... you would probably be not so patient.
Hugo Haas is the Orson Welles of this production - writer, director, star. He plays Jan Horak, a middle aged man with simple tastes, winding down his career of walking the railroad tracks and looking for maintenance issues. He's a widower who gets his pension in six years. He meets gold digger Betty (Beverly Michaels) at a local carnival. She is the aggressor here, eager for money. Eventually, she and Jan talk, they even see each other a few times. But Betty wants everything now, and Jan is a slow and steady wins the race kind of guy, so she decides to move on to more agreeable prey. Except she is being thrown out of her rooming house and the landlady is going to sic the law on her if she does not pay her back for some stuff that belonged to her that Betty hocked. In case you haven't picked up on it yet, Betty is completely bad news.
Desperate, she gets Jan to marry her so she can at least have a roof and stay out of jail. The day after their wedding Jan suddenly and completely loses his hearing, so he is going to retire early due to his disability. But a car hits him and somehow that restores his hearing. He goes home to tell Betty the good news, but overhears her talking about how she wants out because she married a healthy man and now he is a cripple. So he plays deaf to find out what she is up to, and quickly realizes he has married a monster.
In the meantime she becomes involved with Steve, a younger man who is going to be taking over walking the tracks from Jan since he is retiring. And this is odd because Steve knows what she is. She ruined a friend of his and tells Steve straight up she is dumping Jan because he is deaf but first she wants to empty his bank account. Subtlety is not her forte. What would happen to Steve if he runs out of health or money?
So Jan hears her plotting with Steve, hears about going to a lawyer seeing if she can get money in a divorce, hears her saying she could get his money if she and Jan had a joint account - Jan refuses to sign the paperwork. And when all else fails she convinces Steve that Jan is beating her to get him to murder Jan. All the time Jan is pretending to be deaf. Watch yourself and see how this all pans out.
This is a very low budget film. Most of the film is three people in a couple of rooms - Jan, Betty, and Steve. The rest are shots of preexisting exteriors. Hugo Haas gives the best performance, probably because he wrote and directed this so he knew what he wanted from his character. Beverly Michaels could probably have done well in higher budget noirs, but apparently she was very hard to get along with according to Haas.
This is a pretty good noir with a most unusual script, and I'd recommend it.
Hugo Haas is the Orson Welles of this production - writer, director, star. He plays Jan Horak, a middle aged man with simple tastes, winding down his career of walking the railroad tracks and looking for maintenance issues. He's a widower who gets his pension in six years. He meets gold digger Betty (Beverly Michaels) at a local carnival. She is the aggressor here, eager for money. Eventually, she and Jan talk, they even see each other a few times. But Betty wants everything now, and Jan is a slow and steady wins the race kind of guy, so she decides to move on to more agreeable prey. Except she is being thrown out of her rooming house and the landlady is going to sic the law on her if she does not pay her back for some stuff that belonged to her that Betty hocked. In case you haven't picked up on it yet, Betty is completely bad news.
Desperate, she gets Jan to marry her so she can at least have a roof and stay out of jail. The day after their wedding Jan suddenly and completely loses his hearing, so he is going to retire early due to his disability. But a car hits him and somehow that restores his hearing. He goes home to tell Betty the good news, but overhears her talking about how she wants out because she married a healthy man and now he is a cripple. So he plays deaf to find out what she is up to, and quickly realizes he has married a monster.
In the meantime she becomes involved with Steve, a younger man who is going to be taking over walking the tracks from Jan since he is retiring. And this is odd because Steve knows what she is. She ruined a friend of his and tells Steve straight up she is dumping Jan because he is deaf but first she wants to empty his bank account. Subtlety is not her forte. What would happen to Steve if he runs out of health or money?
So Jan hears her plotting with Steve, hears about going to a lawyer seeing if she can get money in a divorce, hears her saying she could get his money if she and Jan had a joint account - Jan refuses to sign the paperwork. And when all else fails she convinces Steve that Jan is beating her to get him to murder Jan. All the time Jan is pretending to be deaf. Watch yourself and see how this all pans out.
This is a very low budget film. Most of the film is three people in a couple of rooms - Jan, Betty, and Steve. The rest are shots of preexisting exteriors. Hugo Haas gives the best performance, probably because he wrote and directed this so he knew what he wanted from his character. Beverly Michaels could probably have done well in higher budget noirs, but apparently she was very hard to get along with according to Haas.
This is a pretty good noir with a most unusual script, and I'd recommend it.