A Life at Stake

Are you ready for another Summer of Angela (Lansbury) post (with Lisa from Boondock Ramblings)?
Today we got "A Life at Stake" from 1955 on the menu.
Take a look at Lisa's post here. She plans to have two more movies, by the way, but for me this will be the last one.

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The plot (spoiler alert!).

Architect Edward Shaw, broke, unemployed, and in a lot of debt thanks to a gambling business partner, gets a business proposal from ex-real estate agent Doris Hillman. She will buy up land, he's supposed to build houses on it.
Her wealthy husband who is the one who will put up the money for this, though, insists on a key-man insurance for Edward in case something happens to him.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Edward is drawn to Doris - and she to him? I think you already get the idea, so I don't have to beat around the bush.
Edward is getting suspicious because he thinks the Hillmans are just after the insurance money. When Doris's younger sister Madge (who's in love with him) tells him that Doris's first husband died in an accident, he's even more convinced about them trying to kill him.
As the police doesn't believe him even though he has been drugged by Hillman and hardly survives an accident, he and Madge plan to pull Doris on their side. Doris, however, lures him to their mountain cabin and shoots him when he wants to leave. Next, her husband turns up and wants to shoot her to make it look like a murder-suicide, but Edward hits the gun out of his hand before being knocked down. Doris picks it up and shoots her husband who tumbles towards her and pulls her down with him through a clifftop doorway.
Just when Edward stumbles outside, the police and Madge arrive, and Edward is taken away in an ambulance with Madge by his side.

The only surprise about this movie was Angela Lansbury as femme fatale again (after Please Murder Me!). She did that surprisingly well, but not good enough to save this movie for me.

"A Life at Stake" is a film noir, but I don't really know that much about film noir. I doubt this movie is playing in the big league, though. It has its moments, but not even those really grabbed my attention.

I just didn't manage to feel any connection to the hero at all at the start or during his affair with Doris whatever exactly that was supposed to be. Throwing Madge into the mix didn't do anything for me, either. Edward, what did you want and what did you expect to come of this whole thing? Getting rid of Hillman - how? - and run off with Doris? Where to? Writing Madge a card every, now and then?
There are some other things I didn't understand.
Why would you dance with your coat on?
How did you make it out of that car without any injury? And how did you get home (always an important question for me)?
Who on Earth would build a cabin with a door leading right down a cliff? "No one felt comfortable on the porch", so instead of putting up some bricks or whatever and a window they just locked the door? Which opened to the outside? How do you even close it again? "One day I'm going to put a big picture window there." Couldn't the guys who took down the porch - how? - have done that right away? One day - after throwing someone down there?

Of course everyone knew something was going to happen there, but at that point I didn't really mind anymore who of them was going to fall down.

If you look around for reviews, you will see that some people say that it's a very decent independent film noir or you have the ones who feel like me.
That's fine, not everyone likes the same things. This may not be a movie for me although it was easy enough to watch (the runtime of only 76 minutes helped with that), but maybe it's one for you.