****SPOILERS**** Richard Conte is recently honorably discharged US Marine Jim Henry who's on the run from the police and state troopers, in both Nevada & California, for a murder that he didn't commit. It's this floozy that Jim got friendly in a Vages casino the drunk and abusive Terry Smith, Mary Beth Hughes, who he's suspected of murdering by strangling her with a dog collar. Could the woman have been involved in an S&M session that went horribly wrong? Well anyway with no witness to his being innocent of this horrible crime with his only witness to his innocence being an old Marine buddy working undercover, thus not using his real name, for the government it's no surprise that Jim flew the coop ending up a fugitive from the law.
It's while on the run in the Nevada Desert that Jim got hooked up with fashion photographer Mrs. Cummings, Joan Bennett, and her teenage model Susan Willis, Wanda Hendrix, who gave him a lift. Even though Susan was nuts about the handsome ex-marine Mrs. Cummings have reservations about him. And although the entire movie a determined Mrs. Cummings tried to not just turn him over to the police, she knew he was wanted for murder, but do her best to kill him, like in a car accident, herself.
It's not until the by now lovers Jim & Susan were tracked down by the police lead by Det. Let. Joe White Eagle, obviously a native American, played Reed Hadley that the whole truth came out in not only Jim's innocence but the reason Mrs. Cummings wanted to shut him up, by murdering him, permanently! The film's ending at Jim's place in his almost underwater home, with a swimming pool in each room, situated on the edge of the Salton Sea has the truth finally come out or surface to who killed the late Terry Smith and the reasons why. It was quite obviously from the start who Terry's murderer was in that all the evidence, from her killer's own mouth, pointed to him or her. As the film went on the killer in knowing that Jim by proving his innocence will expose him he did everything in his power to shut him up by murdering him. This not only tipped off Jim to who he was but also the police including Chief Det. Let. Joe White Eagle who Terry's murderer also tried to do in.
It's while on the run in the Nevada Desert that Jim got hooked up with fashion photographer Mrs. Cummings, Joan Bennett, and her teenage model Susan Willis, Wanda Hendrix, who gave him a lift. Even though Susan was nuts about the handsome ex-marine Mrs. Cummings have reservations about him. And although the entire movie a determined Mrs. Cummings tried to not just turn him over to the police, she knew he was wanted for murder, but do her best to kill him, like in a car accident, herself.
It's not until the by now lovers Jim & Susan were tracked down by the police lead by Det. Let. Joe White Eagle, obviously a native American, played Reed Hadley that the whole truth came out in not only Jim's innocence but the reason Mrs. Cummings wanted to shut him up, by murdering him, permanently! The film's ending at Jim's place in his almost underwater home, with a swimming pool in each room, situated on the edge of the Salton Sea has the truth finally come out or surface to who killed the late Terry Smith and the reasons why. It was quite obviously from the start who Terry's murderer was in that all the evidence, from her killer's own mouth, pointed to him or her. As the film went on the killer in knowing that Jim by proving his innocence will expose him he did everything in his power to shut him up by murdering him. This not only tipped off Jim to who he was but also the police including Chief Det. Let. Joe White Eagle who Terry's murderer also tried to do in.