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If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

***SPOILERS*** The sleaze ball con artist lady killer Ricardo De Villa, John Bromfield, and his unstable and jealous girlfriend Fritzie Darvel, Rosemarie Stack, get it and gets it real good in the end to trying to take advantage of heart patient and loaded with cash Valerie Bancroft, Martha Vickers, whom the sleaze ball, Ricardo, romanced off her feet and later married. Knowing that Valerie doesn't have long to live because of her heart condition that's being kept from her by her doctor Tom Harrison, Robert Bice, she's encouraged to living wild life of drinking smoking and partying by Ricardo hoping it will end her life a lot sooner then expected. So with her kicking off he and Fritzie can collect Valerie's millions when she's finally put to rest.It's Valerie's good friend Marsha Jordan, Eve Miller, who sees through Ricardo & Fritzie's sinister plans and tries to warn Valerie that her husband is not only no good, by cheating on her behind her back, but planning to do her in as well. No matter what Marsha does she can't convince Valerie that dreamboat Ricardo Is no good and even ends up getting kicked out of the beach house, only for a few days at most, by an outraged Valerie. That in her feeling that by breaking her and Ricardo up Marsha can get a crack at lover boy Ricardo so she can be his girlfriend. Still Ricardo can't wait for Valerie, despite everything he does to make it happen, to drop dead before her time which is about a year which Dr. Harrison gave her.***SPOILERS*** Planning to jump the gun in Valerie's impending death Ricardo comes up with this plan to murder her, real smart of his part, and then make it look like it was the result of a home invasion. That while he plants evidence that while that happened he was shacked up with Fritzie in some motel 100 miles away! It just happened that Fritzie's estranged husband and former dance partner Don, Eddie Bee, got wind of his wife's double crossing him for another man, Ricardo, and took matters as well as Fritzie's throat into his own hands making Ricardo's plan fall flat on its face. It's the very fact that Ricardo had an alibi of not being at the scene of Valerie's murder that, in his trying to cover his a**, convicted him of another murder that he in fact didn't commit!

This was directed by Billy Wilder's brother. They weren't that close and it shows.Martha Vickers is very ill -- a few months, perhaps a year -- and has a good deal of money. Without telling her how serious her heart condition is, the doc suggests she take it easy and go to Los Angeles with her friend and companion, Eve Miller. New York City to Los Angeles, to relax. Out of the fire and into the frying pan, as they say.In L.A. they are looked after from time to time by the good doctor Robert Hutton, who is wise to Vicker's terminal condition. In fact, the only person who doesn't know is the patient herself. A very neat sociological analysis of "whether or not to tell the patient" was done by Anselm Strauss, whom the NY Times called "the father of medical sociology." He distinguished between "open" and "closed" awareness, and explored everything in between. Anselm was socially awkward but extremely bright, and a nice, accommodating guy. When he himself was dying of heart failure he continued his seminars at home, lying on his living room couch. (R.I.P.) Anyway, one of the people who is in on the game is the Los Angeles sharpster John Bromfield. He owes everyone money, although he drives what looks like a tinkered-with Jaguar and, salivating over the prospect of getting his hands on her fortune after she gives up the ghost, he takes her to the Scandia restaurant. It was a real restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, very posh, and quite the place to go in the mid-50s, especially if you're fond of what the menu calls gravelax and everybody else calls "lox". It subsequently expired of heart failure and an increasingly shabby milieu.Bromfield manages to marry Vickers, then systematically sets about trying to induce a heart attacks -- dancing, drinking, smoking, tennis, up long flights of stairs, switching sodium bicarbonate for her meds. Perversely, she seems to be improving. She's the incarnation of Rasputin, the Mad Monk. Finally Bromfield has to shoot her and arrange the setting to suggest suicide. There's a big twist at the end -- two or three, in fact -- but I won't give the end away.And, listen, I know this review is discursive and meandering but, believe me, it's at least as entertaining as the movie -- granted that's not saying much.If the expression "B movie" didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it to describe this flick. As an added treat, the music by Manuel Compinsky is atrocious.

When scheming fortune hunter and erstwhile Latin lover Ricardo De Villa learns that a wealthy but sickly widow has terminal heart disease, he seduces and marries the vulnerable millionairess. Playing the part of a faithful and doting husband, he carries on a torrid affair with sexy exotic dancer Fritzi Darvel while avoiding the suspicious eyes of her jealous bongo-playing husband. When his wife's condition seems to go into remission, the impatient De Villa decides on action that will hasten her seemingly inevitable death.The plot sounds awfully racy but these are the 50s.This is sort of a film noir and it's worth a watch, despite the very bad prints that are available.Good story.Good acting.

W. Lee Wilder's THE BIG BLUFF will never be a threat to his brother Billy's genre-defining classic, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, but on its own terms it's a nifty little quickie with a good story and a nice trick ending.When it starts, this film looks so cheap -- I mean, Ed Wood cheap -- you're tempted to hang it up, but stick with it. It improves as it goes along. The writing and cast are perfectly adequate and it's more entertaining than a lot of big budget A pictures.An unusual feature of this film is a reversal of the usual noir femme fatale dynamic. Here it's a sexy guy, an "homme fatal" if you will, who seduces a rich, love-starved widow.Maltin's book (2003) doesn't even list this film, but it's included in the inexpensive 6-CD "Ultimate Film Noir Collection", which I recommend for its intriguing line-up of public domain B-picture rarities, which range from junk to cult classic B's (DETOUR, THE HITCHHIKER) to even a couple great ones (Welles' THE STRANGER).