Willing to give up everything for a sexy babe who isn't bad but yet drives him crazy, a tired and disillusioned cop (Edmund O'Brien) turns to murder in order to get out of a business he has grown to hate. When first seen, O'Brien has his arm tightly around a man he is guiding into an alley. A bullet goes off, an obvious blind man witnesses the killing, and a crowd forms, where O'Brien insists that he was trying to frighten the victim to stop with a bullet that went wild and hit its victim. O'Brien has conveniently removed a bag of money from the dead man's vest pocket which he does not turn over, and returns to his duty as normal. But there's another side to this crooked cop, and we see that when he visits scantily clad Marla English who is about to go from full dressed clerk to teddy wearing cigarette girl. O'Brien goes ballistic on seeing his girl dressed like this, manhandles her and orders her to leave immediately. Fellow cop John Agar suspects that something's amiss, and when the deaf man from the apartment above the murder alley suddenly turns up dead, there's an alleyway waiting for O'Brien one that will lead him to his doom.
This crafty film noir is seen through the eyes of a bad guy, one who's supposed to be on the right side of the law, but disillusionment with law enforcement has pretty much destroyed. O'Brien is excellent as this multi faceted character who finds himself dealing not only with organized crime figures but old colleagues who obviously trusted him at one point. He has a horrifying sequence that is nearly as chilling as the pushing of the little old lady in the wheelchair down the stairs in "Kiss of Death". The whole film is set up like a time bomb ticking, just waiting for him to either explode himself or even accidentally step on one. The final reel is a chase sequence between O'Brien and both seedy criminals and his former co-workers, going from a busy community swimming pool to a housing community under construction. Everything about this film noir is top notch, tensely paced and quite the nail biter. Look for a bleached blonde Carolyn Jones as a party girl whom O'Brien meets in a dive bar.
This crafty film noir is seen through the eyes of a bad guy, one who's supposed to be on the right side of the law, but disillusionment with law enforcement has pretty much destroyed. O'Brien is excellent as this multi faceted character who finds himself dealing not only with organized crime figures but old colleagues who obviously trusted him at one point. He has a horrifying sequence that is nearly as chilling as the pushing of the little old lady in the wheelchair down the stairs in "Kiss of Death". The whole film is set up like a time bomb ticking, just waiting for him to either explode himself or even accidentally step on one. The final reel is a chase sequence between O'Brien and both seedy criminals and his former co-workers, going from a busy community swimming pool to a housing community under construction. Everything about this film noir is top notch, tensely paced and quite the nail biter. Look for a bleached blonde Carolyn Jones as a party girl whom O'Brien meets in a dive bar.