Absolutely the worst movie.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Leslie Brooks stars in "Blonde Ice" from 1948. She plays a reporter, Claire, who is ambitious, not for her career, but for a man who can give her the money and social standing she wants.She has a boyfriend, Les (Robert Paige) but dumps him for a wealthy man, all the while declaring her devotion to poor Les. She promises to write; unfortunately, while still on the honeymoon, her husband sees the letter and decides to dump her.Desperate, Claire hires a pilot (Russ Vincent) and pays him extra to keep his mouth shut. She flies to Los Angeles to find her husband. The next day he is dead of an apparent suicide. The police figure out that it is murder, but try as they might, they can't pin it on Claire since she was not in town.Needing someone to help with probating her husband's estate quickly, Claire wangles a meeting with attorney turned politician, Stanley Mason (James Whalen). He of course is attracted to her, and the two become secretly engaged (meaning without Les knowing about it), their impending marriage to be announced the night of the election.Then the pilot, who has seen Claire's picture in the paper, shows up and attempts to blackmail her.This is a fairly routine noir, without much acting going on. These films were made in a few days' times, and there wasn't an opportunity for nuance or probably much rehearsal. Brooks does an okay job, coming off as cold and not very sincere, so it's a surprise anyone believed her. Everyone else was all right -- Paige reminded me of Zachary Scott after living in the Bowery a few weeks.Leslie Brooks might have had a more major career, but she retired to make a go of her second marriage, which, by the way, was to that sleazy pilot in the film, Russ Vincent. Vincent acted for many years and then became a land developer. I would have liked to have seen this film with better direction.

Cool title (no pun intended). This noirish little flick actually has a couple gems of dialog sprinkled throughout, like the one offered by Claire Cummings' first husband Carl Hanneman (John Holland) - "Don't you think you were being a little affectionate for a newly married woman"? That's all that's needed to set the viewer up for a cold and calculating femme fatale on the prowl for upward mobility. I have to say, Leslie Brooks fits the definition of gorgeous babe, but you'll also find her picture in the dictionary next to 'bitch on wheels'. I do wish the writing here was a bit more clever and the the acting much better than the amateurish portrayals we got. Seriously, did Claire (Brooks) really have to call room service with a menu to order OJ, toast and coffee? I can do that without even thinking about it.It doesn't take much for even the casual film viewer to figure this one out well before it's over. What's cool though (there's that word again) is the way Claire rakes all of her lovers over the coals before giving them the old heave-ho. And what gives with that pilot Blackie (Russ Vincent)? I've seen it before and can't figure out why a guy would try to shake someone down who's already shown a propensity to kill. It doesn't take much to pull the trigger one more time now, does it?But you know, this is just one entertaining little flick. I wouldn't go so far as to actually call it a noir film; the only real bad apple is the peach who runs the table with the men in her life. What the picture could have used was a more satisfying ending. It made no sense at all that Claire would come clean just on the old shrink's say so. I'm still mulling that one over.As for actress Leslie Brooks, this was the first time I've seen her, and was intrigued enough to check her credits here on the IMDb. Curiously, she appeared in twenty seven pictures throughout the Forties, and then one more in 1971. I wonder what that was all about.

Blonde Ice has a DVD that is almost too good for its own movie - the menu has a special ice-crackling design with dialog from the movie placed over and some of that chilling noir-ish music we all know and admire from the period. The DVD menu hints at it being a smashingly good B-movie, but as it turns out the film itself is just OK. Blonde Ice, one of those stories with the conniving and murderous sexy femme fatale who gets whoever she wants and in this case rich men who get suckered into her grasp, is a picture made for cheap, of course, but also with a cheap script: not much imagination goes into the dialog or the construction of the plot. Even the one possibly fascinating character, the one man, Les Burns (Paige) who has held a torch without shame for Claire (Leslie Brooks) for years and stands by and defends her against murder claims even if he suspects deep down she might have done it, is brushed aside into the conventional column.Brooks is a honey, that much has to be given to her, and she can act in some scenes- in others she just goes through the motions like the rest of the capable cast of character players (most of whom you wont know unless you are some kind of film-noir scholar like Alain Silver or other)- and she does give a decent anchor for some of the emotional scenes, such as at the end when she gives a confession that is as icey as everything else she does in the movie. The direction and writing are on par with her: not spectacular, not ever really a downer. Blonde Ice probably has an amazing poster, one of those you might see in an art-museum installation celebrating pulp fiction advertising. The content itself is just there to pay a couple of small bills and fill some seats for a double feature. It's recommended only to those who sniff out whatever 40s noir might have promise. Like me.

For most if its runtime, Blonde Ice is a very entertaining b-noir. Leslie Brooks is about as evil a woman as you'll see in one of these movies. She's beautiful, ambitious, and completely ruthless – it's a deadly combination. She's perfectly capable of chewing-up and spitting-out anyone who gets in her way. And, she's not above committing a little murder if the need should arise. Brooks gives a dynamite performance as far as I'm concerned. The rest of the cast is adequate, but nothing spectacular. The weakest point in the film, unfortunately, comes in the final scene. It's almost as if the screenwriters had no idea how to end Blond Ice. What they came up with is so ridiculous and out of character that it really hurts the overall film.A word on the DVD - from what I've read, the VCI disc is the only way to go. The price is not much more than what you would pay for the Alpha DVD and the VCI disc has a much better transfer and a plethora of features.