Marilyn

B-Movie maestro Wolf Rilla 'rilla' delivers some super-melodramatic Brit-Noir pizazz in the splendidly monikered 'Roadhouse Girl', a low-budget, high blood-pressured, doomily Dashiell Hammett-ed pot-boiler, wherein itinerant grease monkey, the tall drink of dish water Tom Price (Maxwell Reed) secures employment at an isolated, somewhat insalubrious roadside garage, owned by dour, hypertensive, oily misanthrope George Sanders (Leslie Dwyer), who is incongruously married to the breathtakingly beauteous, vastly frustrated, serially flirtatious Marilyn (Sandra Dorne), and before you can say 'lipstick on my crankshaft', the considerably 'handy' Tom enthusiastically provides some extracurricular lubrication service for this divine-looking, dingy dive-dancin' Roadhouse-rocking, B-Movie bombshell!

Wolf Rilla's black-seamed, steamy-windowed melodrama about the increasingly volatile ménage à trois between Brylcreemed, sleazy operator Nick (Ferdy Mayne), the wildly quixotic, weirdly petulant Marilyn, and big, greasy-fingered lug Tom sinfully simmers to a suitably fraught, deliciously dramatic, exciting B-Movie Noir conclusion! In this delightfully tawdry, tannin-stained, low rent gloomy thriller, overheated, highly revved, erotically charged emotions dangerously percolate to a perfectly hysterical, wonderfully camp, bathos-laden climax, while juicy bombshell Marilyn is initially one sticky sweet confection, said glossy veneer belies a poisonously malignant centre, 'Marilyn' is moody Brit-Noir at its finest/dingiest!

I saw this today Monday 20/8/18 on "Talking Pictures" channel 81 for the first time.Elements of the captioned well known films were used in its plot line and.In place of John Garfield we have Maxwell Reed giving his eyebrowns another workout.In place of June Anderson (Mrs Danvers) from Rebecca we have the character of Rosie, with lesbian longings for Sandra Dorn which of course could not be shown on screen in 1953 only suggested.The points made by other reviewers were valid but the final scene of police cars drawing up to a stop at the petrol station indicated the producers were short of the funds to finish the film and /or didn't know how to give it a satisfactory ending.This may account for its mediocre rating by reviewers just over 5 whereas I awarded it 6.

Gas station owner Leslie Dwyer hires drifter Maxwell Reed. He also mistreats his young wife, Sandra Dorne. Miss Dorne turns to Reed for comfort, but when Dwyer catches them together, there's an accident and Dwyer winds up dead.

Sounds like THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RING TWICE? Yes, it's very much that, if you can accept smarmy, pompadoured Reed in place of John Garfield. Certainly Miss Dorne is far trashier than Lana Turner seemed to me. The movie is hindered by its cheap production values -- the titles are displayed over a light concrete road, making them difficult to read. Geoffrey Faithfull's cinematography, though, is first rate.

Wolf Rilla made an extraordinary directorial debut with this nihilistic piece of low life which most commentators have compared to 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' but actually more resembles 'Ossessione'.

Leslie Dwyer is meaner and more dictatorial than the husband usually is, Sandra Dorne just a spoilt child with terrible taste in men; and no prizes for guessing which side Vida Hope bats for.

... And you shouldn't have bothered answering. Unoriginal and uninspired rip off of the John Garfield-Lana Turner classic.