Preminger's hard-edged noir romance might be called a psychological study of deviant, kinky obsession, because almost everyone in the cast loved the title character Laura, who was not a classic amoral femme fatale; while investigating socialite Laura Hunt's (Gene Tierney) murder, obsessed homicide police detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) rummaged through Laura's bedroom drawers and lingerie, inhaled her perfume, and peered into her mirrored closets and then stared at the haunting, domineering oil portrait of Laura and fell in love with the dead woman in the portrait; the film contained troubling necrophiliac themes and sexual obsession by the hard-boiled detective for the dead woman; celebrated, acidic-witted and homosexual columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) incisively described McPherson's obsession over the murdered bewitching woman ("...It's a wonder you don't come here like a suitor with roses and a box of candy...I don't think I ever had a patient who ever fell in love with a corpse"); Lydecker had also functioned as Laura's Svengali-like mentor and protective confidant in a platonic relationship, when he helped her become a successful advertising executive; womanizing, effete Southern playboy Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), whose marriage to Laura was recently called off, was also a prime suspect (he confessed later to being present at the murder scene when the off-screen shooting occurred); then there was the surprising scene when Laura suddenly walked into her own apartment - a murdered woman who mysteriously appeared over half way into the film - and the stunned look of McPherson who expressed shock when stirred from sleep as the "dead" Laura appeared and at first thought she was a ghost or figment of his imagination; she threatened to call the police: "What are you doing here?" - unaware of the news of her own slaying; Laura was horrified to realize that she was caught in the middle of a murder case; the murder victim was actually a young model named Diane Redfern in her negligee, in a case of mistaken identity; after reappearing, Laura herself became a prime suspect in the murder case, since it was possible that Laura killed Diane Redfern out of jealousy for her association with Shelby; another suspect was Anne Treadwell (Judith Anderson), Laura's wealthy, amoral spinster aunt who was neurotically in love with Shelby and decidedly defensive and jealous of the younger Laura, her engagement, and her possible forthcoming marriage to Carpenter

This tense film noir told about law-abiding, mild-mannered, middle-aged and married Gotham College Professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) who met beautiful, strange painting model and femme fatale Alice Reed (Joan Bennett) - when she emerged as a reflection next to a painting in an art gallery window; invited back to her mirrored apartment where she was wearing a diaphanous dress, they sipped champagne; he became embroiled in a crime due to his unintentional self-defense murder (by stabbing his assailant to death in the back with a pair of scissors) when he was attacked by her burly and jealous boyfriend Frank Howard (Arthur Loft) who had accused her of infidelity, and then suddenly found himself on the run and ready to commit suicide; however, the entire plot was only a dream of his subconscious

Edgar G. Ulmer's gritty, cheaply-made ("Poverty Row"), fatalistic, cultish B-crime film was about the bleak twists of fate; in a nightmarish flashback story cynically narrated with almost non-stop voice-over, a world-weary, fatalistic, self-pitying, down-and-out hitchhiker Al Roberts (Tom Neal) was haplessly involved in an ambiguous death during his thumbing trek from NY to Los Angeles; after picking up a vulturous, nasty and despicable hitchhiker Vera (Ann Savage), she revealed her knowledge of his true identity ("You're a cheap crook and you killed him") - she accused him of 'killing' ex-bookie turned businessman Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) who had earlier picked Roberts up - although he had suffered a heart attack - stealing his car and adopting his identity while hitchhiking in Arizona enroute to Hollywood; Roberts commented upon fate and the blackmailing, castrating, exploitative, sadomasochistic and vindictive femme fatale con: "That's life - whatever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you up"; her plan was to sell the car and also to claim a substantial inheritance from Haskell's dying father, by having them pretend to be Mr. and Mrs. Haskell; to make matters worse, he accidentally strangled Vera with a telephone cord through a closed door during a vicious argument when she threatened to call the police - a second disastrous twist of fate signified by the in-and-out of focus shots from the POV of Roberts in a deranged mental state as he wandered the highways like a hobo, and the imagining of his arrest (to appease the Hays Code censors of the time) in a tawdry diner ("Yes, fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all")