respect western auteur budd boetticher be woefully out of place with this choppy modern day cop and robber story that suffers from a strong lack of emotional believability . boetticher seem to have waive rehearsal time and settle for the first take a lead joe cotton and rhonda fleming put little effort into their role and deliver line flatly and without energy . mild mannered employee leon foggy poole work a an inside man on a bank job that go bad and get his wife kill in the process . he escape from prison and immediately set out to kill the wife of the detective who kill his . hundred of cop be mobilize to keep him from get to the home of the intend who have be move to another location but wouldn not you know in the film final moment we have foggy trail foot behind the victim ( who think somehow that take a bus back to the house be a sound move ) while a company of cop observe and bicker over what action to take . sound preposterous . you should see it . it all of that and more . lucien ballard camera work do a decent job of bring noir to the suburb but the editing be lackadaisical and shapeless and it drain the film of it suspense and pace . a poole and wendell corey be the best thing in the film manage to evoke great sympathy a he transition from gentle soul to murderer . these attribute aside killer uniformly fail in construction and execution make it message clear . go western old budd .