Angel Face (1952)

It has Robert Mitchum in it. There; I've said every good thing I can about this movie.

I recently blogged about another movie that was criticized for being formulaic, which I thought was unfair. It's this movie that deserves that criticism. Here's the formula: spoiled rich girl hates her step mother and tries to kill her. She seduces an older man. Things don't go as she planned. The end.

Mitchum plays Frank Jessup, an ambulance driver who is called to the mansion of a woman who has been poisoned with gas from her bedroom fireplace. It's thought by everyone to be an accident - or possible suicide attempt. Diane, the bratty step-daughter falls for Frank and does everything she can to separate him from his nurse girlfriend - including convincing him to leave the hospital and work for them as a chauffer. Men being men, Frank falls for it. Frank does try a few times to go back to his girlfriend and his old life, but pretty little Diane seduces him each time and he falls for it.

Because Diane needs to have her way, and be done with her step-mother, Diane tinkers with her step-mother's car and sends Frank on an errand. When the step-mother needs to go out, Diane encourages her not to wait for Frank, and to drive herself. So she does - and she ends up driving backwards off the steep cliff they live on. What Diane hadn't planned for was that her beloved father asks his wife at the last minute to drive him somewhere, so he too is killed. Frank, naturally is accused of the murder as it's not initially thought a female could make such adjustments in the car. The two marry, as a legal strategy by her lawyer, as both are eventually arrested for the murder and tried together - Diane having confessed to her lawyers out of guilt of killing her father. They are both found not guilty and free to live their lives. But how? Both are miserable now. Diane doesn't have her father, and Frank really has nothing now. No girlfriend, no more plans of opening up his own shop, and neither really has each other; all love - or lust - is gone. So Diane does what she knows best, and pulls the same car trouble move on herself and Frank; and we see them fly off the cliff in a dramatic and slightly shocking end.