Wow I enjoyed this!

As a lover a film noir, kind of embarrassing to admit I had never seen this, not even a clip. So I watched it last night, going in with low expectations realizing this was a micro budget affair.

I really liked it! What blew me away, and a lot of people, was Ann Savage's performance. She was completely out of this world. Tom Neal's narration, where he described her essentially as not-unattractive but something off about her, was absolutely perfect.

What is incredible for this low budget kind of movie is the golden nuggets in her performance. This was a woman who never grew past a little girl, and just had a hard shell from abuse and bad choices growing over her humanity. Note how she goes from one moment from abusive to mildly seductive, and back, without breaking a beat. How about when she goes to "little girl mode" when her hand is hurt. This is a woman who has severe, deep emotional issues, not some cheap caricature of a femme fatale.

Deep down somewhere below that evil is a little girl that wanted to be loved, have a place to live, and have a man--but you only see glimpses of it. That Ann expertly shows these glimpses is what is so amazing here.

The biggest fault with the movie is that, I would assume because of budget, it ended too early. I wanted to see what direction these two went, and there was so much steam left in the story. Someone on another thread mentioned they wished it had moved to the Florida scam. Could you imagine how awesome that might have been?

Great film if you look at it in context. It is no "Double Indemnity", but it doesn't have to be.