Lizabeth Scott
Jane Palmer
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Audience rating
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Synopsis
A bag of cash lands in a married couple's car through a stranger's mistake. The husband wants to return it; his wife sees the life she believes she deserves. When the money's intended recipient turns up, her determination to keep it transforms a chance encounter into a chain of bargains, suspicion and violence.
Cast
DirectorsByron Haskin
Inspirations
Roy Huggins adapted his own serial, first published in The Saturday Evening Post. The story's movement from magazine instalments to film gave its escalating struggle over money a particularly concentrated screen form.
Reception and legacy
The film initially failed commercially and later circulated as Killer Bait. Its reputation grew with renewed interest in film noir, especially in Lizabeth Scott's unusually ruthless central character. Later appreciation differs markedly from its original box-office fortunes.
Sources and availability
The synopsis and editorial text were written for this collection. The references below were cross-checked to identify the film and its copy; each editorial section identifies its reference.
Work catalogued as public domain in the United States.
The reference concerns the original work. Restorations, colorization, translations and other territories may have different conditions. This site uses the player enabled by the channel.
Availability checked on September 10, 2026.
Photograph credit
Photographs cropped, resized and optimized as WebP, displayed in monochrome.
- Lizabeth Scott — Robert Coburn · Public domain
- Don DeFore — NBC Television · Public domain
- Dan Duryea — Trailer screenshot · Public domain
- Arthur Kennedy — ABC Television · Public domain
