A 1946 film noir starring Barry Sullivan & Belita. Essentially a retread of The Postman Always Rings Twice, this film finds Sullivan, a hapless loser arriving in California from the East Coast where an unnamed episode caused him to move on. He name checks a buddy back east to get a job at a carnival but when no berth is forthcoming, he's steered to a ski arena where a nightly ice revue w/Belita (an Olympics skater in real life) is the featured attraction & her husband is the producer of the show. Sullivan starts from peddling peanuts & quickly rises to a managing position (when the current show starts to lull, Sullivan comes up w/a gimmick where Belita leaps through a knife encrusted circular structure in a death defying stunt) gaining notoriety & some winning box office but he gets ahead of himself when he blatantly puts the moves on Belita (the husband isn't dumb & suspects) even following the hubby & wife to a snowbound cottage retreat. When during one of Belita's workouts on a frozen pond w/Sullivan happily looking on, the husband w/a scoped rifle takes a shot at him causing an avalanche (!) where he presumably dies. From there Sullivan & Belita are home-free to be w/each other but then it appears the husband is still around since they both feel someone is watching them. Instead of following the same structure of Postman, we get some unnecessary side plots (an old flame of Sullivan's turns up in town to give him grief, the reveal of the husband being alive) which derails the linear plotting by adding nothing to the proceedings. Also starring Bonita Granville (she played Nancy Drew in a series of films) as the woman from the East Coast, Albert Dekker as the put upon hubby & Eugene Pallette (in his last performance) as Dekker's right hand man.
