No Man's Woman

So, how many victims can the great Marie Windsor (Carolyn) double-cross in less than an hour. Let's see, I've got to four and still counting. Actually, I'll watch anything with the big-eyed seductress. She always looks like she's enjoying some delicious inner joke even as her sly characters aim to corrupt, especially the poor two-timed Elisha Cook in that great heist flick The Killing (1956). Here she gets what amounts to a showcase as the victims pile up. In my little book, Windsor deserves a lifetime Oscar as a true one-of-a-kind.

The narrative starts out as a series of romantic entanglements, but shifts half-way through into a murder mystery. The mystery doesn't play that well since the focus is too spread out among the suspects. To me, it's the cast of B-movie familiars that carries the interest. Add up the delicious Windsor, a straight-up Archer, an officious Louis Jean Heydt, along with that grinning gnome Percy Helton, and the lordly Ankrum, and you've got characters worth watching. Then too, there's a revealing display of street scenes LA, circa 1955, along with a procession of tight female sweaters trailing behind the bosomy Marilyn Monroe.

All in all, it's a good little time-passer from Republic with what amounts to a central surprise to give it note. (Hard to believe, but looks like {IMDB} Windsor, born in Salt Lake City, was a lifetime Mormon! Talk about appearances vs. reality.)

Marie Windsor stars as Carolyn Ellenson Grant, a nasty selfish lady. Her husband is desperate to divorce her, but she refuses and lives a completely separate life on his money. She also has a lover who she uses ruthlessly to get what she wants and along the way she decides to destroy a few lives for kicks. Eventually, she is killed and the police think the husband did it...not realizing practically EVERYONE had motives to do it! Can the poor hubby manage to prove his innocence?

The first portion of the film is more enjoyable than the last...though it is overall a very good movie. Watching Windsor playing such a conniving and god-awful person is incredibly enjoyable and it's a part that Joan Crawford could have done well in at this time...though Windsor was quite convincing. Worth seeing...and a bit like film noir in many ways.

Double standards are at work here. Marie Windsor ( a fine actor and in my opinion underrated ) chooses her men, decides her financial advantage over her separated husband and because of that she is categorised as being ' evil. ' She also likes younger men, and makes that clear even if it means trying to steal one away from a working companion. In my opinion men can behave as equally ' badly ' and get way with it on film, but women in 1950's films cannot, and deserve the ultimate punishment. No spoilers except to say that nearly half of the film is without Marie Windsor's presence and her widowed husband's lover played reasonably well by Nancy Gates becomes a ' good ' woman in desperate peril. Despite my reservations this B-film which is more grey than noir has witty dialogue ( again thanks to Windsor ) and a heady atmosphere of sexuality pervades the first half. Well directed it does not deserve being a lost film. I give it a 6 for Marie Windsor, with putdowns like Eve Arden and as wide-eyed in the pleasure of her ways as Joan Crawford at her best.

Marie Windsor gives an impressive performance as an egocentric man-eater ;it seems that she takes her pleasure by breaking her fellow men 's lives.After thirty minutes, four men and two women have a reason to do away with her , that beats everything!

That's why the second part , without her , seems pale by comparison ; it's a whodunit , with the usual suspects ,the false alibis , the wrong man who confesses something he's not done.

Recalling Joan Crawford , Miss Windsor's going to blow your mind.

Above average murder mystery about a greedy, scheming woman who 'gets it' and the cops think the husband did it.

Nothing original, but the film is a sprint from start to finish so you shouldn't get bored. For a supposedly 'B movie', this has an excellent cast of players. Lots of pretty girls, weather beaten cops and a hunk or two for the womenfolk...

Marie Windsor is particularly fun to watch playing the manipulative wife... which she did twice, a year later, in Kubrick's 'The Killing' and Corman's 'Swamp Women'. (I wonder what she was like in real life!)

The first half of the movie presents the case for 'offing' the nasty woman and the second half is spent finding out who-dunnit. The running time of just over an hour goes by quickly, there's not a moment wasted. You won't be disappointed in this 'Perry Mason' style caper.