Pun Salad

Part deux of a film noir double feature from Netflix.

Richard Basehart plays meek pharmacist Warren Quimby; his only goal in life is to put himself and his wife Claire in a nice Southern California tract house and start makin' babies. Unfortunately (and inexplicably) he's unaware that Claire is all kinds of bad news: selfish, promiscuous, vulgar, you name it. She runs off with a rich salesman with a Malibu beach house. Warren tries to get her back, but is utterly humiliated.

Warren resolves to solve the problem by committing what he thinks is the perfect crime: he sets up an alternate identity under which he plans to murder his rival. Problems: (a) his alter ego meets and falls in love with Cyd Charisse; (b) although the salesman winds up dead, the cops (Barry Sullivan and William Conrad) see through the "perfect crime" in about seventeen seconds. (It doesn't help that Walter's alternate identity mainly involves him calling himself "Paul Southern", and wearing contacts instead of glasses. Criminal mastermind!)

Not too bad, although the plot is more ludicrous than lurid. Audrey Totter plays Claire, and you'll rarely see anyone play a hard-boiled sociopath quite so convincingly.