Behind the sensationalistic title lies an earnest social drama of the sort one would already expect of director Ida Lupino, which follows a similar plot arc to the same year's 'On Dangerous Ground', in which a human being damaged by the Big Bad City finds peace of a sort out in the country. (Although was it really possible in 1950 for a stranger to walk straight into a job - especially one involving handling money - without any sort of references or proof of identity?)
The assault on Mala Powers is never described more explicitly than as a "vicious criminal attack", and it COULD simply have been a violent mugging - which would have been bad enough; but the morbid obsession with her on the part of her attacker makes it clear what the full nature of the assault was.
A religious component in the script - caring hunk Tod Andrews who provides Powers with a strong shoulder to lean on is revealed to be a clergyman - is one of many potentially provocative issues left unexplored; and there are various other loose ends. Her attacker is revealed to be not just an average guy who turned nasty, but a messed-up serial offender who progresses from sexual assault to armed robbery. The would-be suitor whose brusque advances prove she's still not safe from such unwanted attentions even in the Garden of Eden she seems to have found is introduced very abruptly - and despatched even more abruptly with a blow from a monkey wrench. The ending is emotional but highly equivocal; although we have been explicitly told that it will probably take years of therapy and guidance to grant her eventual peace of mind.
The assault on Mala Powers is never described more explicitly than as a "vicious criminal attack", and it COULD simply have been a violent mugging - which would have been bad enough; but the morbid obsession with her on the part of her attacker makes it clear what the full nature of the assault was.
A religious component in the script - caring hunk Tod Andrews who provides Powers with a strong shoulder to lean on is revealed to be a clergyman - is one of many potentially provocative issues left unexplored; and there are various other loose ends. Her attacker is revealed to be not just an average guy who turned nasty, but a messed-up serial offender who progresses from sexual assault to armed robbery. The would-be suitor whose brusque advances prove she's still not safe from such unwanted attentions even in the Garden of Eden she seems to have found is introduced very abruptly - and despatched even more abruptly with a blow from a monkey wrench. The ending is emotional but highly equivocal; although we have been explicitly told that it will probably take years of therapy and guidance to grant her eventual peace of mind.