cult film freak: FRED MACMURRAY, KIM NOVAK AND PHILIP CAREY IN 'PUSHOVER'

Kim Novak in PUSHOVER Year: 1954 Rating: ***1/2

Imagine if Fred MacMurray's crooked insurance agent was able to keep his eye on DOUBLE INDEMNITY partner-in-crime Barbara Stanwyk by becoming a detective to officially watch her apartment, and you have Richard Quine's cop-stakeout/heist-noir PUSHOVER...

The title a reference to MacMurray's instant obsession for the prologue bank robber's moll, as anyone would be for a woman so downright gorgeous as Kim Novak who, prior to the game-changing VERTIGO, is unfairly maligned as being a one-dimensional starlet...

Kim Novak in PUSHOVER

Because she really doesn't have to do much but look extremely pretty, as MacMurry's initial ruse to gain her trust turns crooked... while the more perky character-actress role's played by literal girl-next-door cutie Dorothy Malone, being watched as intently by MacMurray's even handsomer partner Philip Carey, who shares almost equal screen-time...

Whenever Novak's around there's a dreamy, exotic score and when Dorothy Malone's being watched a kind of playful Disneyesque theme patters jovially: making PUSHOVER feel like two converging movies...

Philip Carey and Fred MacMurray in PUSHOVER

Had this been stalwart nice cop Carey's solo vehicle, falling for the peppy Malone, it would be more romantic comedy than the edgy thriller by director Quine, usually more prone to lightweight melodramas: herein using the sparse stakeout apartments, bright-lit hallways, dark-lit alleyways and random taverns to affable use while MacMurray's even more hardened and solid than INDEMNITY...

Throw in the ever-scolding E.G. Marshall as the chief cop, Paul Richards the initial bank robber turned heist patsy, and Allen Nourse as a veteran detective attempting to double-cross the double-cross, and PUSHOVER is a capably intriguing yet sometimes overly complicated rise above the crooked-cop-meets-sultry-dame programmer.