February 2, 2019

Jane (the underrated Lizabeth Scott) was raised wanting what she could not have. "We were white collar poor. Middle class poor. The kind of people who can’t quite keep up with the Joneses and die a little every day because they can’t.” And now, as a grown woman, she is hungry for money and all it can buy.

Her husband, Alan (Arthur Kennedy) can't afford her expensive tastes.

And into their lives falls a bag of stolen cash...

Killer Bait (also released as "Too Late for Tears") is a terrific hidden gem of a movie, directed by Byron Haskin (I Walk Alone and The Naked Jungle) and based on a Saturday Evening Post serial by Roy Huggins.

Enjoy!

PS. Blue Gal and I are trying to remember the name of a recent movie we saw and it's driving us nuts. It is set in a small town where the mining and/or logging industry is dying. There is a widowed father who is trying to keep his failing diner open and going deeper into debt buying equipment he'll never use. A son who has stayed on in the town to help his father. The main protagonist is the daughter, who is very smart, good with numbers (she does the books for the diner) and (everyone agrees) is wasting her life in this dying town. She is dating/living with a small-time criminal or dealer and (I think) even he tells her that she should be moving on to something better. The deceased mother/wife used to buy scratch-off lottery tickets every day and would always lose. Dad keeps the last ticket she ever bought, framed and hanging on the wall of the diner. At some point, there is an armed confrontation between the brother and the boyfriend. I seem to remember a building or vehicle being set on fire. During the climax of the movie, daughter smashes the frame and scratches off the last lottery ticket, which is also a loser.

Any information you may have, leading to the capture of our lost memory, would be appreciated :-)

Open thread below...

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