Adapted from the 1926 play by Charles MacArthur and Edward Sheldon, Lulu Belle is high on melodramatic plotting but low on just about everything else, featuring a tale torn straight from the pearl-clutcher bible: up-and-coming lawyer George Davis (George Montgomery) is swept off his feet and away from his fiancée by the sensational and sensual Lulu Belle (Dorothy Lamour), a smoky-eyed nightclub singer who sets her claws into George after he defends her honor from the brutish advances of champion prizefighter Butch Cooper (Greg McClure). When George's finances start to run low, the dame sets her sights on first robbing well-to-do gambler Mark Brady (Albert Dekker) before deciding to go into cahoots with him as his main squeeze. George, left brokenhearted and destitute, assaults Butch during a barroom brawl and ends up in the slammer while Lulu Belle makes off for Broadway with sugar daddy Harry Randolph (Otto Kruger) in her hip pocket. Further betrayals, deceits, and revenge inevitably follow. Under filmmaker Leslie Fenton's limp direction, emotions here are kept to a very low boil, and the somnambulistic acting is only enlivened during a number of boxing and fight scenes. Lamour, as the eponymous femme fatale, demonstrates a fine singing voice but is left with scraps as far as her unformed character is concerned. Optional. (J. Cruz)
Lulu Belle
Olive, 87 min., not rated, DVD: $24.95, Blu-ray: $29.95 Volume 32, Issue 1
Lulu Belle
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