Assigned to Danger

There's a payroll robbery, and the insuring firm sends investigator Gene Raymond looking for Noreen Nash in a remote resort; she was married to the supposed mastermind. She owns the resort, but is closing it down, preparing to sell it, but Raymond sweet-talks her into letting him stay for a couple of days, pretending to be a doctor looking for some rest. It turns out that her husband, Robert Bice, is there, badly wounded, and Raymond is dragooned into tending him; if Bice dies, he's told, so does Raymond.

It's a dark crime drama produced by Eagle-Lion as they dug their way out of their PRC roots. Happily, the director is Budd Boetticher, still credited as Oscar, and he puts some depth and variety into the characters. Miss Nash regrets her marriage, but figures she is now damaged goods, and western heavy Gene Evans is there as a mute, brutish handyman. It's a fast B movie with little pretensions, but plenty of foreboding and heat.