Betty (Beverly Michaels) is a cheap dame down on her luck. When she finds herself broke and homeless, she decides very impulsively to marry a very ordinary looking older man, Hunky Horak (Hugo Haas). There certainly is no love involved in her part...she just knows this hard-working man has some money. Soon, this tramp is bored. After all, Hunky is a relatively dull guy and they're living in the middle of no where. To make things worse, Hunky loses his hearing and she is not about to take care of any guy with a disability. Unknown to her, he's in a traffic accident and regains his hearing. But instead of telling Betty, he keeps it to himself because he overhears her saying a lot of awful things about wanting to divorce him and how she never loved him in the first place! She also flirts again and again with Hunky's supposed friend...and all the time, Hunky just listens and absorbs it all and shows no sign that he understands her hellish comments. The audience just knows that sooner or later, Hunky is going to burst...but what will he do and when?!
In many ways, this film plays like a reworking of "The Postman Always Rings Twice"...except that HE knows that's coming and he's at a huge advantage instead of the poor sucker in "The Postman". Fortunately, despite the very low budget of "Pickup" and the relatively unknown actors, it works well because of decent writing, direction and wonderful acting by Beverly Michaels. She's just awful...and in a great femme fatale way and does a dandy job in making this character thoroughly despicable. She is much more coarse and nasty than Lana Turner in the other film...delightfully so.
As for the ending, it caught me off guard and the husband didn't do at all what I expected. Some might be disappointed but it was very entertaining and worth seeing.
