One of the tautest, shortest (68 minutes on DVD) films noir, snappily written by Martin Goldsmith and (according to the director*) made in six days (several of them in front of a back projection screen). Ann Savage is memorably nasty, Tom Neal is the voice-overed, doomed protagonist, who in real life did time for manslaughtering his own wife.
As fatalistic as the best of them, there isn't a well-known name in the credits (except for Bud Westmore) and the film only seems to exist in warped and jumpy form, like watching Tarantino's Death Proof. In fact, viewed with a sense of irony, the film is pretty funny and still effective - when he's tugging on the telephone cord, you know he's killing her...
Lighting of the flashback scenes is reminiscent of the same year's Brief Encounter.
Ulmer worked with Murnau ('the best') and co-directed People on Sunday, with Robert Siodmak, Eugene Schufftan, Fred Zinnemann and Billy Wilder. According to Eddie Muller (who includes this in his Top 25 noirs), Ulmer fell for Shirley Castle who divorced her husband, Carl Laemmle's cousin, who 'got even by blackballing Ulmer at all the major studios. Poverty Row became home, but Castle remained his devoted wife for the rest of his life'.
* In Peter Bogdanovich's 'Who the Devil Made It?' From the same source we know that Ulmer's favourites of his own films were this, The Black Cat and Naked Dawn.
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