Just stumbled upon this piece of WWII history:
So yeah, I think it’s safe to say Neff might have been considered a slacker in 1944.
The thing that bothered me the most was when MacMurray, an insurance agent making a cold call on a house, immediately hits on the wife who answers the door. Very unprofessional.
She practically throws herself at him, and his resistance is weak to nonexistent. What gets me is how quickly he caves in to her wanting to murder her husband. Hot or not, I’d have dumped her like toxic waste.
But he’d been thinking, planning this for some time. He was just waiting for the right person. He knew what she was hinting at before she even got too far.
Maybe he never would have done it if she wasn’t so…eager. But, when she brought it up, he was ready to go.
Yeah, Neff had always wanted to cheat the system, just to show himself that he could. She got lucky that he was the sucker she needed.
Just found out that Cain based both the book this movie was based on and The Postman Always Rings Twice on the same real life murder. He must have liked the story.