By the end of film the professor is an object of abject ridicule who returns to his former classroom to die. However, Lola-Lola represents, not destiny but freedom. The professor is destroyed not because he strays from the tried and true but because he does not know how to live free. Her refusal to be bound kills him. Douglas has a fatal attraction for Stone who is a key suspect in a series of ice pick murders.
Stone plays a larger than life, sexy, bi-sexual femme fatale.
She has a female lover who floats in and out of the action. She manipulates whoever falls into her web to enact her narrative fantasies in a living tableau. They willingly compete to join her in the play. In this noir, the basic instinct for freedom is shot through the lens of sudden death. Implicit to the plot is that to be free you must risk everything.