The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Blistering performances.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Society lady Kay Francis (Mrs Seymour) runs a canteen for servicemen during WW2 as well as a beauty parlour. Both these businesses are a front for her real money-maker which is marrying off women to servicemen to then collect their allocated pay as a war wife and also to cash in on the insurance if the servicemen die. Women are encouraged to marry several men at a time. One victim of this scam is the friend of Colonel Paul Kelly (Pete Martin) so Kelly agrees to go undercover to smash this organized criminal gang.This film is OK with a good performance by Kay at the centre of things and her sidekick Otto Kruger (Whitey) also does well as the chief heavy. The syndicate leader from Texas Matty Fain (Moranto) also plays his gangster role well. However, the film slips into sentimentality with Kay's teenage daughter Teala Loring (Connie) and the film slows in these sections and gets a bit boring. Another downfall is casting Paul Kelly as the man to crack the case. He can't act.The sound quality isn't too good but you can live with it – there's a background hissing. Allotment wives has nothing to do with gardening as the title suggests – it could have been a film about women meeting at their allotments and engaging in gossip. I'm grateful that it's not about that and I feel I've learnt something about the times depicted. Never crossed my mind that this sort of thing went on.

Allotment Wives (1945)You might moan when you hear the official voice-over talking about the War Department's benefits program and such. But hang in there. The intro is brief, and it's kind interesting, and it sets up the main movie, which has a great hook: women marrying several absentee G.I. men at once so they can collect multiple benefits. Including big death benefits if the men never returned..This isn't a brilliant affair, but it's better than you'd expect. It has some mediocre acting and routine filming, but it also some some really good parts. The key is the story, and the way the investigator (one main man, a curious, underplayed part by an underused, quirky actor, Paul Kelly) does his job.The leading female is played by Kay Francis. Never heard of her? She was Warner Bros. number one actress for several years in the early 1930s. Yes, and yet has really no single film to point to that has held up as great (she did do an interesting George Cukor movie early in both of their careers). But she's terrific with this middling material, and feels like an undiscovered leading lady. There's a scene between her and her saucy daughter that ends in a slap that will remind you of a similar scene in "Mildred Pierce" a year later. But Francis is usually just likable, even as she runs a lucrative scheme right in front of the U.S. Gov't's nose.There are straight, great noir films with lesser plots, to tell the truth, but this one is filmed in a bright, flat way, with the camera often just sitting there as the actors go through their lines in the lights. Not that you need shadowy drama all the time, but drama, and a physical presence, and a higher sense of style and art. Director William Nigh has a whole slew of these B-movies to his name, and he is often too functional for his own good.

This is an unusual film for Monogram Pictures since it actually has a few relatively big-name actors--something you don't usually see from a 3rd rate studio like this one. Kay Francis, Otto Kruger and Paul Kelly actually bolster the film with their decent performances--otherwise, the film probably wouldn't be seen or noticed today.The plot is odd and I wonder if the problem discussed in the film was real. According to ALLOTMENT WIVES, there was a lot of fraud during WWII, as women would quickly marry G.I.s just so they can get their monthly allotment checks. Some of these women even married multiple times under a variety of names in order to make a huge killing by cheating the system!! Kelly is a Colonel in the army and is asked to go undercover to determine who is at the heart of this scam. In other words, these are not isolated cases but are part of an organized crime network. Now considering that Kay Francis is in the film, it's not hard to guess that she's the evil genius behind the scam and this is revealed rather early in the film--thus taking away much of the element of surprise. However, subplots involving a lady named Gloria and Francis' on-screen daughter are mildly interesting and keep the film moving--but don't expect much magic or excitement. It's a better than average Monogram film, but considering that this studio was known for creating crap, that isn't saying much. It's watchable and interesting but that's about all.

I love movies made in the 1940's esp. Noir type movies. This particular movie, Allotment Wives, was being shown years ago at an extremely limited engagement at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco, California. I had to miss going to see the show, and I've regretted it ever since. I'd love to see this film. I love movies like The Best Years of Our Lives, So Proudly We Hail, Stage Door Canteen, The Red House, Detour, Mildred Pierce, Air Force, Citizen Kane, White Heat, High Sierra, Dark Passage, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, etc. I hate to think I would go to my grave without seeing Allotment Wives. Do they show it on late night TV? How can I see this? If you have any ideas, I would be grateful to you, fellow Noir aficionados.