“It’s all mine!”

Plot Summary: Femme fatale Margo Shelby (Jean Gillie) manages to have her recently executed boyfriend revived long enough for him to reveal where he hid $400,000.

Review:

Despite its reputation as a “forgotten gem” the first act of this poverty row film noir from Monogram pictures is not promising. Some of the acting is pretty lame. The overemphatic music, which underscores every melodramatic moment, is atrocious. And there are some laughable scenes. But just when I had about written it off as just another crappy B-movie, a cinematic miracle occurred: the deliriously outlandish plot began to assert itself, the pace quickened, the narrative screws tightened, the violence got memorably nasty, and above all, Jean Gillie emerged as one of film noir’s most ruthless, heartless femmes fatales, Margo Shelby.

Margo has a problem: one of her boyfriends, Frankie, is about to be executed and he refuses to reveal where he buried $400,000 lest she run off with it with another guy, namely Vincent, Margo’s other criminal boyfriend, who does indeed want a piece of the action. She’s got to stop Frankie’s execution somehow, not out of love mind you, but rather to make him spill where the loot is hidden. Her solution is one of the most outrageous schemes ever cooked up by a B movie character: revive him after the execution with methylene blue - an antidote to cyanide gas! But in order to pull this off she’ll need help from the doctor who oversees the prison executions, and so the flirtatious Margo does what she does best and before long the once idealistic Dr. Lloyd Craig has fallen under the spell of her seductive charms and is obeying her every command like a well-heeled puppy dog.

Of course, Margo needs these guys only insofar as they remain useful to her; once they’ve served their purpose they become instantly expendable. All three saps will learn this the hard way. After her recently executed boyfriend is miraculously revived he rejoices about his second chance at life, only to be promptly shot dead moments later as soon as he reveals to Margo and Vincent where the money is hidden. The poor sap is executed twice in the span of an hour! Driving to the money’s hiding place, Margo fakes having a flat tire, and runs over sap number 2, Vincent, when he goes to put on the spare! Finally, she makes sap number 3, the good doctor, dig up the loot for her, then she repeatedly plugs him and runs away with the booty giggling and gleefully rejoicing, “it’s all mine!” like a spoiled child. Apparently, nobody ever told Margo it was nice to share. Purringly seductive, sizzlingly sexy, but diabolically murderous, Margo is every guy’s ultimate fantasy and darkest nightmare rolled into one dangerously alluring package. Sadly, Gillie died just three years after making Decoy, but she deserves a place among the pantheon of femmes fatales for this performance alone.

Posted on March 26th, 2008 by Mat Viola
Filed under: Reviews