If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Howard Duff and Ida Lupino were one of the more talented teams in Hollywood history. This film does not really show their unique talents; especially those of Lupino, who was one of the smartest women in Hollywood at the time. A good-looking woman with great writing talent is not a common occurrence. There is a nice turn by Steve Cochran as well.This is not pure noir; it really isn't that dark, but it is an interesting plot. Any cop recovering a ton of money would have to be tempted to dip into the cash. This is a nice, small, gritty film that highlights the future potential of both Duff and Lupino. She was truly a gifted actress and writer.

Brilliant intrigue getting you on a wayward journey through webs and jams of complications, especially concerning relationships, the outcome of which is impossible to guess - you can't even guess what's round the corner.The film opens brilliantly with a regular burglary getting into trouble with hard knocks completely ruining a well furnished drugstore, and that's only the introduction. The curious thing is, that although nothing much happens for the next 30 minutes or so, as the two policemen set out an an impossible quest in search of a haystack to begin with in order to be able to start looking for a needle in it, which enterprise involves some boring routine, which not even horse races can brighten up, the film is tremendously exciting all the way, simply because you can't possibly know what to expect. Then Ida Lupino suddenly is helpful.She is the star of the film, she always makes interesting characters of more than one shade and deep shadows into it, and here she really (unintentionally) gets her policeman involved in a serious fall.Don Siegel was a genius comparable with Ben Hecht for poignant dialogue and smashing stories. When the plot finally gets going here, things really happen unexpectedly, and mystery is added to the complications, until everything is resolved in the end with a wonderful sens morale, for a gratifying release out of the unbearable excitement.One mystery remains though after things get settled down. You'll never know what happened to Ida Lupino afterwards. She will probably just go on singing, maybe even "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", like she did when she got the plot started.

A standard movie critic's cliché is "Good cast tries hard but can't overcome the material." That is the case with bland 1954 cop drama Private Hell 36, but with the added debacle of Ida Lupino struggling to overcome her own lousy script! The dialog is particularly bad. What may have been a misguided attempt at give the characters' lines an every-day realism succeeds so well it is downright boring. Director Don Seigel blamed it on drinking and other misbehavior on the set by Lupino, her co-screenwriter and ex-husband Collier Young, who also produced, and dissipated co-star Steve Cochran. For all that it doesn't seem much worse to yours truly than Seigel's average output, which except for his magnum opus Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956), never rose much above mediocrity.Don Seigel has a worshipful following amongst devotees of the auteur philosophy that seems all out of proportion to his modest accomplishments. He was an auteur for whatever that's worth all right in the sense that the pictures he directed show his imprint. Unfortunately that imprint is boring, predicable, and lacking in artistry. Which describes Private Hell 36.With no sure direction the unusually competent actors founder. Cocharan sleepwalks through it. Conversely Howard Duff overacts to the blood vessel popping point. Poor Lupino seems to get more and more hysterical as the doings progress without her finding a line of her own writing into which she can infuse any drama. Beautiful, talented Dorothy Malone, miscast as cop Duff's drab housewife, stumbles through the proceeding with a "what am I doing here?" look. Only ever-reliable Dean Jagger, as the Police Captain, shows any life, and the picture perks up only when he's on screen. Even the cinematography by Burnett Guffey, who had just won an Accademy Award for his camera work in From Here To Eternity (1953), is bland and lacking artistry. Guffey and Seigel show little imagination in using the wide screen, simply centering the characters in the 1.85:1 frame or overusing giant closeups of faces.Others liked this picture, but yours truly and the grouchy old wife can't figure out why. She bailed out before the halfway point. Unfortunately oldblackandwhite is one of those self-flagellating types who has to watch on the the bitter end no matter how bad. Private Hell 36 is lifeless, draggy, talky, predicable and just plain bad. An awful waste of a talented cast and also a waste of whiskey if drinking a lot of same on the set is what Ida and her pals believed was the key to movie-making. Only for die-hard fans of Ida Lupino and rock-hard, desperate insomniacs. Others should avoid it as if it were and amateur barber friend with a new set of clippers.

Strolling home one night, Los Angeles police detective Steve Cochran interrupts a robbery in progress at a drugstore. He fatally shoots one of the perps and books the other. A marked $50 bill in the loot came from $300-grand robbery-homicide in New York. Cochran and his partner Howard Duff trace the bill back to the pharmacist, the bartender who passed it to him, and Ida Lupino, coat-check girl and part-time singer at the bar. She claims a drunk tipped her with it one night after she sang him `Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' five times; the cops don't quite believe her, but it doesn't matter. Cochran is falling for her, even though his cop's salary won't snare her the diamond bracelets she's after.Over the next week, they drag her to a racetrack where more of the marked cash is being uttered, in hopes that she'll spot her tipsy tipper. When she does, Cochran and Duff go off in hot pursuit. The getaway car hurtles down an embankment, killing the driver but leaving cash blowing around the ravine. Cochran pockets about $80-grand and turns over the rest, leaving Duff angry but not angry enough to break the inviolable code: Never rat out your partner. Cochran makes Duff an unwilling accomplice by giving him a duplicate key to a rented trailer where he's stashed the money; it's parked in slip #36. But then Cochran gets a phone call from a stranger who claims the cash is his and wants to make a deal....Opening with an initial burst of two brutal robberies, director Don Siegel then slackens the pace but not the tension; he moves the story forward through character rather than incident. The square-rigger Duff tries to dissolve his guilt in alcohol, to the distress of his wife (Dorothy Malone, in too skimpy a role); Cochran and Lupino seesaw up and down, back and forth in their more volatile liaison. The fifth major player, Dean Jagger, as the detectives' canny superior, senses that their story doesn't quite add up. Written by Lupino and her ex-husband Collier Young, the movie departs from the usual formula by not making current spouse Duff Lupino's love interest; perhaps in consequence, Duff loses the cocky, ingratiating mien he often adopts, while Cochran runs off with the meatier role. Private Hell 36 stays lean and hard-edged (with help from cinematographer Burnett Guffey); it's among the better offerings from the latter years of the noir cycle.