Edgar G. Ulmer's Bluebeard (1944) exists as an eerie artefact of Poverty Row filmmaking, elevated by its German Expressionist cinematography and the morbid charisma of John Carradine. The film, produced by the minuscule PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation), manages to overcome the material limitations of its budget through a meticulously cultivated atmosphere of gloom and psychological torment.
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Edgar G. Ulmer's Ruthless (1948) stands as a merciless anatomy of social ambition and spiritual bankruptcy, constructed with the formal ingenuity of a master denied the budgets and acclaim he deserved.
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Even as it checked out and evolved into the new riffs of the 1960s and the miracle cop movies of the seventies did elect to emulate its own hey day with pictures like Murder Is My Beat (1955) which seems stuck to 1940s noir tropes in an almost nostalgic manner, as if the picture craved to be made in 1945 and not in 1955.
Patsy Flint as the voiceover tells us, has a hard little package with a cunning brain sharpened by constant grinding against the world. And is that kind of snapping theatrical flat wobbling noir, with its amazing snow-scene surprise, one of the best snow noirs on the block.
It's a frankly exciting story right on the ridge of peril, and with noir merit to spare. It slips in all types and travails, including "I'd seen enough killing in the Pacific," as the noir hero makes weary work in his suit and coat through the worst snow drift in film noir.
