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John Bromfield, Rosemary Stack and Max Palmer in THE BIG BLUFF Year: 1955 Rates: ***1/2
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In the 1956 crime thriller HOT CARS, b-movie actor John Bromfield is perfect as a married used car salesman, who, with a sick child, is pushed into a stolen vehicle racket with no way out but his wits, and charm...
The year before, he starred in another noirish programmer, THE BIG BLUFF, only here he's given the kind of skinny mustache that makes you think of tying a girl to train tracks... making the overall performance too up-front and obvious, clashing with his usual natural under-acting style...
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| Martha Vickers and John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
The plot centers on a rich young lady dying of a heart ailment, and Martha Vickers has the right amount of kind-hearted naiveté to make a better charmed than Bromfield's charmer... yet she's far too persuaded, much too soon, so the titular con-game lacks the kind of twisty cleverness it deserves...
Which involves the hottest starlet in Robert Stack's real-life wife Rosemary Stack (credit as Rosemary Bowe), the lounge-dancing lover of Bromfield's secretly broke playboy character Ricardo De Villa... so that sly mustache has a country, not befitting such an American's American brand actor...
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Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) and John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF
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Who played a more playfully energetic womanizer opposite Lori Nelson in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE... and here he's still somewhat effectively manipulative, to almost every female...
Making the tryst with equally-cunning partner-in-crime Stack the most noir-like, sneaking desperate kisses within gray shadows between living in his wife's plush mansion... perpetually scrutinized by her suspicious care-taking friend in buried co-lead Eve Miller...
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John Bromfield and Max Palmer in THE BIG BLUFF with Eve Miller and Robert Hutton
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Randomly paired with nice guy doctor Robert Hutton, the most suspenseful sequences involve Miller putting Bromfield's De Villa into various Hitchcockeque corners he has to keep sneaking out of... which includes the usual run-ins with a token police detective...
Leading to a fantastic 11th-hour twist that sharpens the otherwise cliche crime-genre aspects, providing Bromfield a creatively fitful conclusion... yet he still needed more time with other-woman/lover Rosemary Stack for THE BIG BLUFF (both the film and the scheme) to really matter.
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| John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
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| Eve Miller and Robert Hutton THE BIG BLUFF |
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| Credits from THE BIG BLUFF |
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| Credits from THE BIG BLUFF |
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| Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) and John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
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| Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) and John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
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Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) in THE BIG BLUFF
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| Martha Vickers in THE BIG BLUFF |
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| Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) and John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
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| John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
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| Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) and John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
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Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) in THE BIG BLUFF
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Rosemary Stack (credited as Rosemary Bowe) in THE BIG BLUFF
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| John Bromfield in THE BIG BLUFF |
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