You've seen it many times before. Guy working his way up from the bottom besides that he can't wait to be promoted to move towards the middle so he becomes involved in illegal activities and ends up breaking the law to rise. This average film Noir crime caper features Gene Barry in a decent performance as the unfortunate loser hello, tired of working in the oil fields, decide to become involved with a racket that steals the oil and sells it on the black market. That gets him involved with a series of gangsters (including Arnold in his last film), and he begins to get in too deep.
This film has some surprisingly violent sequences, including one seen in a planetarium where someone falls out of the window as the Houston skyline is seen in the background. Barry is torn between songstress femme fatale Barbara Hale (quite different here than her Della Street role on "Perry Mason") and waitress Jeanne Cooper (long before "The Young and the Restless"), and the confrontation scene between the two women is fantastic.
However, this film has the aura of "I seen this all before and better", but veteran director William Castle does have a few unique elements in here. We've seen oil used in TV soap operas as a power rising plot device, as the motivation for war both in movies and on newspaper headlines, and here, where it involves a different type of criminal element. There are far too many characters and plot devices that ultimately it's slightly convoluted, and that takes it into a twisting path that only has one seeming way out.
This film has some surprisingly violent sequences, including one seen in a planetarium where someone falls out of the window as the Houston skyline is seen in the background. Barry is torn between songstress femme fatale Barbara Hale (quite different here than her Della Street role on "Perry Mason") and waitress Jeanne Cooper (long before "The Young and the Restless"), and the confrontation scene between the two women is fantastic.
However, this film has the aura of "I seen this all before and better", but veteran director William Castle does have a few unique elements in here. We've seen oil used in TV soap operas as a power rising plot device, as the motivation for war both in movies and on newspaper headlines, and here, where it involves a different type of criminal element. There are far too many characters and plot devices that ultimately it's slightly convoluted, and that takes it into a twisting path that only has one seeming way out.