A disappointment! I'd seen Party Girl some years ago (maybe 20) and was ecstatic. The film took cult dimensions in my memory. And having watched it the other day, oh my god, I said, what was all the fuss about? Even for 1958 the story is too melodramatic, the gangster plot too lame and the acting bad all round. Taylor plays an interesting part, his attire is first class and so is the mask he wears, mustache and all, planted on his beautiful self by the makeup department. And there the feat ends. He's stiff as usual and proud of it. Cyd Charisse doesn't even try to act. She dances well and that's all. As for tough guy Lee J. Cobb - usually a very good actor - he's plain bad. He bellows, gesticulates Italian-style, laughs out loudly, screams most of the time and shows signs of acute boredom. After all he has to play someone named "Rico Angelo" - which to me sounds like a travesty of an Italian-mobster's name! The plot is no better. Bad guys' lawyer is finally testifying against former employers who both die in the most ludicrous final scene in the history of gangster movies: both choose to stand by the wide window panes while police is firing from below the street. John Ireland gets hit, Lee J. Cobb holds the vial with the hydrochloric acid he's threatened to empty on Cyd Chariss' face, a bullet hits it and it burns his face. WOW! No, I am a great fan of Nicholas Ray's work - I really worship this director but this must be about the worse thing he's done for the screen. A happy end seems very inappropriate for the gloomy atmosphere (in the script but nowhere in the cinematography, alas!) and 1958 was not so remote a year even from black and white "noirs", like the "Asphalt Jungle"  to name just one. This is mob mickey mouse.