The people who made this are so much like kids in a toy shop that you want to buy the cheesy little plastic cars and trucks for them. The film is as much salacious fun as Hush Hush, the sleazebag magazine edited by Danny DeVito in the story. Hush Hush is patterned after the long-dead Confidential. The Bad and the Beautiful is on theater marquees.
Cop cars are torpedo-nosed Fords.
The news that the Los Angeles Times screams in banner headlines is about crime. We hear his manual typewriter in the background as he taps out his stories. The spine of the film is essence d'noir. Characters wander lost in moral deserts. Some are looking for their oasis.