unless he was faking the whole drunk routine. Which makes him a better actor than I was going to give him credit for.

By the humble standards of both director Sam Newfield and bottom-rung distributor P.R.C., The Lady Confesses (irrelevant title but catchy) shapes up as an outstanding little film noir. The screenplay is reasonably gripping and intriguing, the players (particularly the four leads: Hughes, Beaumont, MacDonald and Drake) are all on the ball, and more importantly both director Sam Newfield (I'd rate this as his best film) and photographer Jack Greenhalgh give it their best college try, using lots of effective close-ups, framed against noirishly glossy, black backgrounds. Even Emmett Vogan (minus his usual trademark glasses) comes across with reasonable conviction, while Dewey Roninson makes the most of his comparatively large role as an over-buoyant bartender. My only complaint is that all three of Claudia Drake's pleasing song numbers are either cut short or interrupted by the demands of the swift-moving plot.