The unappealing Hillary Brooke plays a femme fatal so obvious, so one dimensional, that you want to see her conquest (Alex Nicol) disposed of, not for murder, but for stupidity. Badly photographed, Brooke is so heavily made up, she ends up looking like Theda Bara in a blonde wig. The opening gives promise to the typical film noir set-up of a down on his luck writer in unbelievable lust for the wife of a wealthy Englishman who befriends him, warning Nicol of his wife's evil tendencies and reveals his intentions to cut her out of his will. Told through flashback, its short running time and cheap look (especially a screenplay filled with trite dialog and obviously written too quickly) make it appear as a TV play. The result is a choppy melodrama with far too many clichés, a stupid hero and a vixen who is about as sexy as your maiden aunt librarian. You'll ask yourself if the script writer and the continuity director were one and the same as more and more elements of falsehood reveal themselves.
Review of Heat Wave
