Too Late for Tears

Housewives can get awfully bored sometimes.

Too late for Tears is directed by Byron Haskin and written by Roy Huggins. It stars Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea and Arthur Kennedy. Music is by Dale Butts and cinematography by William C. Mellor.

One night Alan and Jane Palmer (Kennedy & Scott) are driving to a party out Hollywood way, when all of a sudden someone in another car tosses a suitcase filled with cash into the back seat of their car. So begins a tale of greed, betrayal and murder...

Money is poison.

Low budget be damned, Too Late for Tears (AKA: Killer Bait) ends up being a film noir (in story terms) of some excellence. Banging the drum whilst singing that money be the root of all evil, Haskin (I Walk Alone) and ...

Lizabeth Scott ("Jane") stumbles on a case filled with cash. She takes it home and confides in husband Arthur Kennedy who promptly deposits it in the lost luggage at Grand Central station whilst they lay low and figure out what to do. She gets greedy and when he tries to rein her in, she goes boating with him; shoots him in an onboard tussle then sets about retrieving the loot and escaping alive... Dan Duryea is quite good as her drunken, unreliable, sidekick and Don DeFore sort of appears from nowhere are her ultimate nemesis. It is quite a decent crime noir, quite tense at time, but it is way too long, a little convoluted at times, and is really let down by a poor ending.