In the Bible, THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT is "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (I think) and if it weren't broken, there'd be no movie but I certainly wasn't expecting anything like this. College grad Ted Matthews is out on a date with slinky Terry James when he crashes the car and kills her. He gets amnesia and becomes a soul-saving preacher who can heal crippled kids but his world implodes when he finds out Terry didn't die and she's out get him any way she can. Revenge, sexual obsession, moral degradation, alcoholism, and murder follow in the best masochistic potboiler Hugo Haas never made but could have. Ted & Terry even look like Hugo and his muse, Cleo Moore, and there's an ironic, twist-laden ending Haas would have been proud of. And it's all wrapped in religion, to boot. Yikes.
This is the most "noir" in SWV's "Weird Noir" DVD six-pack with its dark and dirty hotel rooms lit only by neon lights flashing outside with a bottle of whiskey on the nightstand -not to mention a femme fatale (hard-bitten Lyn Statten, a psychotronic's dream) who sashays into a room to the strains of "St. Louis Woman" and delights in having sex with a man who's not the groom on their wedding night. When she's not knocking back the booze or loving the bitch-slapping her pimp daddy gives her, that is. There's quite a bit of SCARLET STREET to the story as well and it's ably helmed by director Irvin Berwick whose previous effort was THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS. The "Weird Noir" set is definitely worth the price of admission for this humdinger alone.