Shield for murder

Shield for murderⁱ is banal, run-of-the-mill cheap cinema masquerading as a noir, with little more to distinguish it from the soup besides Carolyn Jones's absolutely exquisite bar whore (and, perhaps, Marla Englishⁱⁱ's cute toes in fishnets atop platforms).

Yet even though the dialogue's impossibily wooden and the plotholes more abundant than the spaghetti dislogic, you absolutely still have to see it. Because female perfection is female perfection, and that blondy's approach to the unknown, difficult, nutty dude, her openers and parries and ripostes... it's the stuff of wonder. For that reason alone you have to see it, for Carolyn Jones it survives, because rarely is anyone any good, at anything -- be it something they care about or not, wish themselves good at or on the contrary, bla bla bla. Carolyn Jones is perfect at whoring out of bars, that's exactly how it's supposed to be done : joke opener, expertly hedged... that bitch can take it, she'd make a jeweled addition to any stable, harem, household etcetera.

RIP old girl, ensconced in the all-protecting solace that you, indeed, have not lived out in vain.

Besides providing superfluous footage diluting an exquisite Carolyn Jones one whore short there's also I suppose a pool shoot-out, and assorted other ex-B-list-in-TVland exploratorium. O'Brien had been a major box office draw at some point, before the war, you know. There's even a (rare) period shot of what exactly "tract homes" (the pioneers of urban sprawl & contemporary suburbia) looked like, back then. Spoiler : not much ; definitely not enough to warrant uprooting a working, workable construction of the world world for.

And so it goes.

1. 1954, by Howard W. Koch & Edmond O'Brien (odd, I know), with Carolyn Jones, David Hughes. [↩]
2. Budget Liz Taylor practically speaking, obscure teenage stunner that settled into a bourgeois marriage before 25. [↩]