A bank heist yields $210,000. Soon, sultry Lona McLane, girlfriend of one of the robbers, meets Paul Sheridan and has a torrid affair. When she finds out Paul's a cop, to save herself she sets out to corrupt him. He's a pushover. But it won't be easy for Paul to get his hands on the money when he's part of a complex, peeping-tom stakeout. Soon, he's in much deeper than he'd planned, amid atmospheric night scenes.Written by
Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
One of the sources for the film was the novel "The Night Watch" by Thomas Walsh, which was serialized under the title "The Killer Wore a Badge", in the Saturday Evening Post from November 10 to December 15, 1951. See more »
Goofs
Exterior shots of the entrance side of Lona McLane's apartment building show it to be angled, but the map of the building in the stakeout room has all straight sides. See more »
Tight, driven little peice of "film noir" with MacMurray as a good cop driven to distraction (and murder) by the gangester moll (Novak, in her film debut, somewhat more effective than usual) he's been assigned to spy on. Malone fills in for a charming bit as the girl-next-door who MacMurray's sidekick falls for. Typically, a mistake is made by the criminals, and they will pay for it, but they're having fun along the way. Some confusion in the script seems to have resulted in Novak's character turning somewhat sympathetic towards the ending, sounding a disingenuous note. Still, good solid bit of film.
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Tight, driven little peice of "film noir" with MacMurray as a good cop driven to distraction (and murder) by the gangester moll (Novak, in her film debut, somewhat more effective than usual) he's been assigned to spy on. Malone fills in for a charming bit as the girl-next-door who MacMurray's sidekick falls for. Typically, a mistake is made by the criminals, and they will pay for it, but they're having fun along the way. Some confusion in the script seems to have resulted in Novak's character turning somewhat sympathetic towards the ending, sounding a disingenuous note. Still, good solid bit of film.