Alimony Madness: A Wild, Low-Budget Trip Through Legal Trouble

Is it worth your time?

If you're into the weird, dusty corners of early 30s cinema, sure. It’s got that frantic energy where characters just sort of shout their motivations at each other. If you need clean, sensible pacing or actors who don't look like they’re waiting for their lunch break, skip it. This isn't Blonde Crazy, that’s for sure.

The whole premise is basically a recipe for disaster. You’ve got a guy dealing with the fallout of his past life literally sitting in the defendant's chair. It’s heavy, but the movie handles it with the grace of a sledgehammer.

Notes from the couch

There’s a moment about halfway through where the courtroom setup just feels... small. Like, did they build the set in someone’s garage? The extras look like they were plucked from a bus stop five minutes before filming. It adds a strange, surreal flavor to the testimony scenes.

Dick Rush is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Sometimes he looks genuinely pained. Other times, he looks like he’s trying to remember if he left the stove on at home. It’s erratic. I kind of love it.

• The lighting in the trial scenes is surprisingly dark. You can barely see the back row of the gallery.
• The dialogue is snappy, almost too snappy. Nobody talks like this unless they’re in a play written by someone who hates downtime.
• I’m still not sure if the director knew where the camera was half the time.

There’s this one sequence that lingers on a character’s face while they process the news of the murder. It goes on for an eternity. My cat started staring at the screen, probably wondering why the guy wasn't blinking. It’s awkward, it’s stiff, and it makes the whole situation feel way more human than the script deserves.

It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy in The Broken Wing, though less romantic and way more paranoid. Everyone is sweating. Literally and figuratively.

Don't look for a grand moral lesson here. It’s just people making bad choices and paying for them in a drafty room. Sometimes that’s all you need on a Tuesday night. 🎞️