The Nattering Nabob
of Noir

The Noirharajah spouts off

REVIEWS


5 Against the House, 1955. Brian Keith, Kim Novak. Entertaining, but sometimes only because it's unintentionally funny/dated in its characterizations. These guys are in college? Really? Still, worth a look. **1/2


52 Pick-Up, 1986. John Frankenheimer directs this lurid but exciting thriller, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, about a blackmail scheme that escalates to murder, double-cross, and revenge. Roy Scheider plays Harry, a rich Los Angeles businessman, married to Barbara (Ann Margaret), who is running for city council. Harry's having an affair with Cini, a much younger woman, played by Kelly Preston. As the film opens, Harry is confronted by three blackmailers who have film of him with Cini. Harry can't go to the cops because of his wife's political aspirations. But Harry's a stubborn guy, and he refuses to pay, instead confessing his affair to his wife. Things escalate quickly, as the blackmailers show Harry a much darker film, of Cini being murdered with Harry's gun. They now have him framed for murder, and the blackmail price has gone up exponentially. But Harry, a self-made man and Korean War vet, has some tricks up his sleeve, too, and he fights back, playing the blackmailers off against each other. As tensions mount, the characters begin to unravel in a way that you don't often see in a thriller, and it's that unraveling -- along with great performances by everyone involved -- that elevates 52 Pick-Up above the average. Those performances include the three blackmailers, who are all involved with the sex trade. There's the cowardly Leo (Robert Trebor), who runs a strip club and sweats a lot; Bobby Shy (Clarence Williams III), a vicious pimp; and the smarmy, psycho, preppy mastermind, Raimy, played by John Glover in a scene-stealing performance. There's a lot of sleaze -- including cameos by a bevy of '70's porn stars -- but Frankenheimer holds it all together and keeps things moving toward the inevitably violent conclusion. ***
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99 River Street, 1953. Action-packed pulp-noir directed by Phil Karlson, starring John Payne as Ernie Driscoll, ex-pug-turned-cabbie who is framed for the murder of his cheating wife (Peggie Castle). Evelyn Keyes is the perky actress who stands by Ernie as he tracks down the real killer, a slimy and menacing jewel thief played by Victor Rawlins. Bursting with noir atmosphere, plot twists and hard-punching fight scenes, this one's a load of fun. ***


711 Ocean Drive, 1950. Edmond O'Brien as Mal Granger, a solid citizen who just so happens to be an electronics expert for the phone company. His only vice: he likes to play the ponies. But he gets sucked into a scheme to put his electronics expertise to work for big-time bookie Vince Walters. After Walters gets gunned down, Granger takes over, eventually getting mixed up with the east-coast syndicate, and the wife of one of the syndicate's big wigs, played by Joanne Dru. Like his name, Mal keeps breaking bad, getting in deeper and deeper, until he tries to take the syndicate for one last big score in Vegas. Yeah, that always works out. Sure enough, it all goes bango in a slam-bang finish at the Boulder Dam. ***​


Abandoned, 1949 (Joseph M. Newman) Hard-boiled social commentary/procedural about a ruthless baby-selling racket in Los Angeles, with dialogue by the great B.M. Bowers, who fills the script with such noir gems as, "You going legitimate is like a vulture going vegetarian!" and "I'd be just as happy if we committed our murders in a state that doesn't have capital punishment."
   Gale Storm plays Paula Considine, a young woman from hicksville who comes to the big city looking for her big sister, who's disappeared. Fresh off the bus, she runs into world-wise crime reporter Mark Sitko (Dennis O'Keefe), who takes a shine to Paula and also sees a possible scoop in it, too. They immediately run afoul of sleazy private eye Kerric, played by the heavy of heavies, Raymond Burr. Kerric is part of the baby-booster racket that had Paula's sister murdered and her bambino peddled to the highest bidder. Burr gets most of the great lines, like, "I was just thinking about how nice life used to be when I stuck to blackmail and petty larceny," and "I couldn't sleep so I just decided to take my gun out for a walk." Jeff Chandler plays the police chief and provides voice-over narration. A nifty little noir for those who like some sizzle on their steak.  ***


Accomplice, 1946 (Walter Colmes) Richard Arlen as a lawyer-turned-P.I., investigating his old flame’s missing husband. In the running for dumbest story ever put to film. A man is found dead with his head “blown clean off” – as the sheriff keeps saying. He calls the man’s widow to tell her this over the phone, then invites her to the crime scene, a mink ranch, where he leads her, her private detective, and the handyman on a walkabout directly through the crime scene and shows her the presumably headless body of her husband. Not noir, and not very smart. 1/2*


The Accused, 1949 (William Dieterle) Loretta Young plays California psychology professor Wilma Tuttle (never referred to as Dr., though she surely would have been one), who's sexually assaulted by Bill Perry, a creepy student and, in self-defense, kills him by hitting him over the head with an implement. Seeking to cover up her "crime," Wilma pushes her attacker's body off a cliff, making it look like an accident. She makes a clean getaway and thinks she's in the clear, but then amiable Warren Ford, Bill's guardian, played amiably by the amiable Robert Cummings, shows up, and the two fall for each other. Or, perhaps more precisely, Warren falls for Wilma and essentially orders her (amiably, of course) to date and, later, marry him. Because that's just the way it was in post-war America?
   Meanwhile, Lt. Ted Dorgan of the Homicide Squad (Wendell Corey) is doggedly pursuing the case, and the closer he gets, the more guilt-ridden Wilma becomes. Dorgan, by the way, is also loopy for Loretta, even though he suspects her of murder.
   Young gets a chance to show off her swooning skills, and there's a lot of unabashed sexism aimed at Wilma in Ketti Frings' script. The 36-year-old Young's unmarried character is referred to as an "old maid," she's constantly ogled (or worse) by nearly every man she meets, and her admirers keep going on about how she can't be both beautiful AND smart, can she??? Directed by William Dieterle, the film has a Hitchcockian look about it, thanks to the excellent camerawork from cinematographer Milton R. Krasner. Thought-provoking despite -- or, perhaps, because of -- its misogynistic ways. ***
 

Ace in the Hole, 1951 (Billy Wilder) The third of Billy Wilder’s three great noirs, after Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. Kirk Douglas gives one of his best, over-the-top, powerhouse performances as the thoroughly despicable Chuck Tatum, a former big-time New York reporter who’ll stop at nothing to get back on top. After talking his way into a job on the small-potatoes Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin -- figuring he’ll only be there long enough to get the scoop that will punch his ticket back to the big stage -- Tatum instead finds himself stuck in the sticks. Then one day, he’s given an assignment to cover a rattlesnake hunt in the boondocks. On his way there, he stumbles onto a story that, with a little manipulation on his part, can become the big scoop he’s been waiting for. A local treasure hunter, Leo Minosa, has become trapped in a cave-in while digging for Indian relics to sell in his roadside diner/trading post. The name of the mountain Minosa is trapped in? Seven Vultures. Tatum convinces the corrupt sheriff (Ray Teal, solid as ever) to drag out the rescue while Tatum gins the story into a national sensation, which he does. Soon, the place is crawling with so many rubberneckers and big-city reporters that it’s literally become a circus. Tatum’s lurid plot includes keeping Leo’s bottle blonde floozy of a wife, Lorraine, from running away from her dreary desert life – and Leo – until the story’s played out and he’s on his way back to the big time. In a performance that should have been star-making, Jan Sterling plays Lorraine as chillingly indifferent to the plight of her husband. She just wants out, but decides to stay when Tatum convinces her there’s money in it if she’ll stick around and play the concerned wife. Also along for the ride is the innocent cub reporter/photographer Herbie Cook, who idealizes Tatum and is ready to follow him to oblivion. In his one redeeming act of the entire film, Tatum puts Herbie back on the right path before the end. A terrific stop on Wilder’s tour of the rattlesnake-and-vulture-infested post-war American landscape. ****


Across 110th Street, 1972 (Barry Shear). Race relations on the streets of New York is the backdrop for this bloody, ultra-violent tale of the aftermath of a daring Harlem mob robbery. The cops and the Italian mafia are scrambling to track down three desperate hoods who robbed a mob "bank" of $300 grand, killing seven in the process, including two police officers. Anthony Quinn plays a racist Italian-American detective who clashes with Lt. Pope (Yaphet Kotto), the straight-laced black detective in charge of the case. Paul Benjamin and Tony Franciosa, in particular, stand out as the epileptic machine-gun-toting leader of the crew of thieves and the brutal, bigoted Italian mob capo tasked with catching and making an example of the stickup men. Ninety-five percent of the film was shot on location in Harlem, giving the picture a gritty realism. **1/2 



Act of Violence, 1948 (Fred Zinnemann). Robert Ryan as embittered World War II vet Joe Parkson out to destroy former fellow POW Van Heflin, who he blames for the deaths of the rest of their comrades in a German POW camp. Ryan and Heflin are terrific, as usual, as Ryan limps his way across the country to the California town where Heflin's character, Frank Enley, is a revered citizen. Janet Leigh is Enley's loyal and lovely wife, and Mary Astor delivers a typically bravura performance as a past-her-prime prostitute who gives the panicked Heflin shelter during his wild flight from fate. Profound, nuanced drama that sees the world through grown-up, big-boy eyes courtesy of director Fred Zinnemann's textured worldview, which he earned the hard way (Fred and his brother escaped their native Austria in 1938 but both of their parents perished in Nazi concentration camps while waiting for U.S. visas that never came). ****


Affair in Trinidad, 1952 (Vincent Sherman) Tepid attempt to recapture the magic of 1946's Gilda. Glenn Ford is Steve Emery, tough, hot-blooded American who arrives in Trinidad to find out the truth about his brother's "suicide." Rita Hayworth is his brother's widow, a nightclub singer/entertainer who Ford initially hates but then falls for. Sound familiar? It is, but it's still got Rita and Glenn steaming it up in a tropical locale.  **1/2


After Dark, My Sweet, 1990 (James Foley) Terrific, uncompromising and underappreciated neo-noir based on the Jim Thompson novel of the same name. Jason Patric gives a sensational performance as Collie, the slack-jawed, bestubbled, seemingly punch-drunk ex-pug who escapes from a mental asylum and shambles into a desert town near Palm Springs, and a long-simmering kidnapping plot. Collie is enshrouded in a sense of doom from the moment he meets sultry alcoholic widow Fay (Rachel Ward), who hires him on (and takes him in) to help fix up her run-down estate left to her by her dead husband. Into the picture slithers "Uncle Bud" (Bruce Dern, fantastic, as always), a sleazy ex-cop who has long been hatching a kidnap scheme with Fay, with only the need for a third hand holding them back. They enlist the reluctant Collie, and the three of them put the snatch on a rich man's child, but it all goes horribly wrong from the get-go, with disastrous results. A bit too talky and convoluted for its own good, but a beautifully realized noir nonetheless, with richly nuanced characters, gorgeous cinematography by Mark Plummer, and especially Patric's bravura performance making this a must-see.  ****


Against All Odds, 1984 (Taylor Hackford) Loose remake of noir classic Out of the Past, with Jeff Bridges -- great, as usual -- as an injured football player blackmailed by slick hood Jake Wise (James Woods) into heading to Mexico to find the girl who stabbed him and robbed him of $50,000. The pulsing 80's soundtrack and vivid color (the scenes shot in Cozumel, Mexico, are particularly stunning) aren't the only changes from the original black-and-white standard. The dame -- played this time by Rachel Ward -- is no femme fatale. Rather, Jessie Wyler is a spoiled, confused rich girl, much more sympathetic than the original's Kathy Moffatt, played by Jane Greer, who, in a classy move by director Taylor Hackford, is cast here as Jessie's mother. Richard Widmark and Alex Karras round out a stellar cast in a production that, while it doesn't reach the heights of the original (few do), manages to stake out its own territory as a worthy entry in the neo noir canon. ***


Allotment Wives, 1945 (William Nigh). Kay Francis is Sheila Seymour, the tough-as-nails queenpin of a bigamy racket (!) -- in which women marry multiple servicemen right before they ship out, so they can collect their military allotment money (and $10 grand life insurance if they get killed!). Sheila disguises her headquarters for the scam as a Canteen where servicemen come to mingle and dance with dames, unaware they're suckers in a multi-million dollar con game. But never fear! Colonel Pete Martin of Army Intelligence is here to bust up the racket! Paul Kelly -- usually a supporting actor, at best, gets the lead here and proves why he's usually a bit player. He has all the charisma of a bar of soap. Kay Francis -- and the unique nature of the crime -- make this mildly interesting. **1/2


An Act of Murder, 1948 (Michael Gordon) Potboiler about a hardline judge (Fredric March, as solid as ever) who learns some empathy when his longtime wife gets a terminal illness. To save her suffering, he commits euthanasia, then turns himself in, at which point he is represented by the sympathetic lawyer (Edmond O'Brien) he's tangled with, and who's been dating his daughter against his wishes. As you can probably tell, this is not noir. **1/2


Angel Face, 1953 (Otto Preminger) Disturbingly cool tale of passion and murder, with Robert Mitchum as languid ambulance driver Frank Jessup, whose real passion is fixing up and racing hot cars. Frank is in a wholesome, 1950s romance with wholesome nurse Mary (Mona Freeman), until he arrives at the Tremayne mansion, where the second wife of author Herbert Marshall has been affected by gas poisoning. Frank meets Tremayne's daughter, Diane (Jean Simmons), who may or may not be a homicidal maniac, albeit a very pretty one. From that point on, Frank is as doomed as any character in noir. The film plummets toward its inevitable finish, which is as audacious an ending as you're likely to see. Though the story feels, at times, a bit like a rehash of The Postman Always Rings Twice, it is brilliantly executed by Preminger and well acted by all. ***   



Angel Heart, 1987 (Alan Parker) Seedy mix of noir and Faustian horror (noiror?) based on the novel "Falling Angel" by William Hjortsberg. In January, 1955, grimy Brooklyn private eye Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is approached by an attorney, who represents the mysterious Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro), a dapper gent with extremely long, sharp fingernails, to find Johnny Favorite, a semi-famous crooner who went goofy during the war and was sent to the laughing house upstate. As Lou Cypher (get it?) explains it, Favorite skipped out on a contract, and he just wants Harry to locate the missing warbler. But with every step that Harry takes, he gets drawn deeper and deeper into Cyphre's circle. As the hunt moves to New Orleans, and the bodies begin to pile up in ever more gruesome fashion, the film's big mystery will become apparent to most. But still, Parker -- who also wrote the screenplay -- and the cast keep the atmosphere dark and creepy and take this haunting tale to its limits. ***  


Anti Matter, 2017  Writer-Director Keir Burrows' neo-noirish indie sci-fi/thriller plays, at times, like teens playing dress-up, but it gets credit for asking some interesting questions. Yaiza Figueroa, as Ana, stands out in a cast of twenty-somethings. **1/2


Apology For Murder, 1945 (Sam Newfield) A terminally dumb and lazy script and direction dooms this tepid, slapdash, and shameless ripoff of Double Indemnity. Poverty Row production company PRC was actually going to name this thing Single Indemnity, until Paramount got wind of it and slapped them with an injunction, so it's not like they were trying to hide it. Hugh Beaumont (yes, The Beaver's dad!) plays the Fred MacMurray role, only here he's Kenny Blake, a boozing newshound seduced by faithless wife Toni Kirkland (Ann Savage, of Detour fame, not nearly as fun as in that classic). Not much to recommend here, outside of Savage's gams, although it is kind of funny watching the two conspirators cavort practically in the open, in front of the wife's maid and everything, given how, in the original, so much was made (and rightfully so) of the two going to great lengths to keep their affair secret (supermarket scene, anyone?). Should be retitled Apology For Shabby Plagiarism.  *1/2
 

Appointment With Danger, 1951 (Lewis Allen) Solid actioner with Alan Ladd as a U.S. Postal Inspector (no, really) working undercover to bust a gang of thieves who are targeting a million-dollar delivery. The bad guys, led by Paul Stewart, have already killed another postal inspector, and Ladd must track down the witness to that crime: a comely nun (Phyllis Calvert). Postal inspectors, fetching nuns, and Harry Morgan as a pint-sized thug. What more do you want in your noir?  **1/2

 
Armored Car Robbery, 1950. Charles McGraw, William Talman, Steve Brodie. Noir stalwarts Charles McGraw and William Talman deliver the goods in this solid, no-nonsense heist film from director Richard Fleischer and screenwriter Earl Felton. Talman is tough crook Dave Purvus, the big brain who hatches a plot to rob an armored car at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles (yes, there used to be one in LA, too) and escape with more than just the loot – he’s been sneaking around on the sly with greedy burlesque queen Yvonne LeDoux (Adele Jergens), who just happens to be the estranged wife of one of his crew, Benny McBride, who’s still gaga over the no-good dame. The heist turns into a shootout in the streets when hardnosed police detective Jim Cordell (McGraw) and his partner respond to the call with guns blazing. Cordell’s partner is killed, and Benny gutshot. Dragnets and roadblocks ensue, and the remaining gang have to hole up in a hideout by the docks. More shootouts, a motorboat, and some lipstick get involved in the plot, until it all comes to a satisfying touchdown beneath the wheels of a landing plane. Excellent little heist noir. The burlesque scenes with Jergens shimmying and winking are, now, unintentionally hilarious. *** 


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The Asphalt Jungle, 1950. Perhaps the greatest heist film ever made. Director and co-writer John Huston's simplicity of style and lack of a musical score ratchet up the tension in this beautiful and powerful tale of a million-dollar jewel robbery. The crooks are masterminded by Doc Reidenschneider (Sam Jaffe), fresh out of the big house. His crew consists of "box man" (safecracker) Louie Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), hunchbacked diner owner/getaway driver Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), and "hooligan" Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), who wants the dough to buy back the Kentucky horse farm his father lost during the Depression. Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen) is the simple, big-hearted gal who loves him. Slick and shady lawyer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) -- who is dallying behind his sickly wife's back with a young-enough-to-be-his-granddaughter Marilyn Monroe -- provides the $50 grand to front the heist, and promises to buy the jewels after the job is done. The beauty is in the dialog and story, as it all goes wrong and it's each man/woman for himself as the double-crosses mount. Every element is fantastic in this noir masterpiece. ****


At Close Range, 1986 (James Foley). Chilling, fact-based portrait of a rural Pennsylvania crime family, led by Brad Whitewood, Sr., played charismatically by Christopher Walken. Sean Penn, young and full of beans, is Brad Jr., one of his estranged sons. After getting into a fight with his mother's boyfriend, Brad Jr. contacts his fast-living, ne'er do well dad, and gets involved with Brad Sr.'s gang's criminal activities. Brad Jr. and a few of his friends form a "Kiddie Gang" of junior thieves who do the dirty work on the gang's heists. When things turn deadly, however, Brad the younger starts to have second thoughts, and decides he just wants to break free of his father and run away with his girlfriend, Terry (Mary Stuart Masterson) and make a life outside of his dead-end town. Brad the elder, however, turns out to be a ruthless killer, and even blood ties won't keep him from eliminating anyone he deems a threat to his freedom. Based on the true life case of the crime family led by Bruce Johnston, Sr. ***


Backfire, 1950 (Vincent Sherman) Edmond O’Brien and Viveca Lindfors lift this mysterious yarn about a couple of war vets, one of whom – Bob Corey, played by Gordon MacRae -- is recovering from a serious spinal injury in a veteran’s hospital in Van Nuys, California. Bob and his war buddy, Steve Connolly (O’Brien), have plans to run a ranch together once Bob gets on his feet, but then Steve goes missing. One night, a heavily-drugged Bob is visited in his room by the lovely and mysterious Lindfors, who tells him that his pal has been badly hurt. Bob groggily promises to join her in ten days, when he’s due to be released, and she writes down her address for him. When he wakes up, however, Bob can’t find the address, and his doctor suggests that Bob hallucinated her. When Bob recovers, he goes looking for the woman and Steve. There’s a murdered gambler, a creepily-upbeat mortician played by Dane Clark, Virginia Mayo, and a mysterious dying Chinese man named Quong. Unfortunately, the whole thing isn’t quite as fun as it should be. **1/2  


Bad Blonde (aka The Flanagan Boy), 1953. Minor Hammer Pictures boxing noir starring fallen Hollywood starlet Barbara Payton as a classic femme fatale -- a boxing promoter's sexpot young wife who seduces naive young puncher Johnny Flanagan into murdering her much older "fat guy" husband, a la The Postman Always Rings Twice. Strictly B-movie stuff with stiff performances from the two leads. Film is notable mostly as a curiosity for those wanting to slum their way through the filmography of the notorious Payton, whose life spiral has to be the undisputed champion of all the sad, sordid, true Hollywood tragedies. **


Bait, 1954 (Hugo Haas). Weird old gold miner Marko (Hugo Haas) with a possibly murderous past convinces Ray, a strapping young roustabout (John Agar), into partnering up to find his long-lost gold mine. When they find it, Marko doesn't want to split the loot, so he brings his supposedly trashy young wife, Peggy (Cleo Moore), up to the mine, figuring sooner or later he will catch Ray and Peggy in flagrante delicto, and he can use the "unwritten law" to rid himself of his partner. Better than most of Haas' Cleo Moore vehicles, but that's not saying much. The ending is truly inexplicable. ** 


Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007. Sidney Lumet's last film was one of his best, a superb, emotionally devastating heist melodrama that puts your heart in a vise from the first moments and then cranks the handle. The story is told non-linearly, flashing back and forth to different points in time to show how everything went so wrong. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke star as the unlikeliest looking brothers ever, but the two actors are so good it doesn't matter. Hoffman, in particular, gives a powerhouse performance as Andy Hanson, a New York City executive with a drug problem that's caused him to embezzle from his company. With an audit looming, he needs cash fast. Hawke is his younger brother, Hank, a fuckup who can't pay his child support (or anything else), and is having an affair with Andy's wife (the timelessly gorgeous and always fantastic Marisa Tomei). Andy, the smart one, comes up with a plan to solve both of their financial woes: rob a mom-and-pop suburban jewelry store that just happens to be owned by their own mom and pop. Of course, it'll have to be Hank that pulls off the actual robbery because reasons. But don't worry, Andy assures little bro, it'll be a piece of cake. But, of course, everything goes wrong, with horrifying repercussions that Lumet and screenwriter Kelly Masterson make you care about. Albert Finney, as the brothers' father, enters the film late but leaves a lasting impression. This is a dark, unrelenting, and deeply disturbing tragedy. ***1/2


Behind Green Lights, 1946 (Otto Brower) Hopelessly outdated police procedural/propaganda hokum in which all cops are freshly shaved, pure-of-heart “good eggs,” and fresh-faced newspaper reporters say stuff like, “Gosh, I hope I don’t pull any boners!” Veers off into madcap comedy territory halfway through, then becomes a whodunit. What it isn’t is film noir. *1/2


Behind the High Wall, 1956 (Abner Biberman) B-movie with a slam-bang premise that could have been somebody with a more hard-boiled noir script. Veteran character actor Tom Tully (he played Gene Tierney's cab-driving dad in Where the Sidewalk Ends) gets a leading role as seeming good-guy Frank Carmichael, an interim prison warden who's kidnapped by a group of cons when they bust out of the big house, aided by the brother of one of the cons, who's brought along a suitcase full of cash -- loot from a heist the gang had pulled before being imprisoned. The gang also kidnaps innocent bystander Johnny Hutchins (John Gavin) and forces him to drive their getaway truck. After shooting a motorcycle cop who's chasing them, the truck crashes. The wreck kills everyone but the warden, Johnny, and one of the cons, who's running off with the suitcase full of cash until the warden comes to and shoots him just before he crests a hill. As the crook tumbles back down the hill, the suitcase breaks open, spilling out a hundred grand.
   That's the meat and potatoes, here comes the gravy: feeling unappreciated by his superiors in the prison system, who have told him they aren't going to give him the permanent job, the warden decides to keep the loot! With the only other survivor, Johnny, still unconscious, Frank buries the boodle, and then lets Johnny take the fall for being part of the gang. 
   Where the script goes soft is with the warden's wheelchair-bound wife, Hilda, played by one-time sex symbol Sylvia Sidney, whose chain-smoking took her beauty and threw it in the ashcan. As written, Hilda's her hubby's conscience, pleading with him to give the money back and save innocent Johnny from the death house. If instead she'd been written as an embittered femme fatale who wants to keep the money, now you're talking noir, baby! **1/2


Berlin Express, 1948. Jacques Tourneur's gritty post-war spy thriller is bolstered by striking location shots of war-ravaged Germany. Robert Ryan and Merle Oberon star as part of an international group aboard a special U.S. Army train bound from Paris and Frankfort for Berlin. Ryan is an American agriculture expert, and Oberon the French secretary to Dr. Bernhardt (Paul Lukas), a German humanitarian peace activist working for the reunification of his country. Also aboard: British educator Sterling (Robert Coote), Soviet army officer Lt. Maxim (Roman Toporow), French official Perrot (Charles Korvin), and German businessman Otto Franzen (Fritz Kortner). Still hanging around in the shadows, clinging to their "thousand-year-reich," are the Nazi baddies, who will stop at nothing to keep Dr. Bernhardt from reaching his destination. There's plenty of action, with a bomb explosion, kidnapping, a fight to the death in a giant vat of beer, evil clowns and heroic clown impersonators. But the real stars of the film are those bombed out cities (Frankfort and Berlin) and the ever (some might say overly) optimistic script that still believes in humanity, even in the midst of such utter devastation. **1/2

 
Between Midnight and Dawn, 1950 (Gordon Douglas). Buddy cop procedural with some good action sequences. Mark Stevens and Edmond O'Brien play a couple of prowl car cops, friends and partners who both fall for the same girl, cute dispatch operator Kate Mallory (Gale Storm). When they're not wooing Kate, they're trying to bust ruthless young gangster Ritchie Garris (a comicly hammy Donald Buka), who owns a nightclub where his curvy girlfriend (Gale Robbins) sings. After they bust Garris for murder, he swears vengeance and then, after being sentenced to the death house, busts out. It all culminates in a ludicrous but semi-thrilling shootout at Robbins' apartment, with Garris using a small child as a human shield. **1/2


Bewitched, 1945 (Arch Oboler) Extremely dated, misogynistic tale of goody two-shoes Joan Ellis (Phyllis Thaxter) who suffers from schizophrenia. Namely she hears voices. Or, a voice, the voice of a wanton hussy named Karen (voiced by Audrey Totter) who wants to live, live, LIVE, damn you!!! Karen hounds Joan until she runs, screaming, from her goody two-shoes life and milquetoast fiance, Bob, lands in big, bad New York City, takes a job at a cigar stand (the horror!), and meets lawyer Eric (Stephen McNally, billed as Horace McNally), who goes gaga over Joan at first sight. Karen takes over and causes Joan to shamelessly make out with Eric like a, well, wanton hussy. Then, when good ol' Bob shows back up (he is let into her apartment by Joan's landlady and is waiting for her when she comes home, because, well, he's a man, and men know best!) and starts packing her things to take her back home, all the while cooing milquetoasty nothings in the background while Karen tells Joan to stab him in the back with a scissors, which she does, killing him. Joan, defended by Eric, natch, is convicted and sentenced to die. Enter kindly psychiatrist Dr. Bergson (Edmund Gwenn), who, with the help of still smitten Eric, convinces the governor that psychiatry is not "hocus pocus" and that Joan is actually two personalities. Under hypnosis, Karen rises from Joan's body and makes some shameless hussy faces, until good old Santa Claus -- I mean Dr. Bergson -- talks her into submission, "killing" her. Joan wakes up, smiles at Eric, and apparently all is right with the world -- they go off to live happily ever after. Moral of the story, apparently: ladies, stay at home and marry the first milquetoast who comes along, because wanting anything more for yourself is pure evil! EVIL, I say! Ha-ha-ha-ha! ** 


Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, 1956 (Fritz Lang) Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine. Fritz Lang's last American film features a plot involving ex-newspaperman-turned-novelist Dana Andrews implicating himself in a murder case to prove the death penalty should be abolished. Lang's typical brilliance and some startling plot twists you won't see coming make this well worth seeing. ***


The Big Bluff, 1955 (W. Lee Wilder) Billy Wilder's less-talented brother, W. Lee Wilder, produced and directed this fabulous no-budget B-flick about a gigolo (John Bromfield) and his no-good girlfriend (Rosemarie Bowe) and their attempt to swindle a terminally ill socialite (Martha Vickers) out of her fortune. The fabulous part comes at the end, in the form of one of the all-time great plot twists. ***


The Big Clock, 1948 (John Farrow) Ray Milland is George Stroud, overworked editor-in-chief of Crimeways Magazine, just one of the properties owned by tyrannical publishing giant Earl Janoth of Janoth Publications (Charles Laughton). Stroud, who is supposed to be on his way to the train station to meet his long-suffering wife (Maureen O'Sullivan) so that they can finally have a honeymoon after five years -- instead gets roaring drunk with Janoth's mistress (Rita Johnson), who plans to blackmail her sweaty, time-obsessed paramour. She is, of course, murdered, and George -- who was in her apartment shortly before the murder -- must find the killer before the killer finds him. Scriptwriter Jonathan Latimer (a terrific pulp novelist) keeps a darkly comedic tone and the pace swift, and Laughton, as usual, steals the whole thing, giving his character a host of oddball quirks and tics. More thriller than noir. Remade with Kevin Costner in 1987 as No Way Out. ***1/2


The Big Combo, 1955 (Joseph H. Lewis) Violent, stylish tale of obsessed police lieutenant Leonard Diamond's (Cornell Wilde) crusade to bring down fast-talking, sadistic, and seemingly untouchable gangster Mr. Brown, played with his usual high-gloss smile by Richard Conte. Diamond's obsession strays to Mr. Brown's suicidal girlfriend, Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace), but his investigation focuses on the gangster's long-missing wife, who, it turns out, got sent to a sanitarium after witnessing her hubby murder his boss on a yacht by tying him to the anchor and dropping him in. The cast also features Brian Donlevy as a hearing-impaired ex-boss who Mr. Brown keeps on the payroll so he can demean him, and Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman as the gangster's two inseparable button men (with a salami truck full of homoerotic subtext), but it's the unusually brutal script (credited to Philip Yordan, likely fronting for black-listed Ben Maddow) and the work of legendary noir cinematographer John Alton that drives this low-budget bus. The story veers too close to melodrama at times, but Alton fills The Big Combo with the brilliant visual style that defines film noir. ***1/2 


The Big Heat, 1953. Fritz Lang's powerful, often brutal story of a cop (Glenn Ford) determined to bust the crime ring that killed his wife in a car bomb meant for him. Lee Marvin cements his place as one of noir's great heavies with the famous hot coffee-tossing scene in which he scalds the face of moll Gloria Grahame. Lang's visuals - in particular his trademark use of shadows - bring the punchy material to life in a film that deservedly ranks among the best of noir, and it's certainly one of the more memorably violent pictures of the `50s. ****


The Big Operator, 1959. Quick, name a late '50s film that features Mickey Rooney, Mamie Van Doren, Mr. Magoo, Uncle Fester, Dennis the Menace, Charlie Chaplin, Jr., Vampira, and the Velvet Fog. It's none other than this cheeseball little crime drama from producer Albert Zugsmith about pint-sized dynamo union boss "Little Joe" Braun (Rooney) -- a not-so-thinly-veiled stand-in for Jimmy Hoffa -- terrorizing anyone who gets in his way. The veritable Who's Who cast of '50s and '60s kitsch includes Van Doren, Mel Torme, Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester), Jim Backus (Mr. Magoo), Jay North (Dennis the Menace), Norm Grabowski (everything from Sex Kittens Go To College to Son of Flubber), and Maila Numi, aka Vampira. The whole thing kicks off with Charlie Chaplin, Jr., being fed into a cement mixer, followed up by Mel Torme getting doused with gasoline and set on fire on his front lawn, only to show up a few minutes later sporting a bandage on his head and one on his hand but otherwise none the worse for wear. It all ends with a giant house brawl reminiscent of a Three Stooges short, minus the pies. Fifties sex bomb Mamie Van Doren, often described as a poor man's Marilyn Monroe (if that's the case, then here's all my money!!), plays the whole thing in an apron with nothing to do but dish up the roast beef and waffles as the perfect 1950s housewife to Steve Cochran, who, for once, is playing a good guy. There's some entertainment value in watching the cigar-chomping Rooney digest the scenery while the rest of this eclectic cast runs through the wackiness, but this is not, by any stretch of anyone's imagination, film noir. **


The Big Sleep, 1946 (Howard Hawks). It’s become fashionable to downgrade this atmospheric Howard Hawks adaptation of Raymond Chandler's great novel for its overt commercial aspects – the studio added scenes to cash in on the Bogie/Bacall frenzy following To Have and Have Not – and they’re right, some of it plays more like screwball comedy than noir. But there’s still an awful lot to love about it, not the least of which is Bogart inhabiting Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe, spitting out snappy lines of hard-boiled patter like only he could. And all that rye whiskey, and all those cigarettes. And Dorothy Malone as the sexy Acme Bookstore clerk ("Helloooo!"). Whether it's a true noir or not, it's still loads of fun. ****


The Big Sleep, 1978. Director Michael Winner's bloodless, paint-by-numbers color remake moves the story from Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles to London. While it's more faithful to Chandler's original novel than the 1946 version, there's very little heat in Winner's script. Robert Mitchum -- as he did in 1975's Farewell My Lovely -- plays Chandler's weary and world-wise detective Philip Marlowe, and, as always, he's terrific. Sarah Miles has the Lauren Bacall part (Charlotte Sternwood Regan), with Richard Boone, Oliver Reed, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, and James Stewart filling out the cast. While Mitchum keeps it interesting, it pales next to the original. **1/2


 
The Big Steal, 1949 (Don Siegel) Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer team up again, only this time there’s more comedy than noir in this enjoyable south-of-the-border chase flick. Call it "Fiesta Noir."  ***


The Bigamist, 1953. Ida Lupino directs and co-stars with Edmond O'Brien and Joan Fontaine in this intriguing and very human story of a man who loves two women. More melodrama than noir, but it is handled in a mature and adult way, and bolstered by great performances from all three leads. ***


Black Angel, 1946 (Roy William Neal) Stylish B-noir about a falsely convicted man's wife (June Vincent) teaming up with the murder victim's alcoholic husband (Dan Duryea) to solve the crime. Duryea is excellent in a rare sympathetic role in this pot-boiler based loosely on Cornell Woolrich's novel. Peter Lorre is smoothly terrific, as usual. ***


The Black Dahlia, 2006. Brian DePalma's convoluted, too-cute-by-half adaptation of James Ellroy's novel. With all the stars and big names littering the cast (Josh Hartnett -- out of his depth, Scarlett Johansson, Hillary Swank, Aaron Eckhardt), it's Mia Kirshner who shines as the doomed title character. DePalma, however, throws the kitchen sink at the screen, and very little of it works. **


Blade Runner, 1982. Ridley Scott's poetic, visually stunning, neo-noir sci-fi masterpiece, with Harrison Ford leading the stellar cast. In a dark, dystopian 2019 Los Angeles filled with flying cars and rainy, smoky streets, Ford plays Deckard, a retired cop/"Blade Runner," whose main talent was in tracking down and "terminating" bioengineered "replicants," who are nearly indistinguishable from humans. Engineered by the Tyrell Corporation to be used as slaves in dangerous "off-world" colonization, the replicants have been designed with short, four-year lifespans. When four replicants rebel, kill the passengers and crew of an "off-world" shuttle, and head for earth to try to extend their lifespans, Deckard is forced out of retirement to hunt them down. Rutger Hauer is brilliant as Roy Batty, the statuesque, platinum blonde leader of the replicants, who only wants more time in a world where humanity has been snuffed out by "progress." Edward James Olmos, Brion James, Darryl Hannah, William Sanderson, and Sean Young stand out as well. Deemed a failure when it was first released, Blade Runner is now, rightfully, viewed as a classic. ****


Black Tuesday, 1954. Hard as nails shotgun blast of a prison bust-out noir from Argentine director Hugo Fregonese, who worked both in his home country and in Hollywood. Edward G. Robinson gives a performance every bit as hard-bitten as his work in Little Caesar or Key Largo. As in those films, he plays a mob kingpin, ruthless, hate-filled gangster Vincent Canelli, only this time he's down to his last gasp, see, literally on the way to the electric chair when he's sprung by a daring and violent prison break that involves taking several hostages, including a reporter (Jack Kelly), a priest (Milburn Stone), a prison guard, a doctor, and the warden's daughter. Canelli also brings with him another death row inmate, Manning (Peter Graves), who killed a cop while committing a robbery. It's not that Canelli has any particular fondness for Manning, he just wants the 200 grand Manning stole and has squirreled away someplace, refusing to divulge its whereabouts despite an offer from the warden that would give Manning 10 more days to live. More time to go on breathing -- it's a theme that plays throughout the film. Canelli will sacrifice or murder anyone for an extra minute of life (except his girl, Hatti, played by Jean Parker, the only person he cares about, other than himself). With a lit firecracker of a script by Sidney Boehm (The Big Heat) and stylish camera work from cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Night of the Hunter), this is a criminally underseen noir that deserves to be better known. ***


Black Widow, 1954. Nunnally Johnson wrote, produced, and directed this DeLuxe Color mystery in Cinemascope, and it certainly looks gorgeous. Unfortunately, the story is ludicrous, the two lead actresses -- Ginger Rogers as a viciously snobbish Broadway star, and Peggy Ann Garner as a ruthless vixen -- are miscast, and, the death blow: George Raft's in it, doing his usual impression of a block of wood. Despite all that, the film is still fun to watch, due in no small part to the presence of Van Heflin -- one of film's most underrated actors -- in the lead. As far as I can tell, Heflin never gave a bad performance, and he's solid as ever here. Plus there's Charles G. Clarke's camerawork, which is worth the price of admission by itself. **1/2
​ 

Blast of Silence, 1961. Bleak, low-budget portrait of a misanthropic hit man on a job during Christmas season in Manhattan. The scenes of paid killer Frankie Bono (Allen Baron, who also wrote and directed) walking alone through the crowded city surrounded by Christmas music are particularly haunting. Told almost exclusively in narration, with a brassy jazz score, this is as desolate as it gets. ***


Blonde Ice, 1948 (Jack Bernhard) Leslie Brooks. Minor fluff about a man-eating social climber. Holds its own until the end, when it appears the producers ran out of film, and had to slap an ending on it quick. As it is, the climax plays like an episode of Scooby Doo, with the titular ice queen announcing to the psychologist who inexplicably unravels her schemes that her plan would have worked, too, if it weren't for "your silly scientific scheming!" *1/2


Blood and Money, 2020 (John Barr) Tom Berenger is terrific in this generic, poor man's version of A Simple Plan. Berenger plays Jim Reed, a recovering alcoholic Vietnam Vet who, wracked by guilt, has hidden himself away in the backwoods of northern Maine, where he lives in his custom RV and hunts deer without a license. Years ago, while driving drunk, Reed killed his daughter. Now he's ill, coughing up blood in the snow and living a lonely, solitary, quiet existence. One day, while out hunting, he accidentally shoots and kills a woman who was part of a gang that robbed a casino, making off with more than million dollars, which the dead woman was carrying in a duffel. Reed flees, leaving the duffel, but later realizes he's left evidence at the scene in the form of his distinctive brand of cigarettes, so he has to go back (shades of No Country For Old Men here) to clean up his mistake. This time, he takes the money, and soon finds himself in a life-and-death survival struggle with the rest of the gang in the snowy north woods. There's really nothing new or remarkable about Blood and Money other than Berenger's performance, and some of the location shots -- including an ice cave where Reed hides the loot. There's also nothing bad about the film. It's exciting enough, and Berenger and all that beautiful snow make for a decent thriller. **1/2 


Blood Simple, 1984 (Joel and Ethan Coen) The Coen brothers' audacious, sensational debut is a blood-soaked nightmare in which the characters are trapped in a web of betrayal and double cross. Dan Hedaya plays Marty, swarthy, brooding owner of a small town Texas bar, whose wife, Abby (Frances McDormand) is leaving him. As the film opens on a dark, rainy night, Abby is being driven down a lonely highway by Ray (John Getz), one of Marty's bartenders. After Ray confesses that he's always liked Abby, the two end up in a motel, making love, while sleazy cowboy private eye Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh in an unforgettable turn), hired by Marty to follow his wife, snaps photos through the window. Visser takes the photos to Marty, needling him. Marty hires Visser to kill the new couple -- and that's when all hell breaks loose. Visser, figuring he'll have to kill Marty anyway because he can't trust him, steals Abby's gun and doctors some photos to make it appear as if he's fulfilled his contract. He goes to Marty's bar to collect payment -- $10,000 -- and, once he collects, shoots Marty with Abby's gun and leaves it there. Unbeknownst to Visser, however, Marty has put one of Visser's photos in his safe, and Visser has also left behind another piece of incriminating evidence: his lighter, which is embossed with his name. Later, Ray shows up at the bar looking to collect his pay and finds Marty's body and Abby's pistol. Thinking Abby shot her husband, Ray cleans up the mess, puts Marty's body in the back seat of his car, and takes off down yet another dark, lonely road to bury him. But en route, Ray is creeped out when he sees that Marty's not actually dead. Pulling over next to an empty field in the middle of nowhere, Ray runs off into the night. In as chilling a scene as any noir film has ever offered, Ray stops and returns to the car, only to find the mortally wounded Marty crawling slowly down the center of the road in a pathetic attempt to escape. Then Ray, unable to finish Marty off, buries him in the field while Marty is still alive. Almost impossibly, the film keeps ratcheting up the suspense, as guilt and suspicion take hold in the new lovers' minds, while Loren tries to tie up loose ends. False assumptions and paranoia lead to a blood-curdling, heart-pounding climax that is also as darkly comic as noir comes. The Coens make it all work brilliantly, on all levels. A startling debut that signaled a major new force in cinema and neo-noir. ****


Blue Collar, 1978. Paul Schrader's directorial debut is a searing indictment of labor exploitation, consumerism, and corrupt unions. It starts off as a light caper film, with Detroit auto assembly line workers Zeke, Jerry, and Smokey -- played by Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto -- deciding they've had enough of their do-nothing union as well as their bosses at the assembly line, and, pushed to the brink financially, decide to rob their local union hall's safe for what they believe will be $10 grand. Of course, complications arise when, instead of money in the safe, all they find is a ledger filled with IOU's for the union's loan sharking. The tone of the film shifts quickly -- perhaps too quickly -- as our three buddies decide to salvage the botched robbery by shifting to blackmail, and they threaten the union with exposure in return for cash. Immediately, our heroes' lives are endangered, as union thugs show up to intimidate (and worse). 
   All three leads are terrific, with Pryor moving easily from his brand of good-natured, foul-mouthed comedy to dead-serious family man dealing with life and death issues in the film's latter half. Keitel expresses his character's sense of helpless rage extraordinarily well, and Kotto is fantastic, tough and sympathetic as the good-natured, philosophical ex-con Smokey. Is it noir? Probably not, but it's still a gritty, powerful ride. ***1/2


The Blue Dahlia, 1946 (George Marshall) Raymond Chandler scripted this atmospheric, hard-boiled noir about a Navy flier (Alan Ladd) who returns home from the war to find his wife has been unfaithful and contributed to the death of their small child by being drunk when he died. Ladd plays Jimmy Morrison, who argues with his drunken floozy of a wife (Doris Dowling) within minutes of his return from the war, packs a bag and flees out into the rain, where he is immediately picked up by Veronica Lake. Some guys have all the luck. Lake plays Joyce Harwood, who just happens to be the estranged wife of Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva), the shady nightclub owner who's been dallying with Helen, Jimmy's wife. When Helen ends up murdered, Jimmy becomes Suspect #1, which means, of course, that he must solve the case to clear his name. Hugh Beaumont and William Bendix are Jimmy's loyal Navy pals George and Buzz, the latter carrying a metal plate in his head that causes him headaches, violent spells and fits of amnesia. Chandler -- a recovering alcoholic at the time -- famously developed writer's block halfway through the script and decided the only way he could finish was to get drunk. Though he'd originally agreed to write the screenplay for nothing as a favor to producer John Houseman, he instead asked for a case of Scotch as payment. The result: he drank a lot and finished the script, which is weakened by the fact that the Navy objected to having war hero Buzz be the killer, as Chandler wrote it. The plot was changed, and the new ending -- featuring a surprise murderer -- feels off-kilter. Still, this is a tough, superior noir, and Ladd and Lake have that chemistry thing. ***1/2


 
The Blue Gardenia, 1953 (Fritz Lang) Overwrought Fritz Lang mystery with Anne Baxter as the Endangered Female who thinks she may have, while in a drunken stupor, killed sweaty sleezeball Raymond Burr. Square-jawed newspaper columnist Richard Conte comes writing to the rescue. Script is planted firmly in the ridiculous, a world where newspaper columnists can show up at crime scenes and tromp around to their heart's content, and order cops around and the cops just say, "Yes, sir!" Plus, it's simply not noir. Still, the show isn't bad until after the crime, when an overdramatic Baxter seems to see a cop around every corner. **1/2


Blues in the Night, 1941 (Anatole Litvak) Early noirish musical with a huge cast, including Richard Whorf, Priscilla Lane, Lloyd Nolan, Betty Field, Jack Carson, Wallace Ford, Howard DaSilva, Elia Kazan, and William Gillespie (uncredited, as are all the black performers in the film). This energetic tale of an itinerant group of jazz musicians (almost all the music in Blues in the Night is jazz, not blues, with a couple of notable exceptions) who get mixed up with some unsavory characters is notable for many reasons. First, it came out very early in the classic noir period, in November, 1941, just six weeks after The Maltese Falcon, considered by many to be the marker for noir's beginning. Second, the music! While it's not a true musical in that the characters don't just break into song, the music is central to the film. That's unusual for a noir film. It's also great, written mostly by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. A highlight is the early jailhouse scene, when the band's been thrown in jail after a bar brawl, and a group of black cellmates launch into a haunting version of the title song, led by Gillespie, Ernest Whitman, and Napoleon Simpson. Third, this is the film that inspired Kazan -- who cowrote the script and plays the band's clarinetist -- to try his hand at directing. As he famously stated, "I sure as hell can direct better than Anatole Litvak."
​   While Blues in the Night is often cited as just being noirish, with great noir aesthetics from cinematographer Ernest Haller, it's much more than that from a noir standpoint. This is more noir than many later films whose acceptance into the canon are never challenged. There's the theme of obsession, psychic elements reminiscent of Lost Weekend, particularly in the great montages crafted by Don Siegel, and, of course, that great noir ending. Yes, it often plays as melodrama, and the fact that Gillespie, Whitman, and Simpson are not credited is a crime, but Blues in the Night should still take its place as a pioneering noir film. *** 
 

Bob Le Flambeur, 1956 (Jean-Pierre Melville)  Precursor to French New Wave has middle-aged gambler and ex-con Bob (Roger Duchesne) plotting a casino heist. Unfortunately, on the night of the heist, he hits the lucky streak of his life. Stylish but muddled. **1/2

 
Body and Soul, 1947 (Robert Rossen) John Garfield’s gritty performance still resonates, along with powerful script and James Wong Howe’s brilliant camerawork, which elevate this boxing noir into the realm of classic. “Whattaya gonna do, kill me? Everybody dies.” ****


Body Heat, 1981. Lawrence Kasdan's steamy, sexy, loose remake of Double Indemnity stars Kathleen Turner as the scheming, seductive wife, and William Hurt as the poor shlub who falls for her, and pays the big price. Set in the midst of a heat wave in Florida, there's lots of sweaty skin on display. Though the film doesn't reach the sublime heights of the original, there's no shame in that, and Body Heat carves out its own lofty neo-noir niche. The superb cast includes Ted Danson as a dancing D.A., Richard Crenna as the doomed hubby, J.A. Preston as the by-the-book cop closing in on his buddy, and Mickey Rourke in a small but memorable role as a smarmy jailbird. This was Kasdan's directorial debut, and Turner's jaw-dropping film debut as well. Top notch stuff. ****


Bodyguard, 1948. Lawrence Tierney keeps the meat warm in this low-budget Radio Pictures programmer from director Richard Fleischer, who made some great noirs (Narrow Margin, Violent Saturday, His Kind of Woman, Armored Car Robbery, Trapped). Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. Real-life hothead Tierney brings his usual two-fisted technique and perpetual scowl to a semi-hard-boiled story about a detective investigating corruption and murder in a meatpacking plant. While Lawrence Tierney would never be confused with Olivier, you usually know what you're in for when you plunk your nickel down for a Tierney flick. Not this time. The real problem is with the script and casting, which has Tierney's file clerk and fiancee (a much too wholesome Priscilla Lane) getting involved in the investigation, bumbling around, hiding behind file cabinets while murders are being committed, and generally veering the whole thing off the rails and giving it the goofy feel of a bad Nancy Drew episode. Has its moments, but, in the end, the meat's cold. **    
 

Border Incident, 1949. Anthony Mann directs this startlingly brutal noir about immigration cops (Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy) who go undercover to stop a gang of ruthless crooks who are exploiting desperate migrant laborers by smuggling them across the border, working them under slave labor conditions, then robbing and murdering them in the desert. Noir master John Alton provides the gorgeous black and white cinematography, and a veritable who's who of noir tough guys -- including Charles McGraw, Howard DaSilva, and Jack Lambert -- play the heavies, who are as cold-blooded as any you're likely to find in noir. Tough and extremely, ahem, harrowing.  ***1/2
 

Borderline, 1950 (William A. Seiter)  Fred MacMurray, Claire Trevor. Elements of noir are overwhelmed by the screwball comedy angle in this south-of-the-border romp. **

 
Born to Kill, 1947 (Robert Wise) Sam Wilde and Helen Brent (Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor) revel in depravity in Robert Wise’s nasty tale of two psychopaths who find each other, for better or worse. Okay, it's always worse. Tierney, never subtle, is all menace, while Trevor matches him sneer for sneer. Walter Slezak, Esther Howard, and Elisha Cook, Jr., provide excellent background work in this dark film about the grimmest corners of the human psyche. As Marty (Cook) tells his unhinged pal Sam, "You can't just go around killing people when the notion strikes you. It's just not feasible."  ***1/2


The Brasher Doubloon, 1947 (John Brahm) Limp biscuit, dumbed-down adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel The High Window. George Montgomery, a staple in B-westerns from the '30s through the '60s -- both on the big and small screens -- makes for a very lightweight Philip Marlowe. One of the heavies (Fritz Kortner) is an obvious Peter Lorre stand-in. But even with the hand-me-down feel of most of the production, there's still enough Chandler here to make it fairly enjoyable, particularly when Nancy Guild is on screen. **1/2
 

The Breaking Point, 1950 (Michael Curtiz). Based on Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, this is much more faithful to the source material than the Bogie-Bacall version, and a grittier film overall, as it better captures the spirit of charter boat captain Harry Morgan (John Garfield in a brilliant performance) wrestling with his inner demons until he reaches his breaking point and finds out what kind of man will emerge. Great complimentary performances from Phyllis Thaxter as Harry's loyal wife, Wallace Ford as a shady lawyer, and Patricia Neal as the sexy dame with a yen for Harry. This is a criminally underseen film, and one of Garfield's best.   ****


Breathless (A bout de soufflé), 1960 (Jean-Luc Godard) Jean-Luc Godard's early New Wave film about a wandering criminal (Jean-Paul Belmondo) with a Bogart fixation and his American girlfriend (Jean Seberg) blew apart filmmaking conventions and attracted a lot of attention for its bold visual style. Godard's constant use of jump cuts, improvisation, and long, rambling scenes of mundane dialogue set the film-going world on its ear and still seems cool after 55 years. **** 


Brick, 2005  Writer-Director Rian Johnson's audacious debut film takes the hard-boiled writing of Dashiell Hammett and drops it dead into the unlikely setting of a modern-day suburban California high school. The results are somewhat muddled, but there is no denying its deadpan style and unique spot in the neo-noir canon. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Brendan, a distant, disheveled loner slouch who sets out to find and help his drug-using ex, Emily (Emilie de Ravin), who got in over her head with local drug lord "The Pin" (Lukas Haas) and his thuggish flunky Tug (Noah Fleiss). The dialogue (and much of the story) is straight out of Hammett by way of The Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, its impassive cool and setting right out of David Lynch, and there are enough Chinatown references -- including in Nathan Johnson's score -- to please the most ardent noir fans. The unusual setting (for a hard-boiled crime story) also veers the story briefly into poker-faced comedy at times -- like when The Pin, who lives at home, conducts business deals over cookies and juice served by his doting mother. At times violent, and the characters are little more than outlines, despite the efforts and talent of the cast, but despite its shortcomings this is a startling and singular work. ***1/2 


Broken City, 2013 (Allen Hughes). 21st century B-movie with an A-list cast looks great but lacks heat, and is let down by a half-assed script. Mark Wahlberg plays Billy Taggart, a sort of modern-day New York version of Jake Gittes -- a cheap private eye who spends his days (and nights) doing matrimonial work, peering through bedroom windows and taking pictures of cheating spouses. Like Gittes in Chinatown, Taggart is a former cop with a tragic past. In Taggart's case, he was forced to leave the police force after shooting a suspect who was let off of a rape and murder charge on a technicality. Billy was charged with murder in the shooting, but cleared by the judge, who called it self-defense. However, the scheming mayor, played by Russell Crowe in terrific over-the-top mode, received damning video evidence of Billy killing the thug in cold blood, but buried it for use later as blackmail. Flash forward seven years. The mayor, embroiled in a tight reelection campaign, hires Billy, ostensibly to investigate his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones, looking every bit the classy, Faye Dunaway-esque femme fatale), who he says is having an affair. Only, like in Chinatown, the mystery proves much murkier -- and deadlier -- than a simple adultery case. And, like in Polanski's classic, the simple snoop, just trying to make an honest living, finds himself up to his nose in a case involving corruption by the city's powerful elite via a crooked real estate deal. It's almost as if the film's screenwriter, Brian Tucker, has seen the greatest neo-noir of them all a time or two and decided to move the story east and give it a modern take. Only Tucker is no Robert Towne, and director Allen Hughes is no Roman Polanski. There are plot strands that fizzle out, leading nowhere but down dead end streets. The cast -- uniformly good -- also features Jeffrey Wright, Barry Pepper, and Israeli actress Alona Tal, who nearly steals the show as Billy's spunky, wise-cracking secretary. Mildly entertaining, but forget it, Jake, it's uninspired town. **    


The Brothers Rico, 1957 (Phil Karlson) Exciting story of man (Richard Conte) who bucks crime syndicate to get revenge for his brothers. Pat ending. **1/2


Brown's Requiem, 1998. Writer/director Jason Freeland's adaptation of James Ellroy's debut novel suffers from a funereal tone and a generic plot, but Michael Rooker -- as alcoholic ex-cop turned hard-boiled L.A. private eye Fritz Brown -- makes it worth watching. Brown, drummed off the force due to his drinking, is working as a repo man and part-time P.I. when he's hired by anti-Semitic caddy Fat Dog Baker to find out what's going on between his 17-year-old sister Jane (Selma Blair) and wealthy, 65-year-old, mob-connected, Jewish businesssman Solly K. (Harold Gould). Noir cliches abound, including Rooker's '40s-style voice-over. The script gives short shrift to a plotline involving Brown's down-and-out nephew, which could have added some needed dramatic weight. **1/2 

 
Brute Force, 1947 (Jules Dassin) Tough Jules Dassin prison noir, starring Burt Lancaster as desperate inmate Joe Collins, a powder keg of a man whose wife needs cancer surgery but won’t go under the knife unless Joe is there with her. Joe plots an elaborate escape, but when it goes wrong, it blows up into an explosive battle between the inmates and guards, led by sadistic Security Chief Hume Cronyn. Fantastic, furious ending.  ***1/2 


A Bullet for Joey, 1955 (Lewis Allen). Not even Edward G. Robinson playing a Mountie can bring this red scare snorefest to life. George Raft -- the giant Sequoia of hard-boiled actors -- plays an exiled American gangster recruited by the commies to kidnap an atomic scientist (George Dolenz, father of Mickey of the Monkees!). Audrey Totter is the wooden one's former flame blackmailed into helping with the scheme, and Edward G. is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detective who's on the case. Ponderous and plodding. **
 

The Burglar, 1957 (Paul Wendkos) Dan Duryea finally gets a starring vehicle, and brother does he run with it in this gritty little gem based on David Goodis' novel (he also wrote the script) about a jewel heist with broader themes of love and loyalty. Always a great character actor but usually playing the slick heavy, Duryea plays Nat, a sad-eyed career crook with a past and a soft spot for his little "sister," Gladden, played deliciously by Jayne Mansfield. The two are part of a small gang of thieves who steal a valuable necklace from a fake spiritualist, and then have to lay low until things cool down before fencing their boodle. Things begin to go awry when Charlie, a crooked cop (Stewart Bradley) gets wise to the scheme and attempts to cut himself in for the whole prize. As tensions -- sexual and other -- mount amongst the bickering family of thieves, Charlie and his partner, Della (Martha Vickers), go to work on Nat and Gladden. Directed with a lot of Wellesian flourishes by Paul Wendkos, this is a treat for noir fans. ***1/2


The Burglars, 1971 (Henri Verneuil) Takes the smoldering, claustrophobic David Goodis tale The Burglar - adapted in 1957 with Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield -- and turns it into a mostly forgettable lightweight international caper flick. Instead of a pulpy character study tinged with sexual longing, we get pointless car chases, a lot of even more pointless jibber-jabber, splashy colors, goofy 1960s modern dance numbers, and an athletic Jean-Paul Belmondo performing an ostentatious stunt or two (to be fair, one of them is truly jaw-dropping). Belmondo takes on the central role, trading in Duryea's brooding desperation for a glib cool. He's fun to watch, bursting with energy and magnetism, but it's all in the service of a superficial silliness. Instead of Duryea pining after his "sister" and fellow gang member -- played by Mansfield in the original -- we get Belmondo dallying (pointlessly) with a smiley model (Dyan Cannon), and Omar Sharif as the sadistic, crooked cop, trading lots of supposedly witty banter with Belmondo. Which, in the end, adds up to a lot of pointless talk. There are some fun bits, but in the end they don't add up to much. Are you getting the drift? The main point is that this is all pretty pointless, and not really noir. **


The Burnt Orange Heresy, 2020 (Giuseppe Capotondi) Slow burning art-world noir based on Charles Willeford's 1971 novel asks some interesting questions about truth and art, and manages to tell a dark and twisted tale in an entertaining way at the same time. Danish actor Claes Bang plays raffish failed artist-turned critic James Figueras, a man with a disreputable past that could end what's left of his career if it became public knowledge. When we first meet James, he's giving a lecture in Milan about the dangers of trusting "experts" like himself. In the audience is Berenice (Elizabeth Debicki), a young and mysterious traveler from America, who, as it turns out, would have been wise to take his warning to heart. The two fall into a casual one-night stand, which could have ended there but instead James invites Berenice to accompany him to the Lake Como villa of wealthy and manipulative art collector Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger!). Cassidy has invited James to discuss a scheme he's cooked up, which involves blackmailing James to "procure" a painting by the legendary reclusive artist, Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland), who lives in a cottage on the property. Things, of course, go terribly wrong in a way that should surprise no one. A glossily stylish noir with terrific performances from all four principles. *** 


Bury Me Dead, 1947 (Bernard Vorhaus) Even the presence of legendary noir cinematographer John Alton and noir lovely Cathy O'Donnell (They Live By Night) couldn't save this mess. Film doesn't know whether it wants to be a screwball comedy or a dark-hearted noir. It begins as the latter, when June Lockhart (the mom on Lassie!) shows up as a mourner at her own funeral! So far, so noir, but things swiftly devolve into screwy hijinks from which Bury Me Dead never recovers, and the film quickly abandons its promising noir premise. The presence of Lockhart and Hugh Beaumont (the dad on Leave It To Beaver) together in what's supposedly a noir makes this something of a curiosity, but the comic elements overwhelm any hints at this reaching noir territory, and on top of everything the jokes don't even work. * 


Cage of Evil, 1960 (Edward L. Cahn). Cheapo rogue cop head-shaker about a good detective who falls for the wrong dame -- the girlfriend of a diamond thief he's pursuing. Flatly directed and acted, with a plot reminiscent of the much better Pushover. Frustrated Detective Scott Harper (Ron Foster), continually passed over for promotion, is assigned to cozy up to Holly, the girlfriend of Romack, a jewel thief who's just pulled off a heist in which the jeweler was killed. Harper's supposed to canoodle with Holly and wait for Romack to show up, but when he and the dish (Pat Blair) fall in love, they hatch a screwy plot to kill Romack and make off with the boodle. As their plan unravels, so does the film, with the lovebirds making one dopey decision after another. They're not alone, either. Harper's fellow detectives have to be the dumbest cops ever put on celluloid. With a droning voice-over by Harper's boss, Inspector Dan Melrose (John Maxwell), this is a cut-rate pork chop without the applesauce. **


Caged, 1950 (John Cromwell) Powerful evocation of women behind bars features great performances from all involved, especially Eleanor Parker, Hope Emerson, and Agnes Moorehead. Parker really shines as a young, innocent girl who's thrown in prison with hardened criminals, and ends up becoming just like them. Emerson is the brutal prison guard and Moorehead the decent, crusading warden trying against all odds to change a flawed and inhumane prison system.  ***


Calcutta, 1947 (John Farrow) Typical fast-paced adventure yarn shot entirely on Paramount's backlot with Alan Ladd and William Bendix as pilots who fly "over the hump" from Calcutta to Chungking. When their flyboy buddy gets bumped off shortly after announcing his engagement to the comely Gail Russell, the two pilot pals resolve to find out who did it. Of course! Because ... they're pilots! There's more than a passing resemblance to The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca here, with lots of "exotic" touches -- even a beer-swilling monkey! It all adds up to an entertaining but run-of-the-mill actioner, elevated by the presence of the three stars, especially Ladd, who gives one of his typically engaging tough-guy performances.  **1/2


Call Northside 777, 1948. Henry Hathaway directed this plodding, mildly potent "semi-documentary," based on real events and shot at the actual locations where the events took place. James Stewart plays a dogged Chicago reporter assigned to investigate a classified ad placed in the newspaper, in which a $5,000 reward is offered for information regarding the murder of a police officer 11 years earlier. After tracing the ad to a local scrubwoman, who is literally on her hands and knees scrubbing floors when he interviews her, Stewart's character discovers that she's the mother of Frank Wiecek, one of the men (played by Richard Conte) imprisoned for the cop's murder. She managed to save the reward money from scrubbing floors for the past decade plus. Brother, that's a lot of floorwax! Needless to say, she believes her son is innocent. Stewart's performance drives the film, which was the first Hollywood feature to be shot on location in Chicago. Unfortunately, the screenwriters chose to change the facts of the real case -- that the newspaper was able to prove that the eyewitness who fingered Joseph Majczek (the real-life Wiecek) was strongarmed by Chicago police into identifying him as one of the killers. Instead, the film has newspapermen enlarging a photograph to reveal the date on a newspaper to prove the witness had seen Wiecek before picking him out of a police lineup. The use of what, at the time, was new technology was in keeping with 20th Century Fox's fascination for portraying technological advancements being used to solve crimes. This can be seen earlier in the film as well, in a long and quite tedious sequence when Wiecek takes a polygraph test. These gizmos might have been cutting edge back in 1948, but they're old hat now, and, frankly, these long segments slow the film down and make it feel dated. Still, lots of noir photography helps, but in the end, the story -- about a crusading reporter out to free an innocent man -- is not nearly noir, and not as exciting as it could have been. **1/2


The Card Counter, 2021 (Paul Schrader) Complex, slow-burning story about a man seeking redemption for atrocities he committed in the past. Oscar Isaac plays William Tell, a former Abu Ghraib prison guard who committed terrible crimes against humanity, just as he was trained and ordered to do by his superiors, who all skated scot-free while he and a handful of other low-rankers paid the price. But surprisingly, Tell didn't mind prison all that much, so it wasn't very fulfilling as far as punishment goes. When he gets out after ten years, he becomes a gambler, counting cards, but careful not to win too much, lest he anger the casino bosses. He lives frugally, staying at cheap motels instead of glitzy casino hotels. He seems to have no one in his life, living like a monk on the road, with only his nightly flashbacks to the crimes he witnessed and committed in the service of his country. He is offered an opportunity by a "backer," La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who runs a stable of gamblers who are backed by wealthy investors for a portion of their winnings, but he declines. He prefers his solitary, low-key existence, even though he's attracted to La Linda.
   Enter Cirk (pronounced Kirk, played by Tye Sheridan), the son of another prison guard at Abu Ghraib, who recognizes Tell when Tell wanders into a presentation at a security industry convention being held at the same Atlantic City casino where Tell is gambling. The speaker is Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), a civilian contractor who trained both Tell and Cirk's father in torture techniques, then vanished when the shit hit the fan, leaving his trainees to take the fall. Cirk's father became a drug addict and violent domestic abuser, who beat Cirk and his mother. His mother left, his father killed himself. Now Cirk is plotting revenge. He wants to capture, torture, and kill Gordo for what he did to his family. In Cirk, Tell sees an opportunity for redemption. He takes the young man under his wing, and brings him along as he travels from one casino to another. Tell's plan is to save Cirk's life by offering him money for college and to pay off his debts, in addition to getting him to reconnect with his mother. In exchange for what comes to $150 k, he wants Cirk to drop his plan for revenge against Gordo. In order to bankroll all of this, Tell calls La Linda and tells her he's reconsidered her offer and wants in after all.
   What unfolds then is what puts the noir in The Card Counter's status as a neo-noir, as Tell finds that, in the end, he cannot escape his past, that his life, from the moment he met Gordo and followed his orders, is like a circle (pronounced circle) with no end and no way out. 
   Written and directed by Paul Schrader, The Card Counter recalls another film that he wrote: Taxi Driver. Though it might be a bit too muted and doesn't come near the dizzying heights of that film, The Card Counter -- with a superb performance by Isaac at its center -- offers a powerful and damning commentary on a vile part of our nation's recent history that we've somehow managed to almost completely cover up in nice, clean white linen. ***


Caught, 1949 (Max Ophuls) Young model Leonora Eames (Barbara Bel Geddes) marries dashing but deranged millionaire Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan), but grows more unhappy by the day because he doesn't really love her. She eventually gives up his mansion and millions to move into a dingy apartment and take a job as a secretary to Dr. Larry Quinada (James Mason). Leonora quickly falls in love with the kindly doc, but when she finds out she's pregnant with her wacko hubby's child, she moves back to the mansion, so she can hole up in her room and ignore her overbearing hubby's phone calls. Great performances by all three stars, and Ophuls' direction is quite stylish. Unfortunately, the story -- particularly the oddball ending -- is a lot of hooey, and not noir. **

 
Cause for Alarm, 1951 (Tay Garnett)  Entertaining but ludicrous tale of a 50s housewife’s “most terrifying day of my life!” Loretta Young is the housewife, whose bedridden hubby (Barry Sullivan) delusionally thinks she’s having an affair with his best friend and doctor, and the two are plotting to kill him. He writes a letter to the D.A. detailing the “plot,” then drops dead. The rest of the film is Young racing around trying to recover the letter from various postal employees. **1/2


Chandler, 1971 (Paul Magwood)  Wanted to be an homage to Chandler, Raymond, but not the presence of Warren Oates, Charles McGraw, or even the sublime Leslie Caron in all her loveliness can rescue this mess. Oates plays a down-and-out shlub, a former P.I. who's toiling away as a rent-a-cop guarding computers in some joyless urban hellscape when he up-and-quits mid-shift. The next day he's ostensibly hired to protect a gorgeous witness (Caron -- who's only here because she was married to Michael S. Laughlin, the producer of this lead balloon) from a mobster. What happens next is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and stuffed into an inexplicable, jibbering ball of confusion. It's too bad, really. This turducken might have been a lot of fun, given the cast. Magwood blamed the jumble on MGM's meddling head James Aubrey, who hijacked the film in the editing process, but who knows. Pretty much unwatchable, and such a waste. *

 
The Chase, 1946 (Arthur Ripley)  WWII vet Bob Cummings gets involved with vicious gangster Steve Cochran and his wife in this potboiler based on the Cornell Woolrich novel, The Black Path of Fear. Unfortunately, this adaptation is ridiculous, plodding, unintelligible hokum. **


Chicago Calling, 1951. Dan Duryea stars in this slight, downbeat, below sea-level budget drama about a good guy drunk who suddenly finds himself in a desperate situation. Coming home after his latest toot, unemployed L.A. photographer Bill Cannon finds his lovely, long-suffering wife Mary (Mary Anderson) packing her bags. She's finally had enough, and she's taking their young daughter Nancy and going to live with her folks in Baltimore, having found a cheap ride with some strangers in a newspaper ad. Despondent after losing his family, Bill does what comes naturally, he gets drunk with an alcoholic pal and crashes on his couch (much to the chagrin of his drunk pal's wife). By the time Bill shuffles home to his dingy Bunker Hill apartment, he finds a telegram from his wife saying that Nancy's been seriously injured in a car accident in Chicago, and that she'll call tomorrow after the girl's surgery. But, as is the way with losers, the telephone man also happens to be there, turning Bill's phone off for non-payment. Suddenly, Bill needs $53 to reconnect his phone by tomorrow or he'll miss the call. The script, co-written by director John Reinhardt (High Tide, The Guilty, For You I Die) and Peter Berneis, does a good job keeping things realistic and Bill sympathetic as he scrambles around town trying to raise the dough. The people he crosses paths with are both kind-hearted and cold. In the former category are the good-natured telephone guy, an outdoor hamburger stand waitress who lends him 5 bucks, and scrappy neighborhood kid Bobby, played by "gee whiz, mister" child actor Gordon Gebert, who you may recognize as Janet Leigh's son in the Robert Mitchum holiday classic Holiday Affair. Bobby offers to crack open his piggy bank and give Bill the money to pay his bill, but entanglements ensue with Bobby's hard-hearted sister and her high-rolling fiance. The whole thing works itself to a rather surprising conclusion, but could be just another forgotten cheapie if not for Duryea's powerhouse performance as a man on the verge of losing what little he's got left. The authenticity of the story is enhanced by great location shooting around L.A.'s Bunker Hill neighborhood, quite familiar to noir fans from classics like Criss Cross and Kiss Me Deadly. But it's Duryea who really takes this one to a higher weight class. So great in so many supporting roles as the snarling, slap-happy bad guy, he gets a chance here to play a sympathetic lead -- as he did in 1957's The Burglar -- and he makes the most of it, proving, once again, that he really is one of the best and most memorable actors of the '40's and '50s. Not quite noir, perhaps, but who cares? It's Duryea! ***


China Moon, 1994. Twisty Florida noir is a pale echo of Body Heat -- which itself was a remake of Double Indemnity. Film is unconvincing in nearly every way, but it's almost saved by Ed Harris' powerful performance and the sultry presence of the gorgeous Madeleine Stowe. Harris plays Kyle Bodine, a small-town Florida detective swept away by a gorgeous femme fatale Rachel Munro (Stowe), who is plotting to kill her abusive, cheating husband (Charles Dance with a really bad southern accent). Benicio del Toro is excellent as Harris' bored partner, Lamar, who's not nearly as good at his job as Kyle is. Some of the sets feel amateurish -- especially the lake where Kyle and Rachel go skinnydipping, and where they dump the husband's body in a torrential downpour that somehow doesn't seem to muss Stowe's hair. A B-film, but it has its pleasures. **
 

Chinatown, 1974 (Roman Polanski) It doesn't get more exquisitely noir than Roman Polanski's hauntingly beautiful and devastating indictment of corruption in early 20th century L.A. Jack Nicholson stars as Jake Gittes, a sleazy yet honorable bedroom dick investigating what seems at first like a simple adultery case, but instead leads to much more, a web of deceit that turns into murder and conspiracy involving the city's water supply. Polanski flawlessly directs Robert Towne's brilliant screenplay, and Jerry Goldsmith's unforgettable score provides a beautifully layered background. Faye Dunaway and John Huston are excellent as the beguiling femme fatale (or is she just a victim?) Evelyn Mulwray and her venal father, the rich and powerful Noah Cross, who can get away with ... anything. And then there's Nicholson, at his absolute best as the wise-cracking snoop, who spends half the movie with a giant bandage on his nose, courtesy of a knife-wielding gangster played by Polanski himself. Top notch on every level. What's the greatest noir ever made? Is it Double Indemnity? Sunset Boulevard? Out Of the Past? Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown. *****  

 
Christmas Holiday, 1944 (Robert Siodmak) Tepid tale of the marriage between a New Orleans chanteuse -- played by child superstar Deanna Durbin -- and a charming mama's boy (Gene Kelly!), which goes off the rails when Kelly reveals himself to be a nutjob and a murderer. A side story about a G.I. stuck in town on his way to try to talk his ex-fiancée out of marrying another guy feels tacked on, but at least it spices up the otherwise ho-hum goings on a bit. Notable for the involvement of its stars, but that's about it. Not one of noir legend Siodmak's better efforts. **


City of Fear, 1959 (Irving Lerner) Vince Reicher (Vince Edwards) breaks out of San Quentin with a canister he stole from the prison hospital, and heads for L.A. He thinks the canister is filled with heroin, but it’s really stuffed full of radioactive powder known as “Cobalt-60,” a substance dangerous enough to kill everyone in the city. What he also doesn't know is that exposure to the element is slowly killing him. While the cops patrol the city with geiger counters in a desperate search for the clueless convict, Vince holes up in the warehouse of a crooked shoe salesman, waiting for his payoff. Unintentionally hilarious. **

 
City That Never Sleeps, 1953 (John H. Auer) Interesting tale of a night in the life of second-generation Chicago beat cop Johnny Kelly (Gig Young), who’s about to make the worst decision of his life, i.e., leave the police force and his wife for nightclub dancer Sally “Angel Face” Connors. Needing cash to head west, Johnny’s made a deal with corrupt lawyer Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold) to “arrest” his slick henchman, Hayes Stewart (the great William Talman), only instead of taking Stewart to jail, Johnny’s supposed to drive him to Indiana, where Stewart’s wanted for manslaughter. Stewart, though, is no fool, but he is fooling around with Biddel’s wife (sultry-eyed noirlot Marie Windsor). Throw in Johnny’s kid brother, Stubby, who’s been hanging around Stewart and is in danger of making a life-changing mistake himself, a “mechanical man” mime who’s in love with Angel Face, and Chill Wills as a veteran cop who rides along with Johnny on his fateful night dispensing pearls of wisdom, and you’ve got one great film. But wait, there's more! Film is narrated -- through an occasional voice-over -- by the city itself! Only quibble: some really bad police work at the Silver Frolics, in which veteran cops arrest Stewart for gunning down Biddel, but fail to even frisk him for the gun! ***1/2 


The Clay Pigeon, 1949. Humdrum hokum with bland performances from leads Bill Williams and Barbara Hale. Former POW Jim Fletcher (Williams) -- accused of turning traitor and causing the death of his war buddy -- goes on the lam with his supposed victim's wife (Hale) to clear his name and find out what really happened to his pal. Despite being directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Carl Foreman, this cheapo RKO programmer is as dull as day-old oatmeal. **


Cloudburst, 1951. Interesting Hammer Studios revenge tale features the always fun to watch American actor Robert Preston as British code breaker John Graham, who, in postwar London, runs a team of crack code breakers for the British Foreign Office. When his beloved wife, Carol (Elizabeth Sellars), with whom John is expecting their first child, is brutally run down by a pair of ruthless killers on the run, John decides to take matters into his own hands, using the very particular set of skills he learned as a resistance fighter during the war. ***


Cold in July, 2014. Director Jim Mickle's rural noir starts off with great promise, but then morphs into a Rolling Thunder-style sort of violent revenge/exploitation flick, with the two halves so disparate that it feels like two completely separate movies. Michael C. Hall plays a small-town regular guy, a Texas business owner who shoots a home intruder one night, which, this being Texas, means the dead man's family -- in this case, his father (Sam Shepard) -- is going to come seeking revenge. But a devilish twist throws everything we originally thought was happening into question, at which point Don Johnson enters the scene, and movie #2 commences. Which is really too bad, because I'd really like to see the rest of the original film. As it is, Cold in July is two halves of two films that could have been pretty good, but, stuck together in its present form unfortunately makes for one complete mess. **


Collateral, 2004. Michael Mann's violent, pulse-pounding thriller about an L.A. taxi driver kidnapped and forced to drive a hitman around the sprawling city at night while he murders his targets is visually striking, but gutshot by a ludicrous story that slowly bleeds the life out of the film. Tom Cruise as Vincent, the nihilistic assassin, and Jamie Foxx as cab driver Max, give mostly excellent performances that propel this typically stylish Mann production, but Stuart Beattie's script is too talky and dumb for this to rise to the level of Mann's best work. Right from the get-go, the story begs the question, what kind of hitman hires a cab to do his dirty work? Why doesn't Vincent just rent a car? And that's not the only contrivance that feels farfetched. Yes, it's an action-packed thrill ride, but even the action gets too generic in the third act. As for its neo-noir label, Collateral lacks the moral ambiguity required in its central character (Foxx's Max) to make it a bonafide noir. **1/2


A Colt Is My Passport, 1967. Stylish, hard-boiled Nikkatsu noodle noir with spaghetti western overtones, starring chipmunk-cheeked tough guy Joe Shishido as a hitman hired by the yakuza to rub out a rival gang's boss, only to be betrayed and targeted by both sides. After pulling off the bump-off, Shishido -- who had his cheekbones surgically augmented in 1957 for some reason, making him look like he has a perpetual case of the mumps -- and his partner (Jerry Fujido) hide out in a cheap trucker hotel outside of Yokohama where, with the help of a fetching hotel maid (Chitose Kobayashi), they plan to make their getaway on a barge bound for foreign shores. Before their ship comes in, however, the bad guys catch up with them, leading to an audacious shootout at a desolate landfill overlooking the docks. Fantastic, gritty film with the final, explosive showdown reminiscent of the best of Sergio Leone. Of particular note is the fabulous score by Harumi Ibe, which mimics Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores for Leone. ***1/2


The Come On, 1956. Cheapo from Allied Artists about a big galoot fisherman who falls for the wrong dame and ends up getting tangled in a plot involving murder and blackmail. Sterling Hayden plays Dave Arnold, the galoot, and Anne Baxter is Rita Kendrick, the tempting seductress who reels him in. It all starts on a secluded beach in La Paz, Mexico, where bikini-clad Rita steps out of the surf to find a stranger -- big Dave -- shamelessly ogling her from the palm trees. He puts the moves on her (or is it the other way around?), and before you can say "bad idea" the two of them are canoodling to some corny romantic dialog that stinks like yesterday's fishsticks. It turns out that Rita is "married" to a much older man, and the two are con artists working a blackmail scheme on a series of besotted (and married) old fools. But now that Rita's met the big hunk of her life (Dave), she wants out, but with her half of their sizeable boodle. Only her slimy hubby won't let her go, so Rita asks Dave to help her blow him up. There's the world's least surprising faked death, a murder, some more cornball dialogue, and lots of bad acting. The plot has the makings of a juicy noir, but director Russell Birdwell and screenwriters Whitman Chambers and Warren Douglas cut every corner, and the whole schmeer ends up inducing belly laughs. Still, it's more entertaining than it has any right to be, even if (or perhaps because) the laughs are unintentional. **


Cop Hater, 1959 (William Berke)  Low-key, low-budget police procedural based on an Ed McBain novel about the hunt for a killer who's picking off cops in the middle of a heat wave in New York City. Robert Loggia and Gerald O'Loughlin star as a pair of buddy cops working the case and trying to keep their cool. Dynamic location shooting adds a gritty feel. Look for Jerry Orbach in his screen debut as the leader of a gang of street hoods. **1/2

 
Cornered, 1945 (Edward Dmytryck)  Dick Powell is excellent in this RKO post-war revenge tale. After the end of WWII, former POW fly-boy Powell searches for the French traitor who ordered the killing of his young bride, a member of the French Resistance. ***
 

Crack-Up, 1946 (Irving Reis) Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor. Middling psychological thriller about an art critic who survives a train wreck that may or may not have actually taken place. **1/2

   
Crime of Passion, 1957 (Gerd Oswald) Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden. Unusual, adult, hard-edged, slightly melodramatic, classic noir that’s both progressive and subversive in its feminist depiction of 50s suburban housewife hell. Stanwyck is terrific, as usual, as a talented newspaper columnist determined not to suffer the dull fate of 50s conformity most women aspired to. But then she falls for tough cop Sterling Hayden and replaces her own career with ambition for her hunky hubby, who she’ll go to any lengths for, including adultery and murder. This is grown up stuff handled in a grown up manner, with a tough, noir ending reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon, without the frills. ****


Crime Wave, 1954. Sterling Hayden chews his way through a thousand toothpicks, and André de Toth's brilliant direction featuring some of noir's finest location shooting (showing off 1952 Los Angeles) make this one stand out. The film opens with three brutal crooks (Ted de Corsia, Charles Buchinsky -- later changed to Bronson -- and Ned Young), just busted out of the big house, committing a gas station holdup during which they gun down a cop. Desperate, the killers make their way to the home of former jail buddy Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson), who is now married and trying to stay straight. Lacey's reluctantly caught in the middle, as tough-as-nails Police Lieutenant Sims puts the squeeze on him while the killers threaten his pretty wife, Ellen (Phyllis Kirk), promising to kill her if he doesn't help them in a bank heist. Timothy Carey -- one of the true oddballs of noir -- rounds out the cast, mugging his way through another part, but it's De Toth and cinematographer Bert Glennon's location camerawork that make this sing. ***1/2

 
The Crimson Kimono, 1959. Sam Fuller's not-so-big but plenty brash buddy cop film opens with as big a bang as you'll find on celluloid, as stripper Sugar Torch finishes her sexy strip-tease in an L.A. burlesque house, then is gunned down on a busy Little Tokyo street as she flees barefoot -- and half-naked -- from a gun-toting killer. The plot in this mystery, however, becomes secondary to its rare portrayal (for an American film in the '50s) of racial tension, personified here by a love triangle between two cops – partners and best friends, one of them  Japanese-American – and a white girl. The two cops are played by newcomers Glen Corbett and James Shigetta -- both actors making their film debuts, and Australian actress Victoria Shaw, in just her third film, plays the object of their affection, while veteran Brit actress Anna Lee adds a boatload of color as Mac, the salty, middle-aged, cigar-chomping, bon-mot-dropping female painter. Fuller and cinematographer Sam Leavitt filmed largely on location in Los Angeles -- and specifically in Little Tokyo -- and fill the film with stylistic flourishes, jagged pacing, and shot-from-the-hip set-ups that show why Fuller was so revered by French New Wave directors like Godard and Truffaut. As usual for a Sam Fuller film, The Crimson Kimono is unconventional, at times discordant and chaotic, and, above all, never boring. ***  


Criss Cross, 1949 (Robert Siodmak). Underrated and underseen, Robert Siodmak's tale of obsessive love and fate is simply one of the very best noirs ever made, one of those rare films that gets better every time you see it. Daniel Fuchs' script crackles with poetic melancholy, Franz Planer fills the screen with hauntingly beautiful shots, and the cast -- led by Burt Lancaster -- is uniformly great. Reuniting with director Siodmak after their success with The Killers, Lancaster plays Steve Thompson, a man who seals his dark fate when he returns to Los Angeles to find his ex-wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo) -- who he's obsessed with -- eager to rekindle their love against all better judgment. Steve gets a job as an armored car driver, but is floored when Anna runs off to marry notorious hoodlum Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea, always terrific but even better here in a beautifully understated performance). Unable to keep himself from Anna, Lancaster begins seeing her again, only to be discovered by Dundee. To cover up their affair, Lancaster convinces Dundee that he only met Anna to get Slim's help in robbing an upcoming payroll shipment he will be driving. The hood falls for the lie, which triggers a series of dark and foreboding events that ultimately lead to violence and death in one of the classic film noir endings. ****1/2


The Crooked Way, 1949 (Robert Florey). There's a lot to like for fans of the dark cinema in this post-war amnesia noir, chief among them the work of ace cinematographer John Alton, who gives the picture the look that noir fans crave. With most of the picture set at night or in the dark, Alton gets a lot of opportunity to show his stuff. And boy, does he come through. The visuals in this movie are off the charts, from the opening scene when wounded war vet Eddie Rice (John Payne) sits in a darkened room while a doctor shows him x-rays of the shrapnel embedded in his skull, the light from the x-ray gizmo backlighting Payne, making him a ghostly silhouette. And that's just the start. There's Eddie and his ex-wife Nina in her house, silhouetted against a back-lit window; a car enveloped by the night as it speeds into the dark; Eddie sitting alone in his seedy hotel room with a neon light blinking on-and-off through the window. You get the idea. This picture has got the look, in spades. There's also the presence of familiar noir weasel Percy Helton as the pathetic Petey, one of the best noir roles of his long, homoncular career. Then there's the story, which, though nothing special, is classic noir: Eddie, wounded in the war, has no memory of who he is, courtesy of that shrapnel in his brain. The injury has given him permanent amnesia, according to the doc who treats him in that opening scene. The only thing Eddie knows is that he's from Los Angeles, so he heads there to see if he can figure out his identity. Only what he finds out is that he's really a gangster and a heel, who, before he enlisted, abused his wife and ratted out his former partner, the ruthless hood Vince Alexander, on a manslaughter rap. And to finish off the noir blueprint, there's the beautiful dame, Nina (Ellen Drew), the wife Eddie ran out on, who is now working as a shill in Vince's gambling joint. All that adds up to a couple of handfuls of noirvana, even with Sonny Tufts playing Vince. Tufts, notorious for his atrocious acting skills, disappoints by turning in a wildly entertaining performance, perhaps the best of his career -- up until the end when [SPOILER ALERT] he gives an inimitably Tuftsian twist to his fabulously over-the-top death scene, complete with hilarious death snarl. ***


Cruel Gun Story, 1964. Brutal, post-war Japanese heist noir from Nikkatsu studios stars chubby-cheeked tough guy extraordinaire Joe Shishido as Togawa, a cool ex-con hired to boss an armored truck robbery. Togawa, who wears sunglasses in almost every scene, day or night, indoors or out, has just finished serving two years for killing the truck driver who ran over and paralyzed his kid sister (Chieko Matsubara). Sprung early from the big house by crime boss Matsumoto -- through crooked lawyer Ito, who also believes in indoor eyeshades -- Togawa is tasked with pulling off the tricky heist of 120 million yen, which is a lot of yen, apparently. Togawa takes the job to pay for an operation so his sister can walk again, making him a sympathetic figure, even though he's a cold-blooded killer. This being noir, however, the heist devolves into betrayal, kidnapping, murder, and sewer-sloshing. Film recalls Stanley Kubrick's great heist noir The Killing. Shishido, sporting his trademark surgically augmented cheekbones, delivers the hard-guy cool, and film has a great noir ending. It's a bit one note, but it also has something to say about post-war Japan abandoning its traditions in favor of a future heavily influenced by the U.S. ***


 
Cry Danger, 1951 (Robert Parrish) Dick Powell continued his transformation from 30s laughing boy crooner to tough noir guy and is great, as usual. He plays Rocky Mulloy, fresh from serving five years of a life sentence for robbery and murder. He’s been sprung by a disabled marine, who figures if he clears Rocky with a false alibi, the grateful ex-con will split the loot from his robbery with him. Rocky keeps telling everyone he’s innocent, but no one believes him. But Rocky knows who pulled the job: his best friend, Danny, who was also found guilty of the crime and is still in prison. Rocky, out to find the missing loot, moves in to the trailer park where Danny’s fetching wife, Nancy (Rhonda Fleming), lives. William Conrad adds heft as a sleazy gangster. Satisfying noir actioner, elevated by the ever smooth and eminently watchable Powell. ***


Cry of the City, 1948. Robert Siodmak and cinematographer Lloyd Ahern use vivid location shots to deliver the noir visual elements -- the dark, rain-splattered city streets, creeping shadows, traffic noise and police sirens that evoke from the urban landscape the hopelessness and despair of the corrupt city. The narrative is a bit more run-of-the-mill. Childhood friends from New York's Little Italy ghetto took different paths: one, Martin Rome (Richard Conte) is a slick career criminal, now in custody in a hospital, near death from bullet wounds sustained in a shootout in which he killed a cop; the other, Lt. Candella (Victor Mature, terrific) is a sincere and kindly cop, determined to knock Marty off the pedestal the crook's kid brother, Tony, has put him on. When a crooked shyster (Berry Kroeger) visits Marty in the hospital, points out that Marty's already going to the chair for the cop killing and offers him 10 grand to take the fall for a jewel robbery in which Mrs. de Grazia was tortured to death so that the shyster's client and partner can walk free, also threatening Marty's mysterious girlfriend, Tina (because the jewel thief had a female partner), Marty breaks out. What follows is Marty, weak from his wounds, limping around the city trying to clear Tina and raise enough money to escape with his girl, with Candella and his partner (Fred Clark) in hot pursuit. While Candela tries to persuade Tony  not to follow in his brother's footsteps, Marty proves his point by using everyone around him, including former girlfriend Brenda (Shelley Winters) and even his own mother (Mimi Aguglia). Towering Hope Emerson stands out from an excellent cast as the giant, menacing masseuse who was the real accomplice in Mrs. de Grazia's killing. The scene in which she takes in the ailing fugitive Rome and begins to give him a soothing massage, only to begin strangling him to find out where the missing jewels are, is powerfully done. ***


Cry of the Hunted, 1953. Joseph H. Lewis swamp noir is entertaining enough, albeit mostly for the ultra transparent homoerotic subtext between the two lead characters, obsessive lawman Tunner (Barry Sullivan) and Jory (Vittorio Gassman), the escaped convict he's chasing from the big city to the Louisiana bayou. At the beginning of the film, the two fight and wrestle each other to exhaustion, then recline against a bed smoking cigarettes. They even dream about each other. William Conrad adds some color as a gruff cop who clashes with Tunner and waits for him to screw up so he can take his job. **1/2 


Cry Terror, 1958. Tense but far-fetched thriller from the Stones -- Andrew and Virginia -- husband and wife movie-making team of low-cost thrillers like Highway 301, The Night Holds Terror, and Julie. In this one, a nice little middle class family (James Mason, Inger Stevens, and their little girl) are taken hostage by a criminal mastermind/mad bomber (bow-tie-wearing Rod Steiger) and his motley gang, played by Neville Brand, Jack Klugman, and Angie Dickinson. **1/2 


 
Cry Vengeance, 1954 (Mark Stevens) Tough, unusual, big-hearted story of ex-San Francisco cop Vic Barron (Stevens), framed by gangsters and disfigured in the car bomb that killed his wife and child. After serving three years in San Quentin, Vic is released, and immediately, as the title suggests, cries vengeance. He goes after the man he thinks is responsible for the crime, ex-gangster Tino Morelli, who has gone legit and is hiding out in Ketchikan, Alaska, with his adorable little daughter. Barron heads to the last frontier, followed by slick, sadistic hitman Roxey, played convincingly by Skip Homeier, and his moll-with-a-heart-of-gold (and a liver of booze), Lily (Joan Vohs). Once in Ketchikan, single-minded Vic is aided by saloon owner Peggy Harding (Martha Hyer), who takes an immediate shine to the broken, scarfaced Vic, as does Morelli’s little girl. Well acted all the way around, and the on-location filming in Ketchikan gives it something extra. Surprisingly touching, effective little film. *** 


D.O.A., 1950 (Rudolf Mate). "All I did was notorize a bill of sale!" Uniquely and perversely entertaining, this low budget classic holds a special place in the dark hearts of noir lovers. The film is largely driven by noir stalwart Edmond O'Brien's frenetic performance as Frank Bigelow, an everyman who, while on vacation in San Francisco from his job as a small-town businessman and notary public, finds himself in a deliciously nightmarish noir situation: he's been murdered -- poisoned with "luminous toxin." Given just a few days at most to live, Bigelow -- incredulous, exhausted, and reeling from his terminal diagnosis -- sets out to untangle the events behind his impending death. Neville Brand stands out as sadistic, bug-eyed thug Chester, who just aches to give Bigelow "one in the belly." As deliriously eccentric a noir as you're likely to find. ****


D.O.A., 1988 (Rocky Morton, Annabel Jankel). Grating, blow-dried hair-band remake of the frantic 1949 noir masterpiece. With grin-happy Dennis Quaid taking the role of the poisoned sap played so brilliantly by Edmond O'Brien in the original, this grinding, discordant disappointment is more bloated, bad MTV video than noir. The cast -- which includes Meg Ryan (natch), Charlotte Rampling, and Judge Reinhold -- compete with the blaring, non-stop '80s soundtrack, and we all lose. **


The Damned Don’t Cry, 1950 (Vincent Sherman) The advertising copy for this slice of Warner Brothers pulp reads:   "[She's] as tempting as a cupcake and as tough as a 75-cent steak." The problem -- besides the wooden acting and ludicrous script -- is that the "she" is Joan Crawford, and she was way past her "cupcake" phase by this point, at age 46. Not that she doesn't look great -- especially for 46 -- she does. But when every man she encounters in this melodrama goes immediately off his rocker for Joan as soon as they set eyes on her, what it elicits are eye-rolls. 
   Ms. Crawford plays Ethel Whitehead, a weary housewife living at the edge of the Texas oilfields. When her young son is run over by a truck and killed in front of her, she packs up and leaves for the big city and a better life. Arriving in New York, she quickly gets a job in a club and before you can say "diva" three times fast she's worked her way from meek bookkeeper Martin (Kent Smith, meek as ever) to mob boss George Castelman (David Brian, a towering block of wood), and then the next thing you know she is renting out lavish penthouses and going on trips to Europe ("it was the height of the season," she intones upon her return -- quite seriously -- to dumb George, who pays for everything), and has changed her name to Mrs. Lorna Hansen Forbes. Even the newspapers are ga-ga for Ethel, filling their society pages with her comings and goings, never once bothering to ask themselves who this person is or where she came from.
   Things get serious when George sends Lorna out west to trap his rival, Nick Prenta (Steve Cochrane, not his finest hour), who, of course, falls instantly blockhead-over-heels for Ethel, er, Lorna. Complications -- in the form of a shootout in her hotel room -- arise when Lorna falls for Nick, too, and soon, Lorna finds herself on the run, back to that dirty little house in that dirty little Texas oil town, with George on her tail and good ol' Marty riding in meekly to, well, not to save her, cause he's too meek, but to inform her, at least, that George is gunning for her.
​   Crawford, as always, commands the screen, but there's just too much mediocrity around her. Maybe the damned don't cry, but I'll bet the suckers who shelled out good money to see this in theaters back in 1950 did. **


Danger Signal, 1945. Tepid potboiler directed by Robert Florey features one of the goofiest endings you'll ever see. Sleazy weasel Ronnie Mason (Zachary Scott) preys on women, then kills them and makes it look like they committed suicide. After dispatching his latest victim, weasel arrives in an unnamed city where he rents a room at the home of lovely stenographer Hilda Fenchurch (Faye Emerson). Weasel woos steno, until he finds that her younger sister, Anne, is due to inherit 25 G's, so he dumps steno like a hot potato for the childish Anne, which gives Hilda homicidal thoughts. Echoes of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and Michael Curtiz' Mildred Pierce, minus the suspense, style, thrills, star power, story, and talent in the director's chair. **


A Dangerous Profession, 1949. A slightly ridiculous story, slow pacing, and a typically lackluster George Raft performance settle this programmer's hash. Raft plays a former L.A. cop turned bail bondsman in love with his client's wife (Ella Raines, as fetching as ever), so when the client gets bumped off, he must solve the murder, natch. Generates all the excitement of a bowl of jello. **


Dark City, 1950. (William Dieterle) Hal Wallis production stars Charlton Heston in his big screen debut as Danny Haley, a WWII vet at loose ends in an unnamed city, employed as a mid-level crook in a bookie joint which, as the film opens, has just been raided for the third time in as many months. It's revealed that Haley killed his best friend/officer for dallying with his wife while he was in the service, but got off somehow. Now divorced, he's seeing Fran (Lizabeth Scott), a torch singer in a local club. Fran's obviously gaga over Danny, but he makes it very clear he's just passing the time and wants no entanglements. Enter big lug Don DeFore as Arthur Winant, an out-of-town sucker carrying his company's money in the form of a check for five grand. Daley and his mates (Jack Webb and Ed Begley) set up a poker game and clean Arthur out to the point that he has to sign over his company's check, after which he returns to his hotel, despondent, and hangs himself. It's at this point that the film begins to exhibit signs that it might rise above the regular and offer some deeper meditation on the nature of guilt, conscience, and man's duty to his fellow man. Unfortunately, the script veers the other way, and becomes a cheeseball revenge thriller, packed with cheap scares and a simplistic effort at redemption by Danny -- only after he meets Winant's comely wife (Viveca Lindfors). Another problem: all of Scott's songs are lip-synched, and she really has nothing to do in the film other than moon over Danny, who treats her like dirt most of the time. It ends up being a serviceable noirish thriller, nothing more. It's a shame, really, because this could have been so much better. **1/2    


Dark Passage, 1947. Delmer Daves' use of a subjective camera angle for the first half of this Bogie and Bacall vehicle works better than when it was employed a year earlier by Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake. Sometimes far-fetched tale follows fugitive Bogart -- busted out of San Quentin after being framed for his wife's murder and almost inexplicably aided by first Bacall, and then a good-hearted cabbie as he searches San Francisco for the real killer. Agnes Moorhead provides a memorable turn as the harpy from hell. *** 


The Dark Past, 1948. Tedious, ludicrous script full of psychological hooey sinks this remake of the 1939 proto-noir Blind Alley. William Holden plays Al Walker, a vicious murderer who busts out of prison, making his getaway with his gang and moll (a game but miscast Nina Foch). After cold-bloodedly shooting his hostage, the warden, in the back, Walker and his gang invade the lakeside "cabin" (a 3-story mansion to most) where a psychiatrist (Lee J. Cobb, as blustery as ever) and his family are entertaining some friends for the weekend. The crooks take them all hostage while they wait for a cohort to pick them up in a boat. While they're waiting, the head-shrinker goes to work on Al, who's haunted by a recurring nightmare. In little more than an hour, the fast-working doc manages to solve the Freudian mystery of Walker's dream and "cure" him. The whole thing is laughably ridiculous. ** 


Dead Again, 1991. Kenneth Brannagh's neo-noir mystery thriller goes so far over the top that it borders on parody at times, but it never stops being fun, one way or the other. With a cast that includes Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi, Wayne Knight, and Robin Williams, this is more Hitchcock (or DePalma) than noir, though there's enough of the latter to keep noir fans happy, at least until the wacky plot twists start flying. The whole thing could have easily flown off the rails, but Brannagh, screenwriter Scott Frank, and music composer Patrick Doyle are having so much fun that you'll just enjoy going along for the ride. As long as you don't expect an honest-to-goodness noir.  **1/2 


Dead Man Down, 2013. Various swarthy, tattooed, bullet-headed tough European types glower, glare, mumble, strut and shoot each other in this adolescent boy's revenge/romance fantasy, starring Colin Ferrell as the obligatory sad-eyed tough guy whose wife and child have been murdered, so he must avenge them. Yawn. Given the world today's action shoot-em-ups imagine, it's a wonder there are any women and children left for these middle-aged killing machines to avenge. The only saving grace in this snorer is the presence of Noomi Rapace and Isabelle Huppert. **


Dead Reckoning, 1947 (John Cromwell). Talky post-war potboiler about a paratrooper captain getting involved in a murder case while searching for his missing war buddy. Humphrey Bogart is Captain "Rip" Murdock, on the way to Washington by train with his pal, Sergeant Johnny Drake. But when Johnny finds out he's to receive the Medal of Honor, he takes off. On a mission to find out what's cooking with Johnny, Rip goes AWOL and follows the clues to "Gulf City," somewhere in the south. That's where he finds a charbroiled corpse from a car wreck -- Johnny. Then there's Johnny's old flame, Coral (Lizabeth Scott), and a slick gangster named Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky) and his brain-addled thug, Krause (Marvin Miller), all mixed up in a murder case from before the war. Rip investigates, and falls for Coral, while at the same time suspecting her. There's a dopey scene in which Rip tells Coral his views on women -- they should be shrunk down and stuffed in their man's pocket so they won't "interrupt" him while he's having fun with the boys -- until he's ready for her to be life-size, that is. It's all told in flashback, with a heavy voice-over by Bogie, and the ending has dialog lifted almost word-for-word from The Maltese Falcon, a much better film. Still, Bogie's fun to watch, and so is Scott, once you take her out of your pocket. *** 


Dead Ringer, 1964. One of those dueling Bette Davis-as-twin-sisters psychological thrillers. There were actually only two films in which The Queen of Hollywood played identical twins (the other being 1946's A Stolen Life), one of whom steals the other's life, but it feels like a lot more, doesn't it? Paul Henreid (Casablanca's Victor Laszlo) directs this Hitchcockian thriller that gives Ms. Davis the opportunity to smoke and emote for two, as she plays twins Edith (the poor, kind-hearted one) and Margaret (the rich, scheming vamp). The two haven't spoken in 18 years, after Margaret stole Edith's wealthy sweetheart, Frank, and married him. When Frank croaks, Edith goes to the funeral and the two sisters are reunited, just long enough for Edith to learn that Margaret tricked Frank into marrying her with the old fake pregnancy ploy. Pushed past her breaking point, Edith cold-bloodedly blows her evil twin away, framing it as her own suicide, and switches identities with Margaret. Enter Margaret's secret lover, Tony (Peter Lawford), the only one who catches on to Edie's switcheroo. Tony tries to blackmail Edie, but when Edith figures out that he and Margaret did away with Frank, the two scuffle, with the bout broken up by the family hound, who -- conveniently-for-Edith -- uses Tony as a chew toy. Exit Tony. Enter Jim, Edith's cop boyfriend, played by Karl Malden, who has to go sticking his big nose in and ruining everything. Suspicious now of Frank's death, Jim exhumes the corpus and finds arsenic in his delicti, which leads, of course, to him arresting MargarEdith for her hubby's murder. Panicked, Margaret tries to assure Jim that she's really Edith, but Jim refuses to believe her, telling her that Edie wouldn't hurt a fly. The trial ensues, MargarEdith is found guilty and sentenced to death. Jim, his nose growing ever snoopier, asks Mags if she's really Edith, only to have MargarEdith deny it, reminding him that Edith would never hurt a fly.
​   Some cleverness in the script, but grows a bit tedious, especially the annoying, harpsichord-heavy soundtrack. **1/2
 


Dear Murderer, 1947 (Arthur Crabtree) Cheeky little Brit noir about a scheming, jealous husband and his equally duplicitous and faithless wife. Lee Warren (Eric Portman) is the possessive hubby who finds out his wife, Vivien (Greta Gynt), has been firkytoodling with barrister Richard Fenton (Dennis Price) whilst he's away on business in America, so he plots to commit the perfect murder and do away with his competition. Upon arriving back in London, the cheesed-off Warren goes to Fenton's flat and tells Dickie at gunpoint that he's going to murder him unless the sharp lawyer can find a hole in his plot. When Fenton fails to do so, Warren cold-bloodedly kills him with a device he's created to make it seem as if Dickie's snuffed himself by gas. But before Warren does away with him, Fenton tells Warren that he's not the only one his wife's been playing footsie with, and that "you can't kill us all!" When his wife shows up with her new lover, Jimmy Martin (Maxwell Reed) at Dickie's flat -- whilst Warren's in the middle of kevorkianing Dickie, Warren discovers that Fenton was telling the truth, and he decides to frame Jimmy for Fenton's murder, thus snuffing two blokes with one stone. There's a great scene after Jimmy's been nicked for Fenton's murder in which Warren nonchalantly confesses his crime(s) to a gobsmacked Vivien over kippers and toast. Vivien thinks he's barmy and flees the connubial igloo, but eventually comes back to her husband, claiming she still loves him and will remain faithful if Warren can save Jimmy from the gallows. Good performances and some clever plot twists, and the whole thing is just so bloomin' scrummy that you can't help but enjoy it until both wife and hubby have gone toodle pip. ***


Death in Small Doses, 1957 (Joseph M. Newman) Peter Graves is straight-arrow FDA investigator Tom Kaylor, investigating the use of "happy pills" by long-haul truckers. Going undercover as a truck driver, he takes a room at a rooming house run by comely Val Owens (Mala Powers), whose trucker husband "got himself loaded up on copilots and ended up in a Reno morgue." Down the hall is hopped-up long-haul hepcat Mink Reynolds (Chuck Connors, hilariously), who, when he's not giggling maniacally and running cars off the road, is bouncing off the walls, snapping his fingers to his loud, hepcat music, dancing with anything that moves, jumping over diner counters to boogie with truckstop waitresses, and belting out lines like, "Anchors away, daddy-o!" Eighteen wheels of big, blaring, runaway big-rig noir. **1/2


Deception, 1946. Director Irving Rapper reunites with the cast of 1942's Now, Voyager for this overwraught yet surprisingly entertaining romantic melodrama. Bette Davis stars as Christine Radcliffe, a Manhattan pianist kept by the famous and wealthy composer Alexander Hollenius (a delightfully haughty Claude Rains). Christine's comfortable life is thrown into a tizzy when her former lover, tempestuous cellist Karel Novak (Paul Henreid), shows up, having survived a Nazi concentration camp. Christine, thinking Novak was dead, killed by the Nazis, falls back into her former paramour's arms, and the reunited couple quickly marry, despite Hollenius' hissy fits. Though none of the three main characters are likeable in the least, there's great fun in watching Davis and Rains scheme and connive. Filled with histrionics and classical music, Deception could easily come off as camp, but Davis and especially Rains make the thing so fun to watch that it doesn't matter. ***

 
Decoy, 1946 (Jack Bernhard)  Lurid, low-budget noir, notable for having one of noir’s most evil femme fatales. Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie), moll to gangster Frankie Olins, will stop at nothing to get her greedy hands on the 400 grand that Frankie stole in a bank robbery. That includes seducing good-guy Dr. Lloyd Craig into resurrecting Frankie after his execution by cyanide gas for killing a bank guard during the holdup. The good Doctor, once an upstanding, caring, hard-working physician to the poor, soon finds himself so entranced by Margot’s wiles that he’s stealing Frankie’s corpse from the prison and reviving him with an antidote called "methylene blue," so that, after Frankie's been brought back to life, Margot can wheedle out of him where he buried the loot. Not very good but highly entertaining at times. Macabre plot and depravity of the femme fatale, as played by Gillie, set this one apart despite some amateurish performances and sets. **1/2


The Departed, 2006.  Martin Scorsese's explosive remake of a moody Hong Kong thriller (Infernal Affairs) features a powerhouse cast, a dynamite script, and a veritable van-load of intensity. Jack Nicholson (in full-blown over-the-top JACK! mode) stars as South Boston Irish mobster Frank Costello, who grooms from childhood clean-cut Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) to join the Massachusetts State Police and be his mole inside the Special Investigations Unit, which is run by father-figure Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his right hand, Sgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). Sullivan's mirror image is rookie cop Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), who's spent his life running away from his troubled, recidivist family, only to be forced, upon graduation from the trooper's academy, into going undercover and infiltrating Costello's mob. No one, besides Queenan and Dignan, even know that Costigan is a cop. As Sullivan works his way up the ranks of the SIU, alerting Costello to impending police operations at every turn, Costigan worms his way closer to the volatile Costello and his murderous henchman French (Ray Winstone), risking his life daily, and struggling with his isolation. Both bosses are aware they have "rats" in their respective nests, and seek to root them out. In the original, the two moles -- burrowing in opposite directions -- each have their own love interest, but in The Departed they are conflated into one -- idealistic police psychiatrist Dr. Madolyn Madden (Vera Farmiga). She is wooed by Sullivan and the two move in together, even as she begins to treat the ever-more vulnerable Costigan, and begins to fall for him. Scorsese and sreenwriter William Monahan follow closely the main plot lines from their labyrinthine source material, but make it their own with a script that is darkly and humorously obscene and much more bloody and intense than the original, not to mention nearly an hour longer. Critics were split over which version they preferred. For me, it's not even a question; while the original is very good, The Departed is the bigger and better film, more gritty, much more menacing, and without Chan Kwong-wing's sappy TV-movieish score. While this may merely be a product of cultural differences, The Departed is an instance in which the remake outshines the original.  ***1/2

 
Desperate, 1947 (Anthony Mann) Ridiculous plot almost overcome by good intentions. Hard-working truck driver Steve Randall (Steve Brodie) just wants to make an honest living and take care of his girl-next-door wife (Audrey Long), who’s expecting. But he gets mixed up with a gang of crooks, led by Raymond Burr, and the next thing you know Steve and bride are fleeing town, pursued by cops and gangsters. **1/2
 

Destination Murder, 1950 (Edward L. Cahn) A solid cast and high entertainment value overcome a goofy plot in this low budget B-flick. Joyce MacKenzie, who could be Barbara Hale's sexier sister, plays a young woman who goes undercover as a cigarette girl in a nightclub to solve the murder of her father. The murder is one of the wackier aspects of the story. The victim was shot by a killer who leaves a theater during a five-minute movie intermission, gets a ride to the murder scene, changes into a messenger's uniform, shoots his target, then gets a ride back to the theater and still has time to buy popcorn before the movie starts again! One of the most entertaining bits of business is how one of the heavies, played by Albert Dekker, keeps referring to himself in the third person. The Noirharajah's seen better, but has to admit this one's kinda fun. **1/2


Destroyer, 2018 (Karyn Kusama). Powerhouse performance by Nicole Kidman drives this bleak, tense, twisty, and ultimately weighty and quite powerful film. Kidman plays Erin Bell, an L.A. detective who, 17 years ago, went deep undercover with an FBI agent (Sebastian Stan) to infiltrate a gang of bank robbers led by the egomaniacal sociopath Silas (Toby Kebbell). Now, all these years later, Bell is an alcoholic husk of her former self, a gaunt, shadow-eyed, shambling wreck of a woman who has essentially let herself be destroyed by her past and the choices she's made. Kidman is nearly unrecognizable as she inhabits Bell completely, moving in a hunched-over hobble, like a stove-up rodeo cowboy who's taken one too many bad falls, and she knows it. When she receives a message from Silas -- who's remained out of sight since the film's seminal event -- a bank robbery gone wrong 17 years ago -- Bell sets off on a grim quest for vengeance. Director Karyn Kusama and screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi tell their tale in a non-linear fashion, starting in the present, with Bell investigating the shooting murder of an unidentified man, but never staying too long in one place, jumping back and forth between the present and the past, revealing Bell's secrets slowly. The viewer doesn't get the whole story until the very end. This narrative choice gives the film a lot of its power, but also ultimately robs it of some emotional impact. Not knowing the depth of one relationship in particular means we don't feel the loss as deeply when disaster strikes. In the end, this is Kidman's film -- a study of a character who is both detective and femme fatale -- and she carries it beautifully to its dark but moving conclusion. ***


Detour, 1945 (Edward G. Ulmer) Fate puts the finger on Tom Neal in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Poverty Row classic. Neal plays Al Roberts, a New York piano player barely scraping by tinkling the ivories in a dive bar where his girl, Sue (Claudia Drake) sings. But then Sue up and leaves for Hollywood, and Al is heartbroken. Soon the penniless piano player is thumbing his way across country to be with his girl. He thinks he's hit the jackpot when he gets a ride in the Arizona desert from pill-popping big spender Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald), but when Haskell drops dead from his unspoken ailment, Al knows he'll be suspected of murder, so he hides the body and assumes Haskell's identity, taking his clothes, his bankroll, and his car, figuring he'll abandon the convertible in L.A. and everything will be jake. But there's no detour from fate for Al. He gives a ride to hitch-hiker Vera (Ann Savage), a hard-bitten cookie with a heart like an ice cube. It turns out Haskell had picked Vera up earlier, then dumped her when she wouldn't "be nice." Vera knows the car, and she knows Al isn't Haskell, and threatens to turn him in unless he does whatever she says. Neal’s road trip gone bad is a bit one-note, but that one note sings, particularly through the haunting, fatalistic script and Ann Savage’s bitter performance. Principle photography was done in six days, and it shows, with the shaky background projection behind Al's doomed convertible ride, but there's more atmosphere in each of the 68 minutes of Detour than there is in films with twice the running time and a thousand times the budget. “Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you.” ****1/2


Devil in a Blue Dress, 1995 (Carl Franklin). Fine Carl Franklin adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel about a black private eye caught up in a case that involves corruption at the highest levels of power in the city. The film opens in 1948 Los Angeles, with World War II vet Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Denzel Washington) having been unfairly laid off from an aircraft manufacturer, so he becomes a private investigator to pay the mortgage on his house, despite having no training for the job. He accepts $100 from the shady DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) to find Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), a mysterious woman who's been involved with a wealthy mayoral candidate. This is an engrossing, atmospheric, and complicated story of blackmail, race, and politics depicting a side of post-war American life largely ignored by Hollywood. There are inevitable parallels to Chinatown, but, while Devil doesn't quite reach those lofty heights, this is an important and well-made film, with good performances throughout, particularly by Sizemore, Washington and Don Cheadle -- who nearly steals the movie with his portrayal of Easy's live-wire, trigger-happy buddy Mouse. The excellent period recreation and costumes add to the impressive production, which include Tak Fujimoto's terrific camerawork. A stylish neo-noir that captures not only L.A. in the forties, but the racial divide, and the color barrier that was in full force at the time. ***1/2 


The Disappearance of Alice Creed, 2009 (J Blakeson) Twists, counter-twists, and double-crosses punctuate this stripped-down, taut, tense, claustrophobic tale of a kidnapping plot seemingly precisely planned down to the last detail by Victor (Eddie Marsan) and Danny (Martin Compston), two ex-con lovers who met while sharing a prison cell. It isn't until well after the two ski-mask wearing kidnappers have grabbed Alice (Gemma Arterton) that the audience learns of the relationships between the characters, which the characters themselves -- in some instances -- are unaware of. The acting by the only three players in the film is fantastic all the way around, but the real star here is J Blakeson's script and direction, which keep you on edge for most of the 96 minutes. ***


Do You Know This Voice?, 1964 (Frank Nesbitt) The always fabulous Dan Duryea shines in this little low-budget British production about a sociopathic kidnapper (Duryea) and his wife who've snatched a little boy for ransom. The two crooks make their ransom demands in a disguised voice from a phone booth, and the cops -- who are portrayed as completely inept -- have nothing to go on except for an eye witness who saw nothing but the kidnapper's shoes. Plot holes abound, but the script provides some suspense and nuanced performances by Duryea and Isa Miranda as the witness hold your interest.  **1/2


Don't Bother to Knock, 1952 (Roy Ward Baker) Marilyn Monroe wows in her first starring role as Nell, a crack-brained young woman, driven off the deep end when her fiancee was killed in the war. Nell, fresh out of the loony bin, gets a one-night baby-sitting gig at a NYC hotel, where her uncle (the always fabulous Elisha Cook, Jr.) runs the elevator. Hotel guest Richard Widmark, having just broken up with his lounge singer girlfriend (Anne Bancroft), spies Nell through the window and invites himself over to firkytoodle on the rebound with the fetching Nell. Gradually, though, he comes to realize that she's out there where the busses don't run, and when Nell gets threatening with the little girl she's watching, things get ratcheted up a notch or twelve. The cast is uniformly good, but Monroe really steals the show with a powerhouse performance. Take her out of it and this is just another small potatoes potboiler. **1/2


Down Three Dark Streets, 1954 (Arnold Laven) Documentary-style cop drama in the vein of Jack Webb's then-popular Dragnet series, based on the book "Case File: FBI," probably a more representative title. The film opens with Voice of God narration, blaring: "FBI. Letters that spell out the internal security of the nation. Behind those doors your guardians. At their command, the most advanced and complete scientific assistance known to man. But often more important than science is the intelligence, the imagination of the individual agent: the FBI man!"
   What follows is pretty standard procedural stuff, elevated by a strong cast led by Broderick Crawford as FBI agent John Ripley, who's investigating the murder of his friend and fellow agent Dave Millson. Millson was working on three cases, and Ripley decides (how is not explained) that the murder is connected to one of those cases. The whole thing ends with a semi-pulse-raising finale beneath the Hollywood sign. Strong stuff, though not really noir. ***


Double Indemnity, 1944 (Billy Wilder) The consummate noir. Barbara Stanwyck takes Fred MacMurray straight down the line, and the last stop is the cemetery. Stanwyck is brilliant as the quintessential femme fatale, sexy and evil in a goofy platinum blonde wig, MacMurray is perfect as the sharp shlub who’s out of his depth and doesn’t realize it until it’s too late, and Edward G. Robinson nearly steals the show as Keyes, the brilliant insurance investigator with the little man inside him that gnaws at the pit of his stomach when something doesn't quite add up. Oh, yeah, and Billy Wilder directed and co-wrote with some guy named Raymond Chandler. What more do you want? *****  


Dragged Across Concrete, 2018. Noted anti-PC warrior S. Craig Zahler's heist film is a disgusting, racist, homophobic, gratuitously violent, right-wing polemic against people of color, homosexuals, and, of course, that terrible scourge that makes life unbearable for the MAGA crowd, political correctness. But then, with Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn starring and Zahler directing, you probably could figure that out for yourselves without bothering to sit through the bloated 159-minute running time. It's a shame, too, because the anti-P.C. stuff is so unnecessary, and the rest of the film is rock solid. This could have been a really pleasant experience for noir fans, if Zahler could just restrain his retrograde politics for a couple of hours. But, like most MAGATS, the writer-director just can't help himself from spewing his delusional, self-pitying, hateful bile, so he fills his film with scenes like Gibson's violent, racist cop grinding his boot into the neck of a handcuffed and restrained Hispanic suspect. This is played for laughs, two years before George Floyd was so callously murdered by a violent, racist white police officer kneeling on his neck for nine minutes. Or Gibson and his partner (Vaughn) mocking a scared, naked Latina woman's accent, comparing it to the sounds made by a dolphin. Or their good ol' boy boss (Don Johnson), forced to suspend them for six weeks, delivering a monologue -- totally without awareness or irony -- comparing those who are branded racist today with the (mostly innocent) folks who were victimized by the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s, never mind that those who were doing the "commie" smearing back then were actually right-wingers like himself and the neo Nazi-supporting, confederate flag-waving bigots he's selling this junk to. Just ask anyone who's supported such radical ideas as affordable health care for all, only to be branded a "socialist" or, yes, a "commie" by these same mouth-breathers. I could go on and on. There are jokes about the so-called blurring of gender lines (depicted here by Vaughn blithely cracking, "that line was obliterated the day men started saying 'we're pregnant' when their wives were"). A black man constantly has his grammar corrected by white men. One cold-blooded white killer makes sport of mocking a Hispanic man before shooting him in the back of the head, then puts a cartoonish sombrero on his victim's ventilated noggin. All played for laughs. And for no good reason, other than to "own the libs" and appeal to red-state knuckle-draggers. There's also a lot of the MAGA crowd's favorite pastime, the poor white man's woe-is-me victimization that runs on a never-ending loop through the Trump crowd's heads. And the over-the-top violence is about what you'd expect from the director of Bone Tomahawk, a horror of a "western" that depicted Native Americans as horrific, cave-dwelling cannibals. There's no excuse for this garbage, really, because Zahler is actually talented, even if he is trying desperately to be the right-wing Tarantino (like we need one of those). So, congratulations, S. Craig, your ugly, racist, hateful, overblown, gratuitously violent piece of crap gets one star, the same as the vile HUAC propaganda tripe I Was a Communist for the FBI, despite your desperate plea that you and your white racist protagonists are the real victims here. Fitting, don't you think? *  


Drive a Crooked Road, 1954 (Richard Quine) Tough, no-nonsense beach noir features an understated (yes, really!) Mickey Rooney, in one of his finest performances, as a lonely mechanic with lofty dreams of being a race car champion, who goes in on a bank heist out of desperation to keep a dame who's way out of his league. Slow-burn script by Blake Edwards makes fine use of excellent supporting players Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy, and Jack Kelly, who are given plenty of time to craft three dimensional characters. ***


The Driver, 1978 (Walter Hill) Lots of great car chases and little else to see here. Well, Bruce Dern is always watchable, and he gets a little more to play with here than Ryan O'Neal and Isabelle Adjani, who are cardboard cutouts with cardboard cutout names (The Driver, The Player). In the end, it's just a lot of squealing tires. **1/2


The Drop, 2014. Bravura performances by Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini -- in his final film role -- and a taut, slow-burn script by Dennis Lehane (based on his own short story) raise this gritty yarn well above the average. Gandolfini plays Cousin Marv, former boss of a small-time Brooklyn criminal crew and bar owner who's lost his bar to the brutal Chechen mob. The Chechens have essentially neutered the proud Marv. They let him keep his name on the bar and continue to run the place while they use it as a "drop" for illegal money, and it eats away at Marv like a cancer. Hardy plays Marv's cousin, Bob, who appears, at first glance, to be nothing more than Marv's bartender and slow-witted sidekick. But there's something simmering beneath Bob's surface that you don't want to mess with. He's underestimated by just about everyone, including lowlife punk Eric Deeds, who used to date Nadia (the lovely and amazing Rapace). Bob meets Nadia one day when he's walking by her house and finds a wounded pit bull puppy in her trash can, placed there by the menacing Deeds. Bob adopts the pup, with the help of Nadia, and a sort of awkward, slow-boil romance develops between the two. But Deeds -- who has "street cred" because everyone thinks he murdered a long-missing bar customer named Richie "Glory Days" Whelan, attempts to bully Bob into giving him $10,000 for the dog.
   One night a couple of dim-witted, wanna-be gangsters rob the bar of $5,000, which the Chechens want back, with interest in blood. As it turns out, Marv, doing his own slow burn over losing his bar, is the "mastermind." Now, as the Chechens close in on the two dimwits, Marv has to cover his tracks, while, at the same time, he's planning an even bigger heist of his former bar on Super Bowl Sunday. The simmering comes to a boil in a tense, deliberate  showdown that includes a key reveal. Top-notch stuff in a muted, low-key package.  ***1/2


The Drowning Pool, 1975. Stuart Rosenberg flatly directs this mostly tepid sequel to 1966's Harper, with Paul Newman reprising his role as wisecracking L.A. P.I. Lew Harper, based on Ross MacDonald's character Lew Archer (why they bothered to change the name from Archer to Harper is an as yet unsolved mystery). In this one, Harper's flown out to Louisiana to find out who's blackmailing a former flame (played by Newman's real-life wife Joanne Woodward). The case quickly becomes a lot more complicated and deadly, and Harper runs afoul of the usual collection of oddballs -- the best of which is an insanely rich (and richly insane) oil tycoon, played with a lot of verve by Murray Hamilton. Unfortunately, it's all mostly forgettable, except for the inventive set piece from which comes the film's title. Still, Newman's always worth watching, and Hamilton's wardrobe is almost as entertaining as he is. Is that a red siren suit he's wearing, or just matching red shirt and pants? Whatever, it's fabulous! **1/2


Elena, 2012. (Andrey Zvyagintsev) Icy Russian drama about a wealthy man's nurse-turned-wife, who, put into a financial bind, takes matters into her own hands. Elena (Nadezhda Markina) asks her older husband, Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), for money, which she wants to give her layabout son from another marriage so he and his wife can get their juvenile delinquent son into college to keep him from being drafted into the military. Vladimir, who despises her goldbricking offspring, denies her request. After suffering a heart attack, he tells Elena that he's going to draft a will, leaving the bulk of his estate to his estranged daughter from another marriage. Elena, with little time to act, makes a fateful decision. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev's minimalist style, with long, drawn-out takes often shot with a single camera set-up, fits like a warm, fur hat. Superbly acted, directed, and shot, this film won the Special Jury Prize of the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. Top notch, but don't expect a lot of action. ***1/2


Elevator to the Gallows, 1958 (Louis Malle) Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau) and Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) are illicit lovers who plan to kill Florence's husband, Simon, a wealthy industrialist who is also Julien's boss. Julien scales the outside of their office building on a rope, shoots Simon in his office without being seen, and arranges the room to make it look like suicide. But he forgets to remove the rope, only remembering it when he looks up from the street as he is about to drive away. Leaving his car running, he rushes back into the building (now closed as it is past office hours), and begins ascending to his floor in the elevator, when the security guard -- not knowing anyone is still in the building -- switches off the power to the elevators, trapping Julien inside. Meanwhile, as Florence waits impatiently for her lover, a young criminal steals Julien's car and goes on a crime spree. It all comes together beautifully with a twist. Malle's directorial debut, which features a tense, jazzy score by Miles Davis, has a rich undercurrent of fatalistic noir irony.  ***1/2


The Enforcer, 1951 (Bretaigne Windust [& Raoul Walsh -- uncredited]) Humphrey Bogart plays a crusading D.A. trying to bust up the Murder, Inc., gang in this hard-boiled procedural shot in semi-documentary style. An excellent cast that includes Zero Mostel and Ted de Corsia helps put this one over, though it feels somewhat dated now (none of the cops know what a "contract" or a "hit" are), and it isn't really noir. A young girl and her father witness a murder-for-hire, and, years later, the mob comes after them. Fast, somewhat exciting, and based loosely on fact. **1/2
 

The Face Behind the Mask, 1941. Peter Lorre is outstanding in Robert Florey's nightmare vision of the American Dream gone horribly wrong. Lorre is Janos Szabo, an ebullient, naive Hungarian immigrant who arrives in New York with hardly a kopek to his name, yet full of hopes and dreams. He's thrilled just to make a friend, have a roof over his head, and get a job washing dishes. A skilled watchmaker, he believes in himself and in the dream of America. Soon, he writes to his sweetheart back home, he'll be rich and will send for her. On his first night in his new country, though, his high-rise apartment building catches on fire, and Janos is horribly disfigured. His face has become that of a monster. In a moment, his entire life and everything he hoped for has gone up in flames. Now homeless, unable to find work due to his face -- or what's left of it -- he contemplates suicide, only to be stopped by Dinky (George E. Stone), a small-time thief who takes him under his wing. Soon, Janos' is using his skilled hands not to make beautiful timepieces, but to disable alarms for a gang of thieves, of which he becomes the leader. He visits a plastic surgeon and has a mask of his former face made, and the gang's criminal exploits become famous. But when he meets Helen, a beautiful blind girl (Evelyn Keyes) who only sees the good in him, Janos sees a way out. He falls in love with Helen, and announces he's leaving the gang, but the gang won't let him leave. A sad and beautiful tragedy. ***1/2 

 
Fallen Angel, 1945 (Otto Preminger) Otto Preminger's follow-up to Laura is a seedy, preposterous tale about obsession. Dana Andrews is a down on his luck drifter with $1 in his pocket who gets kicked off a bus in a dive town and falls for a gorgeous coffee-shop waitress (Linda Darnell) who is part floozy, part femme fatale, and part world-weary gal who just wants to settle down in a home of her own. It's no wonder she's weary -- virtually every man in town is after her, including an old New York cop played by Charles Bickford, who was nearly old enough to be her grandfather. The story, at times, borders on the ridiculous -- like when Bickford's supposedly experienced cop brings all the major suspects up to a murder victim's tiny apartment -- which happens to be the murder scene -- to question them, just to make sure any evidence is contaminated. That's some good police work, there, pal. Some great noir dialog and Joseph La Shelle's atmospheric black-and-white photography -- plus Darnell and Andrews -- make this worth viewing, but watch your step or you'll fall through the many plot holes. **1/2


The Fallen Sparrow, 1943 (Richard Wallace). Early noirish spy thriller bolstered by John Garfield's terrific, intensely dramatic performance as freedom fighter John "Kit" McKittrick, who was captured and tortured by Nazis during the Spanish Civil War. Kit managed to escape the Nazis with the help of an old New York buddy -- now a cop. When the cop's mysterious death -- the result of a fall from a high-rise window -- is ruled a suicide, Kit leaves the Arizona dude ranch where he was convalescing and returns to investigate. Garfield's sweaty, twitching embodiment of a man psychologically damaged by two years of torture nearly raises this to a higher level, but the muddled story holds it back. Maureen O'Hara goes against type here, and Walter Slezak is his usual creepy self, while Hugh Beaumont (the Beav's dad on "Leave It To Beaver") is nearly unrecognizable as a mysterious Nordic type. Moody and atmospheric, with nice noir visuals, but it's the great Garfield -- as usual -- who's the main attraction here. **1/2  


Farewell, My Lovely, 1975. Robert Mitchum was born to play Raymond Chandler's world-weary private eye Philip Marlowe. Everything about his performance here looks, sounds, and feels effortlessly authentic, as if he came sauntering off of Chandler's page and onto the screen. But that's no surprise. Anyone who's ever seen Mitchum in anything could figure that one. What is surprising is how well the rest of this works -- how perfect director Dick Richards and art director Angelo Graham have made it all look, from Marlowe's seedy office, with the blinking neon sign outside the window to the gorgeously composed neon shimmering off the mean streets below. You can practically smell the old ashtrays in the fetid rooms of Mrs. Florian's squalid home, feel your shoes stick to the booze-soaked floor of the old bar that Moose Malloy drags Marlowe to in search of his beloved Velma. The cast is stacked with great actors, and they deliver, too. There's Sarah Miles, who drinks her way to a Best Supporting Actress nomination as the lush, Jessie Florian, Charlotte Rampling as the gorgeous femme fatale, ex-prizefighter Jack O'Halloran as the beer truck-sized Moose, Kate Murtagh as the vicious, pugnacious madam Frances Amthor, John Ireland as Lt. Nulty, and Harry Dean Stanton as a crooked cop. Look for hard-boiled author Jim Thompson as Rampling's sugar daddy Judge Grayle, and a young Sylvester Stallone in an early role as a goon. David Zelag Goodman managed to keep a lot of Chandler's prose through Marlowe's voice over, delivered with perfection by Mitchum. It all fits like an old fedora. ***1/2
​ 

Fargo, 1996 (Joel and Ethan Coen). Against a backdrop of endless snowfall, hapless, smiley, terminally nervous Minneapolis car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires two dim bulb thugs (Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife in the Coen brothers' darkly comic tale of crime and violence amongst the overly polite denizens of the frozen north. Jerry -- in trouble thanks to a convoluted scheme involving a finance fraud scam -- hopes to dig himself out by collecting a huge ransom from his wife's rich, ill-tempered father. It all blows up in Jerry's face when the seemingly simple plot results in a brutal triple homicide, and pregnant, aw-shucks police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) begins relentlessly tracking down the killers. With its grotesque murders and cheery detectives, this eerily screwy, scathingly funny neo-noir opens up the realms of darkness concealed beneath a world of white. With a beautiful, haunting score by Carter Burwell, this is one of the Coen brothers' best, and that's saying something. ****


Fear, 1946 (Alfred Zeisler) *SPOILER ALERT* Slim Poverty Row adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment gets by on a shoestring until cop-out "it was all a bad dream!" ending.  **


Female on the Beach, 1955 (Joseph Pevney) Well-acted but overwrought Joan Crawford melodrama about a beach gigolo (Jeff Chandler) who pursues lonely, rich women to set them up for a couple of aging card sharps until he meets his match in the tough, attractive widow (Crawford) who moves into the beach house next door. Film is a lot of things, but Noir is not one of them. **
 

Final Analysis, 1992 (Phil Joanou). Laughable attempt at Hitchcockian neo-noir starts off okay, but soon plummets into the realm of stupendously ridiculous dipshittery faster than, say, Kim Basinger plunging from a lighthouse. *1/2


Finger of Guilt, aka The Intimate Stranger, 1956. Improbably psychological thriller was written by Howard Koch and directed by Joseph Losey at Shepperton Studios while both were blacklisted. Plot -- obviously a metaphor for the blacklist -- involves playboy American film editor Reggie Wilson (strongly played by Richard Basehart) who's been blackballed from Hollywood after having an affair with his boss's wife. Reggie's landed on his feet at a London studio, where he's married the daughter of the studio head and become a producer. His idyllic comeback is interrupted, however, by a series of letters from a young actress alleging they had an affair, but he vehemently denies knowing her. She's got evidence, though, and things begin to unravel for Reggie as he starts to doubt his sanity. Well acted by Basehart and Mary Murphy as the young actress. Pat ending mars what is a fairly engrossing drama. **1/2


The Flame, 1947. Strictly bottom-of-the-bill B-picture that plays alternately as gothic melodrama and big city noir, and in its confusion trades promising hard-boiled premise for that worst of all outcomes in Noirville: redemption. Shudder.
   It all starts innocently enough with a shootout in a big city apartment, leaving one man dead and another wounded, making his way through the darkened streets to his own apartment, where he'll bleed out, but not before he's told his tale of woe via flashback. So far, so noir, even conjuring images of Double Indemnity. But that's where things start to go haywire, beginning with a shift from the city to a foreboding, Rebecca-style gothic country mansion on a cliff overlooking the roiling sea. Cue the pipe organ.   
   Turns out the wounded man is ne'er-do-well George MacAllister (John Carroll), who's convinced comely French nurse Carlotta Duval (played by Czech figure skater-turned actress Vera Ralston) to marry his rich half-brother, Barry (Robert Paige), who's on his last legs, dying from a terminal illness. The plan being that, after Barry kicks the bucket, Carlotta inherits the boodle and skates off (sorry) with George. But then along comes sad sack Ernie (Broderick Crawford) to gum up the works via blackmail. Ernie's got a yen for hilariously-bad lounge singer Helene (Constance Dowling), who's canoodling on the sly with George, until she isn't. Scorned, Helene then pays a visit to the mansion, threatening to blow the whole business by blackmailing Carlotta, but then decides, for whatever reason, nah, never mind. I'll just leave you nice people alone. Exit Helene. Then there's dowdy-faced Aunt Margaret, lurking around the gothic mansion on the cliff like a toothless Miss Danvers threatening to do, well, something. But of course she doesn't. She doesn't burn the house down. She doesn't do much of anything but scowl disapprovingly. In The Flame, everything just peters out. The script is overrun with dead ends. Even the ocean with its metaphorically pounding surf that keeps pounding and swirling at the bottom of the cliff, pounding and swirling, pounding and swirling, pounding and swirling, threatening to drive everyone mad, MAD I tell you! In the end, pffttt. Nothing. It just floats there. Stupid ocean. Even worse is the pipe organ in the parlor that Barry plays constantly for whatever reason. I guess Vincent Price wasn't available to play Barry. More likely he found the part too dull, or the producers couldn't afford him. They could afford Hattie McDaniel, though, to play -- shocker! -- the chortling black maid! -- and Henry Travers to play angel Clarence -- I mean kindly Dr. Mitchell, who seems to know all and offer the perfect sage advice to whomever needs it most at the perfect time. Perhaps worst of all is Victor Sen Yung (Jimmy Chan in the Charlie Chan series and later Bonanza's Hop Sing) as George's Confucious-quoting Chinese houseboy, Chang. It's Chang who gets the unintentionally hilarious last word, when a dying George is being questioned by the cops. After Georgie croaks on the couch, Chang sobs, "Mr. MacAllister answering questions elsewhere now." **


Flame of the Islands, 1956. Republic Pictures Trucolor melodrama shot on location in the Bahamas. Yvonne DeCarlo dances, prances, jiggles, and wiggles across the screen as Rosalind Dee, a singing New York secretary turned Bahama Mama after being gifted $100,000 from the widow of one of her firm's clients. The widow mistakenly believes Ros was having an affair with her dead husband, and surprisingly feels grateful to Ros. Despite the misunderstanding, Ros keeps the dough, using it to invest with oily Cyril (Kurt Kasznar), who owns an exclusive gambling club in Nassau. Investing with Ros is her platonic friend Wade (Zachary Scott). They move to the Bahamas, where Ros performs at the club and gets mauled by every man in Nassau, including the he-man party-pooping beach preacher/fishing boat captain Rev. Kelly Rand (James Arness). Enter rich mama's boy playboy Doug Duryea (Howard Duff), who's vacationing at Ros' club with his mother. Some playboy! It seems Doug and Ros have a past, and Ros has her sights set on reclaiming her lost love. Lots of soap opera complications ensue, including Cyril's silent partners -- a group of Cuban and American gangsters -- discovering Cyril's been cooking the books. There's murder, a maritime kidnapping, voodoo signs, the Coast Guard, and James Arness wearing a sea captain's hat everywhere he goes. But mostly, there's DeCarlo! DeCarlo singing! DeCarlo dancing! DeCarlo shamelessly shimmying up a storm and driving all the men wild! Sound ludicrous? Well, it is, but it's also grotesquely hilarious, and that's worth something. **


Flight to Nowhere, 1946 (William Rowland) Cheap snorefest reminiscent of a bottom-tier Republic serial without the cliffhangers. In fact, there's very little in this rambling spy film about a missing map to some uranium mines to hold your interest. Not noir, but it is an antidote for narcolepsy. *1/2


Following, 1999 (Christopher Nolan) Shot in black-and-white on 16mm, Christopher Nolan's below-low-budget (he made it for $6,000, shooting only on weekends) debut feature provides a preview of the talent and glimpses of the style that would later produce the more gripping and imaginative neo-noir Memento. Make no mistake, Following's plot is incredibly clever in its own right, it's just that the story provides no one for the audience to care about, at all. The film's London protagonist, Bill, is a 20-something unemployed wanna-be writer who combats boredom by following random people around the city, spying on them. Eventually he follows the wrong guy, a psychopath named Cobb who breaks into people's homes and messes with their possessions for thrills, stealing small-change items like CDs, which he sells. Cobb lures Bill into his sleazy world, and what follows is an ingenious triple cross that involves blackmail, a woman called only "The Blonde," a safe full of cash, and a couple of violent bludgeonings with a hammer. The violence isn't graphic, and the plot twists keep you mildly interested, but in the end it's hard to work up too much emotion over what happens to any of these characters. **1/2 


For You I Die, 1947 (John Reinhardt) Dark, low budget heart-tugger about good guy escaped convict Johnny Coulter (Paul Langton) forced at gunpoint to escape the big house with ruthless killer Matt Gruber (Don C. Harvey). Gruber orders Johnny -- who was injured in the breakout -- to hide out for a few days at a remote roadhouse where his old girlfriend, Hope Novak (a luminous Cathy Downs) works, and wait for him while he collects some dough. As the days go by, Hope and Johnny fall in love. But with the law closing in and the murderous Gruber's arrival imminent, their romance seems doomed from the start. Strong performances from the leads, as well as good character performances from the supporting cast, separate this one from the bottom of the B-movie pile. **1/2  


Force of Evil, 1949 Abraham Polonsky's big, gritty, fast-talking noir is driven by a fantastic script, with performances to match by all, especially John Garfield and Thomas Gomez as the Cain and Abel brothers at the heart of this tragic masterpiece. The story -- on the surface a tale about two brothers caught up in a mob war over the numbers racket -- is really a blatant indictment of capitalism and corruption of the soul. Every aspect is top-notch, with particular nods to the screenplay by Polonsky and Ira Wolfert, taken from Wolfert's novel Tucker's People, George Barnes' terrific noir camerawork, and the direction, in his debut, by Polonsky. Polonsky, an avowed Marxist, was tragically a victim of the blacklist, who saw his career come to an abrupt halt when he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Commission in 1951. He didn't direct another feature until 1969's Tell Them Willie Boy is Here, but he continued to write film scripts under various pseudonyms that have never been revealed. One film we do know that he co-wrote was the great 1959 noir, Odds Against Tomorrow. As for Force of Evil, though it wasn't fully appreciated when it was first released, over the years it's been recognized as a master work, thanks in no small part to Martin Scorsese, who championed the film and lauded it as a particular influence on his work. The stellar supporting cast includes great work by Beatrice Pearson as Doris, the film's only ray of light, Howland Chamberlain as Gomez' doomed accountant, and noir goddess Marie Windsor in her usual role as sexy femme fatale. Filled with scorching dialog and scenes that will sear into your memory, Force of Evil is one of the truly great films of the 1940s. ****


Foreign Intrigue, 1956 (Sheldon Reynolds). Blandly-titled EastmanColor potboiler enlivened by intriguing foreign locations and the presence of Robert Mitchum, who could make an old shoe worth looking at for a couple of hours. Mitchum plays Dave Bishop, a press agent hired to make up a history for his wealthy, enigmatic client. As the film opens, the client is dying of a heart attack, and before you can say "Foreign intrigue!" three times fast, Mitchum's caught up in ... well ... foreign intrigue involving blackmail, murder, spies, and two beautiful women (Genevieve Page and Ingrid Thulin). Frederic O'Grady is amusing as an entertaining baddie, but without Mitchum, this is not intriguing whatsoever. **1/2 

 
Framed, 1947 (Richard Wallace) B-noir that starts with a bang when the truck Glenn Ford is driving loses its brakes. He ends up crashed out and broke in a small western town, but his bad luck is just beginning. It turns to poison in the beautiful form of femme fatale Janis Carter, who is arsenic in a pretty package. Standard plot unfolds from there, but good performances help this pot boiler rise above its story, low budget and production values. ***


The Friends of Eddie Coyle, 1973 (Peter Yates) Robert Mitchum stars as Eddie Coyle (aka "Eddie Fingers"), an aging bakery truck driver/gun runner for the Boston mob. Eddie's facing a prison term for a truck hijacking set up by Dillon (Peter Boyle), who owns a local bar. Eddie's last chance to get a lighter sentence is ATF agent Dave Foley (Richard Jordan), who wants Eddie to become an informer. But, unbeknownst to Eddie, Dillon is an informer for Foley. Mitchum has perhaps never been better than he is playing the doomed Eddie Coyle, a man without a future in Peter Yates' excellent character study, adapted from the fantastic George V. Higgins novel. ***1/2


The Gambler and the Lady, 1952. Muddled, lackluster crime thriller from Hammer Films features Dane Clark as Jim Forster, American tough guy with anger/drinking issues who's left America for London after serving a prison stretch for manslaughter. Once in England, Forster wins a fortune gambling, which he uses to open a nightclub and some illegal gambling houses. He falls for Susan (Naomi Chance), a nice, upper-crust gal, which causes his volatile ex, Pat (Kathleen Byron), to go off the deep end with jealousy. At the same time, some ruthless gangsters are muscling in and trying to take over his gambling joints, and Jim gets swindled in a phony investment scheme set up by a friend of Susan's brother, which causes Jim to fall off the wagon. I don't blame him. I need a drink just trying to keep it all straight. It all comes to a head when the gangsters bump off Jim's best friend, and Jim drunkenly goes after them with guns blazing, gets wounded but gets his revenge and makes his escape, only to be turned into a hood ornament by his crazed ex. Perhaps this stupefying ball of half-baked befuddlement can be blamed on the fact that there were two directors. Prolific American B-movie director Sam Newfield, who boasts The Terror of Tiny Town ("the world's only western with an all-midget cast!") among his credits, was scheduled to helm, but he couldn't receive credit or he'd violate British labor quotas, so British director Pat Jenkins was given the blame, er, credit. ** 
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Gambling House, 1951 (Ted Tetzlaff) A bit hokey but surprisingly affecting tale of gambling syndicate underling/ex-G.I. Marc Fury (Victor Mature) threatened with deportation as an undesirable alien, and how he comes to understand the meaning of being an American and caring about someone other than himself.  **1/2
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Gilda, 1946 (Charles Vidor) Iconic Rita Hayworth performance still has the Wow! factor. Rita is the vampish Gilda, sultry ex-pat nightclub performer stranded in Buenos Aires, who marries shady casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready), who has just hired down-on-his luck gambler Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford, in one of his more smoldering performances). Johnny and Gilda have a past, though, which ended badly, leading to a volcanic love-hate dynamic that threatens to blow the top off the whole sordid triangle. And it is a triangle, what with those barely disguised homoerotic discussions of Mundson's "little friend" -- a retractable switchblade hidden inside the tip of his cane. The film is beautifully lit (by Rudolph Mate) and designed (by Van Nest Polglase), and the story features the most prominent men's room attendant in noir. Sure, he's great at dispensing pearls of wisdom, but those urinal cakes aren't going to change themselves, Uncle Pio! ***1/2


The Girl Hunters, 1963 (Roy Rowland). Somebody had the genius idea to cast pulp novelist Mickey Spillane as his own creation: two-fisted private eye Mike Hammer, and, well, let's just say his acting doesn't make his writing any better. The thing is, Spillane isn't even the worst actor in this brutal but splashy mystery about missing dames and damn commie spies. That honor would go to Scott Peters, who plays Hammer's explosively violent ex-buddy, police captain Dan Chambers. Peters' other credits include They Saved Hitler's Brain and Invasion of the Saucer Men. I guess he saved his best work for those two classics. This one's of interest due to the casting of Spillane and not much else. **


The Girl in Black Stockings, 1957 (Howard W. Koch) Anne Bancroft, Lex Barker. Godawful whodunit hokum about a crazed killer run amok at a Utah resort. Unintentionally comical at times. *1/2


The Glass Wall, 1953 (Maxwell Shane) Affecting, moving post-war drama about a Hungarian "displaced person" who, after spending 10 years in Nazi concentration camps and watching his entire family perish in the gas chamber, and then walking 300 miles to stow away aboard a refugee ship bound for America, only to be denied admittance by an unfeeling bureaucracy that doesn't believe his story. Peter Kuban (played brilliantly by Italian actor Vittorio Gassman) tells the immigration officials that, after escaping Auschwitz, he saved the life of an American paratrooper, which would qualify him for admittance under a special statute of the Displaced Persons act. But he has no proof, and so he's to be sent back to Europe, where he will be killed. Desperate, he jumps ship, injuring himself, and flees into the city, searching for the American soldier he saved. All he knows is that the G.I. is named Tom, and he plays the clarinet professionally around Times Square. In scenes reminiscent of Carol Reed's brilliant 1947 noir Odd Man Out, in which wounded IRA fugitive James Mason staggers through Belfast desperate to reach a ship that will take him to freedom, the wounded Kuban staggers through Manhattan, searching for the man who can back his story. Along the way, he meets Maggie (Gloria Grahame), a gal so down-and-out she tries to steal a woman's coat from a restaurant. The two desperate people connect and hit the streets in search of Peter's salvation.
   Shot largely on location in New York, The Glass Wall is filled with amazing scenes of early 1950s Times Square, though some of the shots featuring Gassman on the streets are obvious rear projection shots. Film is also filled with great jazz, particularly the Jack Teagarden band (Teagarden plays himself in one scene).  
   The character of Peter Kuban has a naivete and purity that makes him instantly sympathetic, rare for a noir protagonist, and even the Noirharajah found himself rooting hard, for once, for a happy ending. The scene near the end of the film, in which a desperate, disconsolate Kuban delivers an impassioned monologue in an empty conference room in the U.N. building (the "glass wall" of the film's title) is particularly moving: "As long as there is one man who can't walk free when he wants, as long as there is one displaced person without home, there won't be peace, because to each man, he is the world! Nobody listens." Leftist propaganda? Definitely. So what? Written and directed by journalist-turned screenwriter Maxwell Shane, The Glass Wall is an overlooked little gem that deserves more recognition. ***1/2

 
The Good Die Young, 1955 (Lewis Gilbert) Overlong British melodrama drags on and on. Laurence Harvey as Miles Ravencourt, a sponger and scoundrel, is pure evil as he leads three poor slobs (John Ireland, Richard Basehart, and Stanley Baker) to their doom. At just over two hours, film is way too long, spending the majority of that time delving into the money and marriage problems of the three saps who get talked into taking part in Harvey's robbery scheme. Monotonous potboiler. **1/2
 

The Great Flamarion, 1945 (Anthony Mann) Erich von Stroheim has the longest death scene in the history of film. **1/2


The Green Glove, 1952. Glenn Ford, in one of those adventure roles he was so good at, amiably plays Lt. Mike Blake, an American paratrooper who returns to France after World War II to recover the priceless, jewel-encrusted green "gauntlet" he'd hidden during the war (said titular glove having been stolen from a country church by a sleazy Nazi sympathizer played by George Macready). Ford and the rest of the cast -- including Geraldine Brooks as the love interest, an American tour guide Mike happens to meet and woo -- keep things rolling in a watchable sort of way, but director Rudolph Mate (D.O.A.) and scriptwriter Charles Bennett (Hitchcock's 39 Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Foreign Correspondent) let the thing get bogged down in the middle, before coming to life with a slam-bang finish. **1/2


The Grifters, 1990 (Stephen Frears) Stephen Frears' excellent adaptation -- written by Donald Westlake -- of the Jim Thompson pulp novel. Anjelica Huston is stunning as veteran con artist Lily Dillon, who works for brutal bookmaker Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle), making large cash bets at race tracks to lower the odds of longshots. John Cusack is her estranged son, Roy, a small-time Los Angeles grifter, who is dating Myra Langtry (Annette Bening in her star-making performance), who used to play long cons with her partner, Cole, rooking wealthy marks in business cons. But Cole went nuts, leaving Lily dangling, going to bed with her landlord to pay the rent. Lily's looking for a replacement for Cole, and she thinks Roy could be the one. But Lily and Myra take an instant disliking to each other, and when Myra accuses Roy of having an incestuous interest in his mother, Roy strikes her, and the couple break up. When Myra finds out that Lily has been stealing from Bobo for years, stashing her siphoned loot in the trunk of her car, she blabs the news, sending Lily on the run, with Myra following. Myra catches up to Lily late one night at a quiet desert motel, and the result is explosive, as is the climactic scene involving Roy and, well, you'll just have to see it.  ***


The Groundstar Conspiracy, 1972. White-pantsed Michael Sarrazin steals secret government rocket plans from the computer gizmo machine at the Groundstar facility, then blows the place up, including six people, not counting himself. Barely surviving, he stumbles to the home of the prettiest lady around and collapses, getting blood all over her nice shag carpet. Government sonofabitch George Peppard shows up to slap everyone around and get to the bottom of things, no matter the cost, dammit! Amnesia, various chases, yelling, and marshmallow toasting ensue, before all is revealed in a clever twist you won't see coming at the end. **1/2


Gumshoe, 1971. I'm not as high on Stephen Frears' directorial debut as most, it seems. Certainly Albert Finney is a load of fun as Eddie Ginley, a Liverpool bingo announcer and wannabe-comic who also dreams of being a noirish gumshoe a la Sam Spade. Eddie has the hard-boiled patter down, but he spends a lot of time getting beaten up as he finds himself investigating a case involving drugs and murder. Blatantly racist in spots, this left me wanting better. **1/2


Gun Crazy, 1950 (Joseph H. Lewis). Fascinating story about a pair of sharpshooting lovebirds who go on a crime spree. One of the most overtly erotic films of the post-WWII era. John Dall and Peggy Cummins are both terrific as the fugitive couple on the run. Dall's Bart is at heart a decent guy who finds out too late that the girl he's fallen for is a psychopath. Screenplay by McKinley Kantor and uncredited blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (credit was instead given to Millard Kaufman) is awash with symbolism in this magnificently enjoyable noir. ****


The Gun Runners, 1958 (Don Siegel) Third adaptation of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not is the least of the three, but that doesn't make it bad. Worth seeing for Eddie Albert, who, as the heavy, steals the show from star Audie Murphy.  **1/2


Gunman in the Streets, 1950 (Frank Tuttle) Paris locations lift this gangster-on-the-run story starring Dane Clark as the desperate crook and Simone Signoret as the girl whose fate seems inextricably handcuffed to his. **1/2

 
Guns, Girls, and Gangsters, 1959. This low-budget armored car heist film has exactly three things going for it: Mamie van Doren and her … assets. Watch Mamie sing and, uhh, dance. Sort of. Watch Mamie in a low-cut nighty. Watch Mamie sunbathe in a one-piece while stretching out on a chaise longue. Okay, now let’s watch that last one again. She might have been a poor man’s Marilyn Monroe, but money isn’t everything. Edward L. Cahn directs. You may remember him from such classics as Creature With the Atom Brain, Voodoo Woman, and It! The Terror From Beyond Space. So it's a bit of a surprise that this isn't half bad. It's got a sometimes-clever script by Robert E. Kent, and the supporting players -- including Lee Van Cleef and Gerald Mohr -- do fairly good work. Even the ridiculous aspects -- like the goofy shoot-out in a motel room -- are at least entertaining. But the omnipresent, unintentionally hilarious voice-over makes it hard to take any of the goings-on seriously. It’s like a parody of a Quinn-Martin production, only with Mamie and her extras. Somehow, that's almost enough. **1/2


Heat, 1995. Michael Mann's spectacular crime drama features a remarkable ensemble cast, headlined by Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in a cops v. robbers showdown for the ages. DeNiro plays Neil McCauley, the brains and guts behind a crew of hardened criminals who are "taking down scores" in L.A. Pacino is Lt. Vincent Hanna of the LAPD, whose life revolves around his job, which makes the rest of it a disaster zone. McCauley's philosophy is that, to live the life of a high-stakes criminal, one has to remain emotionally unattached, willing to abandon everything (and everyone) in his life if the heat is on. But when he meets Eady (Amy Brennaman), it seems McCauley's having second thoughts about that philosophy. The rest of his crew is more tied down: Chris (Val Kilmer) has a wife (Ashley Judd) and child, Michael (Tom Sizemore) is a family man in it for the thrills more than anything, and Trejo (Danny Trejo) is also married. When a trigger-happy psycho named Waingro (Kevin Gage) joins the crew and murders three guards during an armored truck heist, he brings the heat down hard on McCauley and his crew. 
   Meanwhile, Vincent has his own troubles at home. His third wife, Justine (Diane Venora), is fed up with his moody silence, and has to "demean herself" with a random schlub named Ralph to get his attention, while her teenaged daughter from a previous marriage (Natalie Portman) is suicidal over her absent father's indifference. 
   Mann's script crackles with machismo and subplots, and, at nearly three hours running time, nearly every character and plot thread feels complete. Every aspect is top notch. Cinematographer Dante Spinotti gives L.A. both grit and glitter, Elliot Goldenthal's synthy score sets the tone, and the editing shines, especially in a spectacular bank heist/urban shootout sequence that is to bank heist/shootouts what the car chase in Bullitt is to car chases. This is one of the best crime films ever made, but it is more than that -- it's a truly great film, period. But, is it noir? Noir enough for the Noirharajah. ****


Heat Wave (aka The House Across the Lake), 1954. While renting a lakeside bungalow in rural England, a struggling American novelist is seduced by the beautiful blonde wife of his rich neighbor across the lake, leading to murder and double-cross. Alex Nicol plays the hack writer who gets caught in the web of the promiscuous wife (Hillary Brooke) who's out to bump off her husband (Sid James) -- who is wise to the fact that he's being cuckolded -- before he cuts her out of his will. Story is told in flashback by the doomed writer, adding an air of dark fatalism to the whole affair, and solid acting all around helps compensate for a leaky but adult script by Ken Hughes, who also directed. A worthwhile entry in the Hammer Films-Lippert partnership. *** 


Hell Bound, 1957 (William J. Hole, Jr.) Tough, grimy, and fantastic, this little-known no-budget crime thriller features John Russell (no-nonsense Marshal Dan Troop from the TV western Lawman) as Jordan, the cold-blooded mastermind of a convoluted caper to steal a quarter-million dollars worth of medical grade narcotics from a cargo ship. As Hell Bound opens, Jordan, seeking the finances to back his caper, is showing a film he's created of his planned heist to crime boss Harry Quantro. Quantro agrees to bankroll the job, as long as his knockout girlfriend, Paula (former Playboy Playmate June Blair), is included to protect his investment. Jordan is one of the most ruthless and brutal villains you'll find in noir, and, as inhabited by John Russell, he's also one cool, post-modern heavy, a prickly cucumber with ice in his veins and no heart at all. Or maybe it's the other way around. As he tells Paula when she tries putting her hooks into him, "I've got no blood." At one point, Jordan uses the alias "Mr. Natas." Hold that up to a mirror and see what it spells. 
   Jordan may be made of ice, but his big plan proves to be pure jelly. It all falls apart suddenly when the chips are down, when each of his accomplices succumbs to his or her own particular weakness, leaving Jordan in desperate flight from the cops, scrambling over the industrial slag heap of L.A.'s trolley car graveyard, where he meets one of noir's most brutal ends, his mouth frozen open in a silent scream.
   Hell Bound has the unmistakable feel of an ending -- the final dismantling of the classic noir period. Yes, Touch of Evil (1958) and Odds Against Tomorrow ('59) were still to come, but Hell Bound feels closer to Don Siegel's The Lineup, released a year later in 1958, than those two classics. With its sudden, brutal violence, its sweaty, twitching junkies, a slick, sneering, blind dope dealer doing business in a seedy burlesque hall, a femme fatale with a foot fetish, and a jumpy score by controversial "exotica" composer Les Baxter, Hell Bound is raw, pulpy psychodrama leading us into the cool, bleak landscape of post-classic neo-noir. ***


Hell on Frisco Bay, 1955 (Frank Tuttle) Cinemascope Warnercolor dud starring Alan Ladd (all the verve of a bucket of expired oysters) as an ex-cop framed for a murder he didn't commit, and seeking revenge for the ones who did it to him. Just released after spending 5 years in Quentin, Ladd will stop at nothing to find the real killers, except taking time out to squabble with his ex-wife (Joanne Dru), who he holds a grudge against for her dalliance while he was in stir. Edward G. Robinson as the sneering, merciless gangster almost saves the thing before it drowns in an ocean of absurd narrative choices, culminating in a preposterous speedboat chase, during the filming of which Robinson's stunt double was killed. Filmed largely on location in San Francisco. **

 
Hell's Half Acre, 1954 (John H. Auer) Wendell Corey, Evelyn Keyes. Dippy, slow-moving script and stagey production sink this Hawaiian noir that features some police work that would make Dano throw the book at director John H. Auer. Somehow the screenplay even manages to botch the punchline, even though it's sitting there like a big, fat pineapple ready to be plucked. At least there's Evelyn Keyes, and Marie Windsor as a drunken floozy. **


Hell's Island, 1955. Director Phil Karlson helms a cheap, poorly-acted VistaVision remake of The Maltese Falcon set in the Caribbean, with all the usual south-of-the-border trimmings. As this overheated piece of cheese opens, tough guy Mike Cormack (John Payne, with a perpetual scowl) is undergoing surgery on his shoulder in the operating room, apparently without anesthesia. Does he cry out in pain? Whimper? Moan a little? Say "ow!"? Nope. Instead, he asks for a cigarette, to which the doctor shrugs, "Why not?" Nice work, Doc! The story unfolds there, in flashback, as Cormack tells his two-fisted tale under the bright lights of the surgery. Having been dumped by his fetching fiancee, Janet Martin (Mary Murphy), he took to the bottle so hard he lost his job with the L.A. district attorney's office, and is working as a bouncer in a Las Vegas casino. Into his depressed life rolls the unctuous, wheelchair-riding criminal mastermind Barzland (the always fantastic Francis L. Sullivan). Barzland has a proposition for Mike: fly to the Caribbean and cozy up to his old flame, Janet, in order to find a missing ruby that vanished in the crash of a plane owned by Janet's new husband, Eduardo, who now resides in an island penal colony for the murder of his business partner, who died in the crash. It seems the plane's fuel switch had been tampered with -- only it turns out it wasn't Eduardo who did the tampering, it was Janet, who was out to collect on his $100,000 life insurance. Cormack takes the job, and, after "bumping into" Janet, he ends up falling for the duplicitous dame again, like a sap. Lots of smoking, fistfights, and skulking about through the tropical sets ensue, with the usual hard-hitting action resulting in the usual slap-happy histrionics. It all adds up to little more than mediocre fiesta noir. **


High and Low, 1963. Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece is certainly one of the greatest -- if not THE greatest -- police procedurals ever filmed, but it is much more than just a procedural. It's a profound social commentary and character study. Based on the Ed McBain novel "King's Ransom," Kurosawa's Japanese title translates literally to "Heaven and Hell," -- a much more descriptive moniker for this searing noir than the English translation.
   The film unfolds in thirds. The first act (a little more than a third of the two hour, 23 minute running time) is stagey, taking place almost entirely in the living room of powerful shoe tycoon Kingo Gondo (played magnificently by Toshiro Mifune), who is closing in on a deal to take over control of his company. The deal, however, has put Gondo in debt right down to his sofa and chairs. "Now I don't even own the clothes on my back," he says, just before a phone call that suddenly turns his world upside down. The call is a ransom demand from a kidnapper who thinks he's put the snatch on Gondo's son, but in reality has grabbed the chauffeur's boy by mistake. Watching the dynamic change as both Gondo and his chauffeur realize the kidnapper's mistake is fascinating. When Gondo thinks it's his boy who's in danger, he refuses to call the police, because the kidnapper forbade it. As soon as he finds his son is safe, and the chauffeur's boy in danger, he calls the cops. Gondo goes from the high of completing his business triumph, to the low of thinking his son has been snatched with a ransom demand that will break him financially. Heaven to hell. The police arrive, the kidnapper calls back, having found his mistake, but unwilling to alter his demands. "You won't let (the chauffeur's boy) die," he tells Gondo. "You don't have the guts." As played by Mifune and a large cast of supporting players -- the lead detectives, Gondo's wife and son, his unctuous assistant, the chauffeur -- who come and go, this first act is a powerhouse, but it's merely prologue to what's to come. 
   As Gondo wrestles with whether or not to secure the boy's release -- which means financial ruin for him and his family -- we learn that the kidnapper is watching their every move. Gondo's house, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows -- looks down on the rest of Yokohama like a king's castle lording it over the peasants in their industrial wasteland below. High and low. Heaven and hell. 
   Gondo may live in a mansion on a hill, but, as played by Mifune, he's a man rooted solidly to the ground. Literally. By shoes. At one point, as the detectives are rigging the ransom bags so they can track the kidnappers, it's Gondo who pulls out his old shoe-repair tools and does the grunt work himself. In the film's opening scene, Gondo is meeting with other execs from his company. They want Gondo to join them in pushing "the old man" out the door so they can make more money by producing cheaply-made shoes that won't last a month. Gondo refuses. He won't stand for it. There's a great scene near the end when the ruined footwear kingpin takes a walk down into the sweltering hellpit of Yokohama, stopping to gaze through the window of a shoe store. The man just loves shoes! 
   Once Gondo decides he must pay the ransom, we move swiftly to the thrilling second act, starting on a bullet train, from which Gondo must throw his money literally out the window, while the cops scramble to take photos of the boy and his kidnappers as the train hurtles past. This is followed by pure procedural, as the police meticulously use every method at their disposal to track the kidnapper. The final act, however, is what elevates High and Low to its lofty place amongst the truly great films of noir. Once the police zero in on their suspect, Kurosawa takes us on an extended ride through the teeming, fetid streets of Yokohama in a scene reminiscent of his famous Tokyo montage sequence in Stray Dog, made 14 years earlier. Only here, the stakes are so much higher than a bumbling, naive cop stumbling through post-war Tokyo looking for the thief who stole his gun. Here, Kurosawa takes us into a sordid sin market -- a hell, really -- filled with grime-covered peasants, cat-eyed party girls, gyrating party boys (many of whom are American), and drug-ravaged zombies. The sequence is trumpeted by an astonishing plume of pink smoke -- marking the first time Kurosawa used color in film -- signalling an opening into the pit. It culminates brilliantly, to the twinkly strains of the 1960 Elvis Presley hit "It's Now or Never." And then finally, the denouement, in a scene that echoes the brutal, final shot of The Maltese Falcon, as the elevator doors close on Miss Wonderly, sending her on her descent into hell. Here it is the kidnapper (and murderer), a tortured, disfigured medical student named Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki in a haunting performance) -- who's summoned Gondo to the death house where he's awaiting his execution. "From my tiny room, your house looked like heaven. Day by day I came to hate you more. It gave me a reason for living," he tells Gondo. As he begins shaking uncontrollably, he continues: "I'm not afraid of death. I don't care if I go to hell. My life has been hell since the day I was born. But if I had to go to heaven, then I'd really start to tremble." Enfolding himself like Munch's The Scream, he bolts to his feet, wailing, a damned soul sinking into another kind of hell as the guards burst in to haul him away. The protective screen descends, leaving only Gondo, sitting, head bowed, his face only visible to us in reflection, as Takeuchi's tortured screams fade. It's an ending that ranks with the most powerful of noir, and one that will haunt you long after the screen fades to black. ****


High Sierra, 1941 Raoul Walsh directs from a script by John Huston and W.R. Burnett, from Burnett's novel. Humphrey Bogart is hardened criminal Mad Dog Roy Earl, just paroled from prison and leading a gang that's plotting to heist a load of jewels from a Palm Springs resort. Bogart is fantastic as the tough old con with a soft spot for Velma, a girl with a club foot (Joan Leslie), and a scraggly, bad-luck mutt named Pard (played effortlessly by Bogie's own dog, Zero). And then there's Marie, the tough-but-vulnerable moll, played in an unforgettable turn by noir goddess Ida Lupino, who eventually melts the old bandit's heart too. It all culminates in a slam-bang finish high up in the Sierra mountains, as Bogart's defiant snarl echoes through the peaks and crevasses of Mt. Whitney. ****

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High Tide, 1947. Pretty standard B-noir about Hugh Fresney (Lee Tracy), a hardboiled L.A. newspaperman who hires old colleague turned private eye Tim Slade (Don Castle) to help him investigate a local racketeer who's trying to take over the city (and the newspaper). The story is elevated from the ho-hum by a pretty spectacular framing device. As the film opens, Slade and Fresney are trapped in the wreckage of a car that's cracked up on the beach, with the tide coming in. Slade's outside the vehicle with his leg trapped under the wreck, while Fresney is inside mortally injured. As the two survey their dire situation, Fresney begins recounting how they got there, which turns into the flashback that encompasses the body of the film. It's Grade A top sirloin on both ends, but the middle of this slab of beef is pure gristle. **1/2 +


High Wall, 1947 (Curtis Bernhardt). Dark but dated amnesia noir starring Robert Taylor is visually striking, with lots of great noir style courtesy of cinematographer Paul C. Vogel. Check out the early scene with the oily villain played by Herbert Marshall getting onto a cage-like elevator that closes him in like a jail cell. Pure noirvana. Unfortunately, the script can't keep up, veering more toward psychological melodrama than noir. 
  Taylor stars as Steven Kenet, a flyboy vet who comes home to find his wife has been canoodling with her smoothie boss (Marshall), who's up for partnership at the religious publishing house where he and Mrs. Kenet work. Kenet, who suffers the effects of a brain injury from the war, is choking his wife in a rage when he passes out. He wakes up later, with no memory of the incident, and finds her strangled. Thinking he's killed her, he packs her lifeless body down to the car and drives into a dry river in a suicide attempt. When he wakes up, Kenet is sent to the psychological hospital, where he's treated by Dr. Ann Lorrison (Audrey Totter), who, of course, falls for him. There's a lot of oh-so technical (for the 1940s) psychological jibber-jabber (Totter wants Taylor to undergo "narcosynthesis" -- which is nothing more than a shot of sodium pentathol). There's also a blackmailing janitor, the usual laughing-house loonies down at the asylum, and a lot of rainy night scenes. When Kenet finally begins to doubt he killed his wife, he manages to break out of the nuthouse not once but twice so he can investigate the crime and clear himself. The plot gets even goofier from there. 
   Like Taylor, a McCarthy Republican who actually ratted out the film's screenwriter, Lester Cole, to the House Un-American Activities Commission, which ended with Cole being blacklisted and serving 10 months in prison, High Wall is nice to look at, but there's not a lot there beneath the high gloss. **1/2
 

Highway 301, 1950 (Andrew L. Stone) Steve Cochran, Virginia Grey. Tense, hard-driving actioner about a gang of ruthless bank robbers and the dames unlucky enough to get mixed up with them. Based on true events, the violence depicted by the group known as The Tri-State Gang is shocking for a film of the era. Steve Cochran plays the brutal leader of the gang, who will rub out anyone who gets in their way, or threaten their freedom, including their girlfriends. Film kicks off with the governors of three states bloviating about how "crime doesn't pay." **1/2


Highway Dragnet, 1954 (Nathan Juran). Entertaining, fast-paced tale of Korean War vet Jim Henry (Richard Conte), just discharged, accused of killing a former fashion model in a Las Vegas hotel room. Henry takes it on the lam with two comely "hostages" (Joan Bennett and Wanda Hendrix), leading the cops on a merry desert pursuit. Story by Roger Corman was his first screen credit. **1/2 


His Kind of Woman, 1951 (John Farrow) Robert Mitchum oozes cool, Jane Russell sings, Vincent Price hams it up, Jim Backus (!) leers, and Raymond Burr menaces, but this oddball tongue-in-cheek crime thriller too often veers into near farce to be taken seriously as a noir. Still great fun -- especially when Mitchum and Russell are sparking up the screen -- or any time Price opens his mouth. Also features gravel-voiced noir deity Charles McGraw -- as a brutish thug, of course.  ***

 
The Hitch-Hiker, 1952 (Ida Lupino) William Talman delivers one of noir’s most menacing performances as droopy-eyed evil personified in director Ida Lupino’s chilling tale of darkness on the road in post-war America. Based on the true story of psychopathic killer Billy Cook, who went on a murder spree between Missouri and California in 1950-51. Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are solid as two fishing buddies, on their way to a fishing trip in a Mexican town on the Gulf of California, who pick up hitch-hiker Emmett Myers (Talman) on the road, only to find out that he's the cold-blooded killer who's been murdering his way across the west. Myers as much as tells them he's going to kill them as soon as he no longer needs them to get to where he's going. The only true noir directed by a woman. ***1/2


Hollywood Story, 1951. Cheap William Castle production is about as hard-boiled as a 2-minute egg. Film was Universal Pictures' attempt to cash in on the success of Sunset Boulevard -- released by Paramount the year before. Richard Conte plays a New York theatrical producer who goes to Hollywood and attempts to make a movie about the murder of a silent film director twenty years earlier. An ill-advised voice over narrated by Jim Backus -- the voice of Mr. Magoo from the Saturday morning cartoon -- runs throughout and lightens the mood, undercutting the darker elements of the story. Speaking of story, this one was loosely based on the unsolved murder of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor in 1922. Ho-hum whodunnit lacks any of the narrative elements of noir. **


Hollywoodland, 2006. Allen Coulter directed this atmospheric, melancholy period piece about the events surrounding the 1959 death of Superman actor George Reeves, played ably by Ben Affleck. Adrien Brody stars as down-and-out Hollywood P.I. Louis Simo, hired to find out the truth about Reeves' death, ruled a suicide by the cops. Diane Lane turns in a great performance as Toni Mannix, who had a long-standing affair with Reeves, and was the wife of MGM studio exec Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins). More a thoughtful meditation on the nature of fame than a thriller, this is a slow burn that doesn't pretend to solve the mystery of Reeves' death, and is better for it. ***


Homicide, 1949 (Felix Jacoves) Warner Brothers B-film mystery programmer features affable Brit Robert Douglas as a "Canadian" detective working for the LAPD, who heads to the desert to get to the bottom of the murder of a drifter. It's all rather dull stuff, what? A strong supporting cast of character actors -- including Robert Alda and Esther Howard -- help liven things up a bit. **


The Hoodlum, 1951 (Max Nosseck) Overworked but fast-paced cheapie about unrepentant hood Vincent Lubeck, played by Lawrence Tierney. Tierney specialized in playing dark, violently anti-social psychopaths, and Lubeck fits right in, as he lies, two-times, bullies, uses and ruins all those who fall within his orbit, including his mother, brother, and brother's girlfriend, who he impregnates and dumps, driving her to suicide. Raised in stench near the city dump, Vincent exclaims, "dough is the only thing that will cover up the stink of the city dump!" Tierney, as usual, delivers a less than subtle yet memorable performance as one of noir's most irredeemable characters. *** 


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House of Bamboo, 1955. Sam Fuller's hard-hitting post-war CinemaScope/DeLuxe color crime drama is a loose remake of 1948's The Street With No Name. Fuller gets a lot of mileage out of location shooting in Tokyo -- the first American film to be shot there after the war -- but ludicrous and out-of-character buffoonery by criminal mastermind Robert Ryan at the end knock this out of the upper echelon of Fuller's oeuvre. Ryan is great, as always, as racketeer Sandy Dawson, who leads an ex-GI gang of thieves in post-war Tokyo who hit their targets fast and hard, and immediately shoot any gang-members who get wounded to keep them from talking if captured. Robert Stack is less convincing as Eddie Spanier, a truculent military cop who infiltrates the gang, taking up with Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi, terrific), beautiful wife of a former gang member who was killed by Dawson during a robbery when he fell wounded. As usual, Fuller fills his film with subtext -- homoeroticism, mixed-race relationships, U.S. appropriation of foreign interests. Add the spectacular location shots staged by Fuller and executed by cinematographer Joe MacDonald (for example, get a load of the opening of the film, featuring Mt. Fuji in the background while the gang robs a train) and you have what is shaping up to be top-notch Fuller until the climax, when the script takes it off the rails. The bad stuff happens after Dawson learns Spanier's a cop. He has some time to stew about it, and come up with a plan to get rid of the rat in his midst. But instead of just executing him, he comes up with a ridiculous plan to frame Spanier for a jewel theft, which includes knocking him out at the crime scene, calling the cops, then propping the unconscious Spanier up to make it look as if he's awake and standing, thinking the cops will blast him first and ask questions later. Of course it doesn't work, which leads to a rather thrilling Hitchcockian finish high atop a giant revolving globe at a carnival. Look for a young DeForest Kelley as one of the gang members. ***


The Housemaid, 1960. Famed South Korean director Kim Ki-young's cringy cult classic horror-noir (noiror?) is a claustrophobic, relentless nightmare about sexual obsession and class anxieties in a capitalist society. Hailed as one of South Korea's greatest and most influential films (Bong Joon-ho credits the film for inspiring his 2019 Oscar winner Parasite), The Housemaid takes place almost entirely in a cramped two-story house that becomes a prison for the family that lives there. Handsome pianist Dong Sik-kim (Kim Jin-kyu), who teaches music at an all-girls factory, his wife (Ju Jeung-ryu) and two young children -- are the aspiring middle-class family trying to climb the social ladder, at any cost. When they hire a live-in housemaid (Lee Eun-shim), she seduces the husband,  and their affair leads to tragedy and horror. A disturbing, even shocking film, with a bizarre ennding. ***



Human Desire, 1954 (Fritz Lang) Fritz Lang's follow-up to 1953's The Big Heat (which also starred Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame) is this remake of Jean Renoir's La Bete Humaine (based on Zola's novel), and it's as cold and dark as any of his work. Here, Broderick Crawford plays brutish railroad supervisor Carl Buckley, who gets fired from his job, then persuades his sexy wife Vicki (Grahame) to plead with rich, old magnate John Owens for her hubby's job. But when the hot-tempered Carl suspects Vicki of going too far with Owens, he smacks her around, then jealously stabs Owens to death in a train compartment. Into this melodrama comes locomotive engineer/Korean War vet Jeff Warren (Ford), who spots Vicki in the vicinity of the murder, but shields her at the inquest. Soon, the two are having a steamy affair, and Vicki is scheming to have Jeff kill the increasingly violent and unstable Carl. Another excellent, highly polished example of Lang's craft. ***


Hustle, 1975. Robert Aldrich directs this standout cop drama, featuring Burt Reynolds in one of his best performances. Fine script by Steve Shagan keeps the focus on the characters -- Reynolds as Lieutenant Phil Gaines, Catherine Deneuve as his high-priced hooker girlfriend, Nicole, Paul Winfield as Gaines' partner, Louis, and Ben Johnson and Eileen Brennan as the parents of a murdered teen. Yes, there are a couple of moments when this feels a bit like an episode of Starsky & Hutch, and the ending is about as cliché as it comes, but mostly this is a complex, well-acted, atmospheric, cynical crime story about characters. It also has some memorable lines, like when Reynolds' weary cop describes the father of a murdered teen (Johnson, excellent): "He's just one of those middle-class Americans who thinks you get 40,000 miles on a new set of tires." ***


I Am Waiting, 1957. Dreams die hard in this haunting Nikkatsu noir about hope, the loss of same, and redemption. On a rainy, lonely ol' night by the Yokohama piers, ex-boxer-turned restaurant manager Joji (baby-faced Yujiro Ishihara, fresh off his huge success in the delinquency hit Crazed Fruit) saves Saeko (Mie Kitahara), a beautiful, forlorn "canary that's forgotten how to sing" from suicide. Next thing you know, Saeko's working and living in Joji's joint, and the two are falling for each other, but their dark pasts keep getting in the way. See, Joji killed a guy with his fists in a bar fight, and Saeko's on the run from her gangster boss who's forcing her to keep working for him, even though her singing voice is supposedly shot from illness. Oh yeah, and Joji is waiting to hear from his brother, who left for Brazil a year ago to buy a farm and was supposed to send for him. Koreyoshi Kurahara, in his directorial debut, uses expressionist lighting, creative flashback, and bold camerawork to create an atmospheric mystery that was one of Nikkatsu's earliest successes, and for good reason. ***1/2
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I Confess, 1953. Alfred Hitchcock's melodrama about a priest who hears a killer's confession and refuses to break his vow, even when suspicion for the crime falls on him. The film is long on the "illicit love" angle and short on suspense, but Montgomery Clift turns in a typically fine performance as the priest, with Anne Baxter as the woman who loves him (nearly tragically), and Karl Malden as the dogged Inspector Larrue. The choice to have the despicable heavy be a German immigrant feels a bit easy, for the time. **1/2 


I Died a Thousand Times, 1955. Scene-by-scene color remake of High Sierra. Not that there's anything wrong with the film, or with the performances (Jack Palance in the Bogart role and Shelley Winters in the Ida Lupino role), but the question is, why make this at all? It can't stand up to High Sierra, and it's the exact same story, only filmed in color and with a lesser cast, director, and writer. What's the point? **1/2 


I Love Trouble, 1948 (S. Sylvan Simon). Franchot Tone adds his name to the short list of former light comedy players who moved on to play tough, wisecracking private eyes. While not as successful at it as Dick Powell, he makes the transition better than Robert Montgomery in this flippant and convoluted mystery. Tone is fun as he flirts his way up and down the west coast, digging into the past of a wealthy man's missing wife. Noir stalwarts John Ireland, Raymond Burr, and Tom Powers support, alongside a bevy of beauties led by Janet Blair and Janis Carter. **1/2



I Wake Up Screaming, 1941 (H. Bruce Humberstone)  Victor Mature and Betty Grable. Visually arresting camerawork makes this one of the very first films to incorporate what has become known as the Noir style. Narratively, it's a bit light in the gumshoes, especially compared with other early Noir pioneers like The Maltese Falcon -- which was released about a month earlier -- but the fantastic images from director H. Bruce Humberstone and cinematographer Richard Cronjager -- neither of whom ever did anything like this before or after -- elevate this otherwise middling murder mystery. Lots of ludicrous histrionics -- like Laird Cregar's creepy cop breaking just about every civil right on the books, such as when he breaks in to Victor Mature's apartment to watch him sleep -- and you may get a bit sick of hearing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," as it's played nearly every time Betty Grable shows her mug. Still, this is a prerequisite for noir afficionados ***


I Was a Communist for the FBI, 1951 (Gordon Douglas) Despicable propaganda for the House Un-American Activities Commission. Film -- which was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Documentary (!) -- depicts "commies" (and even school teachers and people who embrace liberal causes, such as the Scottsboro Trial defense) as racist thugs or dupes who were not interested in social change or improving working/race/social conditions, but only in seizing power for the Soviets. This laughable tripe is the Joe McCarthy crowd's Reefer Madness, only not nearly as entertaining. *


I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes, 1948. Ludicrous Poverty Row cheapie based on a Cornell Woolrich novel scrapes the bottom of the shoebox in every category. Don Castle and Elyse Knox play Tom and Ann Quinn, struggling husband and wife hoofers. One night, trying to sleep in their tiny New York rat-trap, Tom throws his shoes out the window at some noisy cats. A couple of days later, Tom is arrested for murder when his shoe prints are found outside the murder scene. As Tom waits on death row, faithful Ann takes it on the arches to find the real killer and save her hubby, with the "help" of flatfoot Regis Toomey, who happens to be a heel who's in love with her. Whoever greenlit this stinker should have been given the boot, or at least a hotfoot. *1/2

 
Illegal, 1955 (Lewis Allen) This Edward G. Robinson vehicle gets points for chutzpah and entertainment value, but this is melodrama, not noir. Robinson plays Victor Scott, a D.A. with a spectacular courtroom style, who falls into alcoholism after sending an innocent man to the chair. After hitting rock bottom, Scott bounces back as a defense attorney and ends up defending an associate of the city's crime boss (Albert Dekker). Robinson, always fun to watch, is even more so than usual here -- the highlight, for my money, being a fantastic courtroom stunt in which he sucker punches a hulking witness who had claimed a smaller man could never knock him out. Nina Foch's usual quietly solid performance adds a bit of elegance to the proceedings.  **1/2


I'm Your Woman, 2020. Julia Hart's 1970s-era neo-noir takes a different approach to the crime thriller, by telling the story from the perspective of the wife of a criminal. Rachel Brosnahan plays Jean, wife of Eddie, a criminal in an unnamed city. The couple wants to have a baby, but Jean is unnable, and they can't adopt because of Eddie's record. One day, Eddie shows up with a baby. Surprise! The next thing we know, Jean's being woken in the middle of the night by one of Eddie's friends saying something's gone wrong, Eddie's missing, and Jean needs to pack and leave immediately with the mysterious Cal (Arinze Kine). Turns out, Eddie killed the boss of their crime syndicate, and now everyone's after him. As Jean gets set up in a new house in another town by Cal, we begin to learn more about Cal's place in the story (along with that of his wife, Teri, played by Marsha Stephanie Blake) and other members of his family. Great performances from all and a focus on characters usually on the periphery of the crime story -- like the wife, and African-Americans on the forgotten side of town -- make this a compelling watch.  ***

 
Impact, 1949 (Arthur Lubin) Unusual noir that alternates between hard-boiled Cainsian murder story and bucolic, tale of small-town post-war romance. Scheming wife of San Francisco millionaire industrialist Walter Williams’ (Brian Donlevy) plots to have her lover kill her hubby while he's on a road trip to Tahoe. The plot goes awry, and the lover, fleeing the scene in Williams’ convertible, dies in a fiery head-on crash. The body is mistakenly identified as Williams, who, dazed, wanders the countryside with a slight case of amnesia, finally ending up in a small town in Idaho, where he gets a job as a gas station mechanic and falls in love with his war widow boss, Marsha, played by Ella Raines. Can you blame him? Meanwhile, his unfaithful wife has been arrested for his murder. When Williams and Marsha go back to San Francisco to clear things up, the unfaithful wife lies her head off and Williams is arrested for the murder of lover-boy. Is your head spinning yet? Good work by Donlevy and Helen Walker as the faithless wife, and Charles Coburn adds his usual soft touch as the veteran police detective on the case. Not anyone's idea of a classic, but an enjoyable ride. ***


In a Lonely Place, 1950 (Nicholas Ray). Nicholas Ray's profound meditation on the darkness of the soul. Humphrey Bogart is troubled screenwriter Dix Steele, a man with a violent temper who may or may not have strangled a young hatcheck girl. Gloria Grahame is his neighbor, a woman who loves Dix, but is terrified of him. A wrenching and powerfully disturbing film, this is Czar of Noir Eddie Muller's favorite noir. **** 


Indestructible Man, 1956 (Jack Pollexfen). Cheap, cheesy B-movie mix of sci-fi/horror and noir, told in Dragnet-style voice-over by bug-eyed Max Showalter, Jr., who stars as Lieutenant Dick Chasen (yes, really). Lon Chaney, Jr. plays "Butcher" Benton, killer who, after being executed in the gas chamber has his body delivered to a mad scientist who's working on a cure for cancer and needs a human body to finish his experiment. So, instead of trying to get the corpse of a patient who died of, say, CANCER, he bribes a prison guard to get the corpse of an executed criminal, natch! Instead of curing the dead man's cancer -- which he never had -- the experiment (which involves a Frankenstein-like "throw the switch!" maneuver) accidentally brings Butcher back to life, none the worse for wear, only the "tremendous electrical voltage" somehow burned out only his vocal cords and "increased his cellular structure," which gives Butcher superhuman strength, which he uses occasionally as he staggers around the L.A. area seeking revenge on all those who wronged him. Lots of laughs, none of which are intentional.  *1/2


The Indian Runner, 1991. Sean Penn's directorial debut, inspired by the lovely, powerful Bruce Springsteen ballad Highway Patrolman, is intense, brooding, heartfelt, but ultimately repetitive, overlong, and laborious. The film stars David Morse as Joe Roberts, the Nebraska highway patrolman from Springsteen's title, and Viggo Mortensen as his bad boy Vietnam Vet brother, a tortured soul just back from the war who can't stay out of trouble. The problem isn't the acting, as both leads do fine, as does a strong supporting cast that includes Valeria Golino as Joe's wife Maria, and Charles Bronson and Sandy Dennis as the brothers' parents. If I had to pick a culprit, I'd choose the script, penned by Penn, who seems as if he's trying to capture the beautiful simplicity of Springsteen's writing in the dialog. Like when Bronson says, "He's a very restless boy, that Frankie. That's what got him into trouble, you know." Or when Joe observes, "There are two kinds of men: the strong and the weak." The thing is, Springsteen's writing only appears simplistic on the surface because of the blue collar characters who populate his songs. Looked at a bit closer, the complexity and depth reveal itself. 

Yeah, me and Franky laughin' and drinkin', nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"
I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family, well he just ain't no good

   There's a lot going on in those four lines, including the hint at a possible romantic triangle, which is avoided in Penn's script, which is too bad. The film could have used more context for why Frankie's so tortured. As it is, it's simply explained away as Frank was always high-strung and hot-tempered, from the time they were kids. Not much to hang a 2-hour film on.
​   One line from the Springsteen song -- sung in Joe's voice -- tells the story: "I got a brother named Frankie, and Frankie ain't no good." Penn takes 125 minutes to tell us what Springsteen manages in five. And, unlike the song, it's not a pleasant or particularly insightful experience to sit through. **
 

Inferno, 1953 (Roy Ward Baker). Technicolor, 3D survival potboiler in which unlikable, broken-legged millionaire Robert Ryan is left to die in the desert by scheming wife Rhonda Fleming and her beau (William Lundigan). Much of the film is narrated by Ryan, alone in the desert, as he struggles to survive against all odds. The 3D effects are mostly absent until the big climax, and that's when Director Roy Ward Baker gives you your money's worth. 20th Century Fox's first foray into the 3D market is a fairly taut survival thriller. Cinematographer Lucien Ballard's Mojave Desert photography is worth looking at, as, of course, is Fleming. **1/2


Johnny Angel, 1945 (Edwin L. Marin) George Raft is his usual slab of lumber as the titular character, a two-fisted merchant ship captain (you can tell by how he wears his captain's uniform and cap everywhere he goes) investigating a mystery involving a ghost ship, smugglers, murder, an exotic foreign dame (you can tell by her accent and the beret she wears everywhere), and a cache of secret French gold. There's Claire Trevor as Lilah, a scheming femme fatale, Hoagy Carmichael as a singing cab driver, and plenty of noir atmospherics as Raft noses around the dimly-lit, fog-enshrouded docks and the swinging French Quarter of New Orleans. There's also the pretzel-twisty mystery which includes Johnny trying to clear the name of his father -- the captain of the ghost ship -- who disappeared along with the entire crew, and Trevor's chubby blubbering man-baby husband, Gusty, and his doting ex-nursemaid turned personal secretary, Miss Drumm. Sounds like it's got it all, right? The only problem is, it also has too much talk, a lot of hokey histrionics, and George Raft as the lead. Though the wooden one actually has a couple of decent moments, they're outnumbered and overshadowed by all the usual Raft robotics. **1/2


Johnny Eager, 1941 (Mervyn LeRoy) Tough syndicate boss Johnny Eager (Robert Taylor) turns sucker for Lana Turner in this entertaining, if far-fetched, melodrama. Great performance by Van Heflin as Johnny's fatalistic, philosophizing friend won the actor a Best Supporting Oscar. ***


Johnny Guitar, 1954. Nicholas Ray's intensely stylized, colorful, crazy, jaw-dropping, one-of-a kind western about a feud between a saloonkeeper named Vienna (Joan Crawford and her eyebrows) and a cattle queen (Mercedes McCambridge) is a thinly veiled anti-McCarthy commentary. Besides the fabulous switcheroo making two tough-as-nails women the leaders of the feuding factions, there's Sterling Hayden as the titular Johnny Guitar, a reformed gunfighter, squaring off against The Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) over Vienna's love. Audiences at the time didn't know what to make of it, and yes, some of it is unintentionally hilarious, but even when you're laughing you're riveted. Whether this is noir or not (Eddie Muller says no, and who am I to argue with the Czar of Noir?), it's still wildly entertaining, and not to be missed. ***1/2  


Johnny One-Eye, 1950 (Robert Florey) Sappy, zero-budget tale about former gangster turned legit Martin Martin (Pat O'Brien), whose past comes back to haunt him when his former partner, the craven Dane Cory (played by big lug Wayne Morris), sets him up to take the rap for a killing they were involved in many years ago. When Martin pays Cory a visit to try to persuade him not to rat him out, a shootout ensues, leaving Cory's henchman dead and Martin badly wounded. Stumbling around with a bullet in his shoulder, Martin takes refuge in an abandoned building next door to the apartment building where Cory's girlfriend -- a burlesque star known as "Beautiful Mama" -- lives with her little girl, figuring Cory will show sooner or later. While he's hiding out and waiting, Martin adopts an injured dog he names Johnny One-Eye. Call me a sap, but I think I have something in my eye. *** 


Johnny Stool Pigeon, 1949. A strong cast lifts this otherwise run-of-the-mill cops-and-dope-syndicate yarn above the ordinary, but even the likes of Dan Duryea, Shelley Winters, Howard Duff, John McIntyre, and Tony Curtis in one of his earliest film roles can only lift it so far. William Castle directs from a script by Robert L. Richards (Winchester '73, Act of Violence). Duff plays a federal narcotics agent who infiltrates the dope syndicate, with the help of Johnny Evans, a hardened Alcatraz inmate, played with his usual inimitable style by Duryea. Duff's character convinces cop-hating Johnny to turn stool pigeon by springing him from prison and taking him to the morgue, where he shows Johnny the body of his wife, who's just died of an overdose. From there the two form an uneasy alliance, as the action takes them from Vancouver, B.C. to a dude ranch in Arizona, with Shelley Winters' bad girl with a heart of gold along for the ride. **1/2 


Journey Into Fear, 1943. Orson Welles, who co-wrote the script with Joseph Cotton, supposedly didn't direct this spy film (it's credited to Norman Foster), but it's filled with typical Wellesian flourishes. Narratively, the film is a fairly pedestrian WWII spy tale, featuring Cotten as Howard Graham, American armaments engineer, being menaced by Nazi spies and assassins while completing some business with the Turkish navy. When Colonel Haki of the Turkish police (Welles) tries to sneak Graham out of Istanbul aboard a tramp steamer, the Nazi baddies follow. Lots of shadowy skullduggery ensues aboard ship. Some of it is quite pleasant to watch, thanks to the presence of the alluring Dolores del Rio. There's some inventive work with Dutch angles and shadows, though Welles had nothing to do with that, wink-wink. **1/2 


Julia, 2008. Julia Harris is an out of control, self-destructive alcoholic who is quickly swirling the drain on her way to oblivion in L.A., partying hard, passing out in strange bedrooms (or cars), and getting fired from her job. On her way to the bottom, she meets another emotionally unbalanced woman, Elena, at an AA meeting. Elena wants Julia to help her kidnap her son from her millionaire grandfather, promising to pay Julia $50,000 from a vague inheritance. Julia comes up with the genius plan to pull a doublecross on Elena and kidnap the kid from the kidnapper, and in the bargain get a lot more money -- $2 million. Things go horribly wrong, of course, as they tend to do with addicts, and Julia ends up on the run with the child in Tijuana, where some other kidnappers -- these ones truly dangerous -- snatch the kid from her. If it all sounds too screwy to take seriously, well, it could be but for one small detail: Julia is played by the one and only Tilda Swinton. As Julia, Swinton is a force of nature, a human comet, her long, red hair flaming out behind her as she careens across the California desert. The scene in which she kidnaps the boy is frenetic and pulse-pounding, because not only do we not know what Julia is truly capable of, as played by Swinton, neither does Julia. Any other star would have tried to make us like her. Not Swinton. She takes us the other way, embodying the desperate, walking fiasco of a disaster (a fiaster?) that is Julia in full panic-mode. Director Erick Zonca and the film's writers were clearly inspired by John Cassavetes' Gloria, a modern fairytale, but Julia is no storybook story. Filmed at times in a lurching, hand-held documentary style that matches Julia's frantic desperation, the film is overlong at nearly 2 1/2 hours, and veers off into what feels like aimlessness once or twice, but Swinton somehow manages to keep it all together until the white-knuckle ending. *** 


Julie, 1956. Doris Day gives it her all as the title character in this unintentionally hilarious thriller, which is not in the least bit noir. Julie is a stewardess in peril, on the run from her psycho second husband Lyle, played against type by French loverboy Louis Jourdan. After her first hubby supposedly committed suicide, Julie marries Lyle, only to find out that Lyle is a jealous wacko who murdered her first husband to get his mitts on her. Barry Sullivan is a steadfast friend who tries to help Julie get away from Lyle, and gets a slug in the gut -- courtesy of Lyle -- for his trouble. It all comes to a goofy climax aboard a flight that Julie's working, with an ending that's an inspiration to later aeronautical disaster films, including the stellar 1980 spoof Airplane. ** 
 

Kansas City Confidential, 1952 (Phil Karlson) Imaginative, bare-knuckled tale of an ex-con (John Payne), an ex-war hero whose medals won't buy him a cup of coffee, who gets framed for a bank robbery and must solve the case himself to clear his name. Payne continued his reinvention from light romantic lead to two-fisted tough guy in noirs and westerns with a straight-forward performance as Joe Rolfe, a hard-luck delivery driver determined to clear his name. The imaginative part comes in the crime's set-up, which Quentin Tarantino borrowed liberally from for Reservoir Dogs. An embittered former police captain recruits a veritable who's-who of 50s and 60s heavies (Jack Elam, Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef) to knock off an armored car as it picks up the loot from a bank. The catch: all the crooks wear masks from the first time they meet, so they won't be able to rat each other out later. Phil Karlson's direction eschews standard noir flourishes and focuses instead on the characters' sweaty faces. According to Karlson, he and Payne dreamt up the story one night while "loaded on Scotch." One of the better heist noirs. ***


Key Largo, 1948 (John Huston). A superb ensemble cast highlights John Huston's tale of post-war . Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, a war vet visiting the widow (Lauren Bacall) and father (Lionel Barrymore) of a man who died under his command in Italy. They run a hotel in the Florida Keys, and McCloud arrives to find the hotel has only six "guests" -- gangsters posing as tourists. Boss of the outfit is Johnny Rocco, a Capone-like gangster played in a film-stealing performance by Edward G. Robinson. When first we see Robinson, he's sitting in a bath chomping on a cigar. Then he arises to put a high-pantsed stranglehold on the film. Turns out the gang is holding Barrymore and Bacall hostage until an old underworld pal/rival of Rocco's arrives to conclude a big deal. Also along as part of Rocco's entourage is his alcoholic ex-moll Gaye Dawn, played by Claire Trevor in a wonderful performance that earned the noir goddess an Oscar. It all comes to a boil as a giant hurricane hits, amping up the sweaty claustrophobia and threatening to blow the hotel and everyone in it away. ****


Key Witness, 1947. One of the goofiest films on this list, this cheapo B-picture from Columbia gets some credit for the unintended entertainment value generated from its wacky story. John Beal plays Milton Higby, a meek inventor who gets unintentionally framed for a murder one night while his wife is out of town, so he takes it on the lam and becomes a hobo, riding the rails and hanging out in "hobo jungles" with his hobo buddy, Smiley. Then one day the two tramps come across the mutilated body of another vagrant named Arnold Ballin on the railroad tracks, and Higby decides to switch identities with the dead bum, taking Ballin's wallet -- which contains his birth certificate -- and a locket with a photo of Ballin's parents inside. On Ballin's corpse, Higby leaves his own watch, given to him by his wife. Once he hits the nearest town, Higby sends an anonymous letter to the police, telling them where they can find Higby's body. It looks like Higby/Ballin's in the clear. But wait! Because he gets hit by a car and winds up in the hospital with a "brain concussion!" And when authorities find Ballin's identity papers on him, and the story hits the papers (for some reason?), Ballin's estranged father -- a wealthy businessman -- comes to see him. As the younger Ballin was just a tyke when he left with his mother when his parents split up, pops has no way of knowing it's not really his son. So Higby, as Ballin, goes to live with his unsuspecting "father," and everything seems great. But wait! Because Higby gets the itch to start inventing again, and makes a couple of his goofy "talking clocks," which businessman dad thinks are the shizzle, so pops starts manufacturing the things and they form a company, selling the gizmos all over the place. You can probably guess what happens next. Higby's best pal, Larry, and his girlfriend Marge, see one of his clocks in a store and recognize it as Higby's invention. They take it to Higby's "widow," Martha, who also recognizes it, and the three of them track Higby/Ballin down, thinking he stole the dead Higby's inventions. There's some understated surprise and elation at finding their old pal/husband is alive, and, amazingly, Higby is thrilled to see them, too, even though he'd made no effort to contact them before. Okay. Furthermore, since the real murderer of the woman he'd supposedly killed has confessed, Higby's now in the clear! But wait! Because now that his fraud's been exposed, the cops think he murdered Ballin to steal his identity, and before you know it he's on death row! But wait! Because five seconds later, just as they're about to strap him to the chair, Smiley shows up and ta da! The whole gang is toasting Higby's good fortune at the Ballin mansion, with fancy champagne and yuks all around. The End. The whole thing plays out in a breakneck 67 minutes, with all the depth of a thimble full of water, but it sounds exciting, right? But wait! **



Kill Me Again, 1989. Derivative but entertaining John Dahl neo noir boasts an interesting storyline – alluring femme fatale (Joanne Whalley) hires down-and-out Reno P.I. Val Kilmer to help her fake her death in order to get away from her menacing, psycho boyfriend (played with sneering, over-the-top zest by Michael Madsen), and escape with the briefcase full of loot they stole from the mob. Dahl’s directorial debut starts with a bang, has some interesting plot twists, a great noirish score by William Olvis and enough noir atmospherics to please any noirista, but feels slightly less than filling when it's done. **1/2


The Killer That Stalked New York, 1950 (Earl McEvoy). Dated, at times accidentally hilarious noir about a woman who unintentionally brings a plague into the city. Film was shot on location, semi-documentary style, and takes on added relevance in the midst of the 2020 pandemic wreaking havoc around the world. Our tale begins at Penn Station, with a solemn voice-over intoning that a woman coming in on the streamliner is a killer. It's reinforced by the stylized credit sequence just prior, featuring a silhouette of the New York skyline, with the shadow of a giant woman towering over all, pointing a gun down at the puny skyscrapers, and the rest of the city below. It turns out the woman, Sheila Bennet -- played by frequent noir siren Evelyn Keyes -- is, according to the voice-over, "something to whistle at," a "pretty face with a frame to match, worth following, and followed she was, by a big-faced man from the U.S. Customs Service, a T-Man on the make." Sheila's just come from Cuba, smuggling 50 grand in diamonds and a case of smallpox. The diamonds she's carrying for her smarmy foreign husband Matt Krane (Charles Korvin). The smallpox she doesn't know about. Yet. But she's sick with a headache and flu symptoms. She calls Matt, eager to reunite with her hubby, and it's then we find out that the sleazy weasel is two-timing Sheila with her own sister, Francie (Lola Albright). Put off by her husband, Sheila checks into a hotel. As she moves about the city, she spreads the deadly virus to those she comes into contact with, including Jim Backus in a small role as a lecherous nightclub owner. Public Health officials -- represented by the dauntless Dr. Ben Wood (William Bishop) and his stalwart nurse, Alice, played by perky Dorothy Malone -- team with other officals to search desperately for the unwitting Sheila, and set about trying to innoculate the entire city of 8 million people. 
   Released in 1950, as the Cold War was getting nice and icy, film is a blatant warning against foreign influences. The only deplorable here, besides the virus itself, has a foreign accent, a superior attitude, oily hair, and uses unsuspecting women for his own financial gain. The virus has been brought in from Cuba, still three years away from communism, but still home to them dangerous foreign types. Beware! It's ironic that when we actually have an outbreak here, it's not foreigners we have to worry about, but idiotic anti-maskers and red-blooded American morons in camouflage threatening public health officials for doing their jobs. Dr. Wood and Nurse Alice don't know how easy they had it! **1/2
 

Killer’s Kiss, 1955 (Stanley Kubrick) The critics’ catchword for this one seems to be verisimilitude. Kubrick’s second film was shot on a shoestring for $40,000, which he borrowed from his uncle, who owned a drug store in New York. Notable for its verisimilitude – mostly on account of its naturalistic on-location cinematography of seedy Manhattan street scenes -- the film almost appears to be a documentary at times. Or a student film. Kubrick, who was still learning how to make movies, shot the film without sound, dubbing it in later. The climactic fight scene in a deserted warehouse full of department store mannequins is creepy enough, but the whole thing lacks cohesion. Still, Killer's Kiss has style -- and oh, the verisimilitude! **1/2


The Killers, 1946  (Robert Siodmak) Burt Lancaster's film debut is a memorable one, as he plays doomed sap Ole "The Swede" Andreson, a former boxer-turned-crook in Robert Siodmak's exquisite tale of double-cross and murder, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway. The film opens with a bang as two hitmen, played menacingly by William Conrad and gravel-voiced noir god Charles McGraw, descend on a small New England town to kill "the Swede." When Lancaster is alerted, however, he wearily accepts his fate, making no attempt to flee, instead waiting in his dark, tiny room for the killers to gun him down. Edmond O'Brien is Jim Reardon, the insurance investigator assigned to the case. As he doggedly tracks down and interviews the Swede's friends and associates, Reardon begins to put together the pieces of Andreson's sad story. Through a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that the Swede's boxing career was cut short by a hand injury, which led him to join a gang of thieves led by "Big Jim" Colfax (Albert Dekker). When Swede meets the gorgeous and enigmatic Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner), he falls, but hard. So hard he's willing to take a prison rap for her. When he gets out, he falls back in with the gang, who are plotting a heist of a hat company, and Kitty is now Big Jim's girl. What follows are a dizzying series of double-crosses, some of which aren't revealed until the end of the film. Heightened by great performances all around, Siodmak's faultless direction, and Miklos Rosza's moody score, this is one of the truly great noirs. ****1/2

 
The Killing, 1956 (Stanley Kubrick) Stanley Kubrick’s great heist film (co-written by the great noir novelist Jim Thompson) has a lot going for it, not the least of which is Sterling Hayden at its center. Elisha Cook Jr. is superb as an aging sap who’ll do anything for his trashy wife, played by the fabulously sultry Marie Windsor. She’d sell what’s left of her tramp’s soul for a fistful of greenbacks, or a roll in the hay with Vince Edwards. And then there’s the jaw-dropping spectacle of the hairy-backed chess-playing Georgian wrestler Kola Kwariani, rumbling shirtless with half a dozen cops in a racetrack bar. Put it on, Kola! Please, put it on! It’s all humming right along to film noir heaven until a couple of plot holes spring leaks in the engine. With 2 million dollars at stake, Sterling Hayden, you couldn’t spring for a decent suitcase? And Sebastian running out onto the runway at just the exact moment – come on, Stan. These are minor quibbles, though, in the grand scheme of noir things. This is still an undeniable classic, but like Hayden’s suitcase, it tumbles off the cart at the end. ****


The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976. John Cassavetes' gritty, meandering, jazz solo of a film about the owner of a sleazy LA strip club (Ben Gazzara) forced to commit a murder for the mob to pay off a gambling debt. No doubt it contains greatness -- Gazzara is particularly brilliant -- but watching it drag on becomes only slightly less painful than a trip to the dentist without novocaine. ** 


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 2005. This "neo noir black comedy crime film" may have been written and directed by Shane Black, but it's dominated in every way by the persona of its star, Robert Downey Jr., who not only breaks the 3rd wall, he knocks it down with a wrecking ball made of snark and tap-dances on the rubble. 
   The set-up is great: petty New York City thief Harry Lockhart (Downey) is running from the cops after a botched robbery in which his partner was killed, and accidentally runs into an audition for a Hollywood detective thriller. Harry's "reading" is filled with authentic remorse over his partner's death, and he wows the casting director, winning a Hollywood screen test. Before you know it, he's in L.A., at a fancy Hollywood party, where he just happens to run into Harmony Lane (Michelle Monaghan), the girl he's loved since his small-town Indiana childhood. While there, he also meets "Gay" Perry Van Shrike (Val Kilmer, who is a blast in the role), the gay private eye hired to prep him for his screen test. The three then get involved in a convoluted murder mystery swirling around retired actor Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen). 
   Director Black shows his noir bonafides by dividing the story into "chapters" titled after books by Raymond Chandler, and the classic L.A. noir/pulp homages don't stop there. The plot is more than a nod to Brett Halliday's Bodies Are Where You Find Them, and, based on a suggestion from director James L. Brooks, Black wrote Harry as Jack Nicholson's character in As Good As It Gets playing Nicholson's Jake Gittes from Chinatown. How does it work? That depends on your capacity for Downey's in-your-face brand of irreverance. It's more comedy than noir, for sure, and can be a lot of fun if you can follow Downey's rapid-fire delivery. ***


Kiss Me Deadly, 1955 (Robert Aldrich). Ralph Meeker stars as Mickey Spillane's hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer. While driving down a lonely road late one night, Hammer picks up a beautiful blonde hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman), dressed in nothing but a raincoat. Hammer soon finds out that the terrified girl has escaped from "the laughing house." Then he and the girl are abducted and tortured by well-dressed thugs. The girl is killed, and to cover up the crime, she and Hammer are placed in Hammer's sports car and pushed over a cliff. Somehow, Hammer survives, and tries to discover the secret behind the girl's murder. All clues lead to a mysterious box -- the "Great Whatsit," as Hammer's sexy secretary, Velda (Maxine Cooper) describes it. Turns out it contains radioactive material of awesome power. The apocalyptic climax is one of noir's wackier endings, and this weird, wonderful pulp masterpiece is one of it's more cynical and brutal films. The terrific supporting cast includes Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, and Jacks Elam and Lambert in their usual roles as pluguglies. And to top it all off, there's the fabulous hunchbacked homunculus Percy Helton in one of his more memorable character roles as Doc Kennedy, the greedy coroner.  ****


Kiss of Death, 1947 (Henry Hathaway) Taut, touching thriller featuring Victor Mature as Nick Bianco, an ex-con trying to go straight after turning stoolie for the sake of his kids. Richard Widmark turns in one of his most memorable performances in his breakout role as sadistic, giggling psychopath Tommy Udo, who famously delights in pushing a little old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. Film -- shot on location throughout Manhattan -- opens with a tense jewelry heist in a New York highrise on Christmas Eve. When Bianco is caught, he's offered a deal for squealing on his accomplices, but refuses. But while he's serving time in the big house, he finds out his wife has committed suicide and his two little daughters sent to an orphanage, so he changes his mind. After he's forced to testify against the psychotic Udo, he becomes a marked man, a squealer. And if there's one thing Tommy Udo hates, it's a squirt. But if there's one thing he hates more than a squirt, it's a squealer!
​   Everyone remembers Widmark's turn as a cackling killer, but it's Mature's poignant and affecting performance that drives the film. Also featuring Colleen Gray in her first billed role, Brian Donlevy as a sympathetic assistant D.A., and Karl Malden in one of his earliest film appearances. ***


Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, 1950. Scorching James Cagney performance propels this brutal gangster tale based on the novel by Horace McCoy. Film was unfavorably compared to 1949's White Heat, which is too bad, because this is a terrific film in its own right. Everyone is corruptible and no one is trustworthy -- especially Cagney's mad dog killer Ralph Cotter, who busts his way out of a chain gang, gunning down his accomplice (Neville Brand) on the way. Then he woos his dead partner's sister, Holiday -- if you can call blackmailing her and then beating her black and blue "wooing." Holiday is played by Barbara Payton, looking lovely shortly before the booze, fast living, and accompanying headlines sunk her career. Ralph quickly gets back in the gangster business, with the help of crooked lawyer Luther Adler and an old crime pal (Steve Brodie). Before you know it, Ralph and his gang are holding up a supermarket and Ralph kills the owner, then manages to outwit crooked cops Ward Bond and Barton MacLane (who were tipped off by a crooked garage owner) when they try to shake him down. Are you getting the picture? Everyone is corrupt! Film was banned in Ohio upon its release. ***1/2    



The Lady From Shanghai, 1947 (Orson Welles). Orson Welles' technical mastery highlights this rambling, convoluted tale of lies, deceipt, and murder. Rita Hayworth is Elsa Bannister, beautiful wife of famed disabled criminal defense attorney Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloan), who lures seaman Michael O'Hara (Welles) into her web. The Bannisters hire Michael as crew on their yacht, then set sail from New York to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Also aboard for the cruise is Bannister's partner, George Grisby, who proposes that Michael "murder" him in a plot to fake his own death, assuring Michael that, since there would be no body, Michael would never be convicted of murder. Of course, the reality is a lot more sinister, and it all ends in the famous hall-of-mirrors shoot-out. A Wellesian classic. ***1/2 


Lady in Cement, 1968. Frank Sinatra's swinging '60s Miami private eye returns in this disappointingly dull, stale  sequel to Tony Rome. You'd think that the cast -- which includes Raquel Welch and Dan Blocker -- would at least make for some campy fun, a la the first installment, which was released a year earlier. But the plot's so convoluted, the jokes so tired and distasteful, and the omnipresent ga-roovy '60s instrumental soundtrack so repetitive and grating that you just want to stick the whole shebang in a block of cement and drop it into the deep blue sea. It starts off interestingly enough, with Ol' Blue Eyes out deep sea diving off of his boat searching for sunken treasure. Instead what he finds is the titular concrete blonde, a beautiful, naked babe stuck in cement at the bottom of the ocean. Frank fights off a few swooping sharks on his way to the surface, and it's all downhill from there. Welch, as usual, is great to look at, and, as an actress, she's great to look at. Gordon Douglas tries to direct this mess -- he also helmed Tony Rome and Sinatra's other late '60s neo-noir, The Detective, with mixed results. This is the worst of the bunch. *1/2 


The Lady in the Lake, 1947 (Robert Montgomery) Robert Montgomery’s schlocky POV camera trick doesn’t work, and neither does Montgomery’s attempt at playing Raymond Chandler's quintessential noir hero Philip Marlowe, which is too bad. Montgomery gets points for chutzpah, but his awful tough-guy voice is simply too grating for the Noirharajah. **


A Lady Without Passport, 1950 (Joseph H. Lewis) Atmospheric but clichéd low-budget Casablanca-wannabe from Joseph H. Lewis. John Hodiak is Pete Karczag, an undercover U.S. Immigration man in Havana, sniffing out the trail of evil alien smuggler Palinov (George Macready) when he meets the beautiful concentration camp refugee Marianne Lorress, played by Hedy Lamarr. Karczag, of course, is immediately smitten, which mucks up the works as he tries to bust Palinov's heartless smuggling ring. Paul Vogel brings some nice noir cinematography, and Lewis' evocative visuals and atmospheric location shots keep the whole thing fairly interesting. **1/2


Larceny, 1948 (George Sherman) Engrossing tale of a group of con men out to fleece a war widow out of her fortune. Film flows along nicely until the end, when someone popped the balloon, and the thing just ... ends, leaving a frayed rope full of loose ends dangling. John Payne plays the front man for the grifters, a gang that is led by Dan Duryea, who, unfortunately has too little screen time and too little to do. Shelley Winters gets all the best lines as Duryea's moll who's two-timing him with Payne, and she steals every scene she's in. Joan Caulfield plays the widow, who Payne falls for, gumming the grift. Could have been all right, if they hadn't run out of film. **


Last Embrace, 1979. Stylishly-shot Jonathan Demme thriller is drowned by ludicrous story. Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin star in this wanna-be Hitchcockian thriller that looks great, thanks to cinematographer Tak Fujimoto's gorgeous camerawork, but the overwrought script keeps veering toward bad DePalma territory. Also, this is in no way noir. **


The Last Stop In Yuma County, 2024. Director Francis Galluppi's first feature -- a darkly humorous neo-western/noir -- is a mixed bag that starts off like gangbusters, calling to mind the works of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino, but the rookie writer/director shoots himself in the foot when his plot takes a wrong turn that's more off-putting than compelling, leaving the viewer with no one to root for.
   Jim Cummings stars as a traveling knife salesman, driving through the Arizona desert on his way to California when he stops at a gas station/diner in the middle of nowhere to fill up. But the gas station's out of gas, so the unnamed knife salesman goes into the diner to wait for the gas truck, which, he's told, should be there soon. As he chats with Charlotte, the pretty, spunky, and immediately sympathetic waitress (Jocelyn Donahue), two violent bank robbers (Richard Brake, Nicholas Logan) pull up, also needing gas to complete their getaway. Before you can say "The Petrified Forest," we've got a hostage situation on our hands. As more customers enter the diner, Galluppi's script ratchets up the tension, until the film suddenly explodes into carnage that seems designed to not only surprise but upset the audience. 
   One of those customers -- a soporific, middle-aged husband -- is played by Gene Jones, who also played the gas station propietor who Anton Chigurh lets live after a lucky coin flip in No Country For Old Men. The casting feels intentional, as Galluppi is clearly aiming for a Coen Brothers/Tarantino vibe here. And while he succeeds for a time -- even to the point where the Noirharajah felt like he might be experiencing something special -- the grim turn of the script lets the air out of the balloon and makes the whole thing feel pointless by the end. **1/2 


The Last Seduction, 1994. John Dahl's erotic thriller is elevated by Linda Fiorentino's terrific performance as one of noir's most amoral femme fatales, the scheming telemarketing manager Bridget Gregory, who pressures her doctor hubby, Clay (an over-the-top Bill Pullman), to sell stolen pharmaceutical cocaine to street thugs for $700 grand to pay off the money he borrowed from a loan shark. Before Clay even has a chance to roll around in the loot in celebration, Bridget grabs the cash and leaves him, ending up in a hick town upstate, where she sets upon an unsuspecting local (Peter Berg) and manipulates to have him do away with the vengeful Clay. Solid script and production, and Fiorentino's performance, make this more memorable than most. *** 


Laura, 1944 (Otto Preminger). Otto Preminger's mannered tale of obsession and murder is definitely style-over-substance. Dana Andrews is Mark McPherson, a cynical cop investigating the brutal shotgun slaying of beautiful advertising exec Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). As the plot thickens, McPherson becomes obsessed with the victim. There is a by now well-known plot twist. Clifton Webb steals the show as creepy, decadent dandy Waldo Lydecker.  ***1/2  


The Limey, 1999 (Steven Soderbergh) '60s icons Terrence Stamp and Peter Fonda face off in this stylishly directed  revenge thriller with a heart. Stamp plays Wilson, the titular Limey, a tough bloke just out of a Brit prison when he learns that his daughter Jenny has died in a suspicious car crash in L.A. Wilson travels to Tinseltown and before you can say "Bob's your uncle," he's causing trouble (i.e. killing bad guys) as he tries to find out the truth behind his daughter's death. With the help of two of his daughter's friends (Luis Guzman and Lesley Ann Warren), he learns that Jenny was involved with playboy record producer Terry Valentine (Fonda), who is protected by a ring of security goons, led by Avery (Barry Newman). The story is nothing special, but Soderbergh tells it in an imaginative, non-linear  way, making ample use of flashbacks and Wilson's feverish thoughts. The only sour note is an annoying, motormouthed hit man played by Nicky Katt, who would have been more at home in one of Quentin Tarantino's hipster yakkers. ***


 
The Lineup, 1958. Don Siegel directed this thrilling procedural based on the CBS radio series. Shot on location in San Francisco, film finds another gear when the focus shifts to the bad guys. Eli Wallach, in his second film role, and David Keith (Brian's dad), play a pair of psychopathic drug smugglers/murderers who are tearing up the city chasing their missing dope. Excellent, except for ridiculous plot point: the police close in and divert half the force after the suspects based on the fact that they have TANS! ***
 

The Locket, 1946 (John Brahm) Psychological drama notable for its script by Sheridan Gibney, which uses flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, told by different points of view, all without becoming confusing, which is quite a feat. Laraine Day plays a bride-to-be with a past. She's ruined several men -- including Robert Mitchum and Brian Aherne -- in her attempt to get revenge on a world that wrongly accused her of stealing as a child. **1/2


The Locksmith, 2023. The modern thrillers churned out by the Hollywood cheese factory have one thing in common, besides being almost uniformly terrible, soulless dreck: the hero always has one driving force in his life, and that's either protecting or getting revenge for his family. That's about the extent of the character development needed for today's audiences, apparently. A pretty wife and a little kid threatened, and sometimes slaughtered, all in the name of "motivation" for our monosyllabic, square-jawed, kick-ass action heroes (with their particular set of skills). It's a rich Hollywood tradition. From Charles Bronson to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Bruce Willis to Mel Gibson to Liam Neeson to Nicolas Cage to ... etc., etc., etc. And it's all so damn boring. And stupid.
   Add Ryan Phillippe to the list, in this paint-by-numbers yawnfest set in some drab, nameless small town somewhere in America. As with pretty much all of these kinds of movies today, it doesn't really matter. Just show that the scruffy, good-hearted hero really cares about his doe-eyed wife/kid, then either put the wife/kid in peril at the hands of the comically evil baddie(s) or have them slaughtered by said baddie, then let the good ol' fashioned, all-American revenge-killin' begin! 
   But wait! There's something first-time Director Nicolas Harvard really, really, REALLY wants you to know about his movie: it's a noir! How can we tell? Because his characters always have a TV on in the background and -- get this! -- there's always a classic noir playing! Genius, I tells ya! It's so ... subtle! Never mind that none of these characters strike you as the type who'd be paying premium cable prices so they can get TCM, or would ever in a million, brazilian years be watching some old black-and-white movie like The Big Sleep or Touch of Evil. But there they are, glowing away in the back of the locksmith shop and the room where the bad guys are keeping the little kidnapped girl. 
   Phillippe plays Miller Graham (a needlessly dumb name), a crook with a ... wait for it! ... heart of gold. How can we tell? Because he LOVES HIS FAMILY, duh!!! Haven't you been paying attention? Having just been released from the slammer after serving 10 years for ... oh, who cares? We all have better things to do with our time, and we've seen this movie a thousand times. And you know what? It still sucks. So let's just fast-forward through the plot here... Scruffy hero ... particular set of skills... pretty wife ... adorable kid ... rich baddie ... crooked cop/officials ... family in jeopardy ... big shootout -- PEW! PEW! PEW! Happy ending. (And remember, the wife/kid don't have to survive for there to be a happy ending, 'cause they're expendable! As long as the scruffy hero gets to revenge kill lots of bad guys, that's all that matters!). The End.  *1/2


London Fields, 2018. A series of pretentiously-staged cologne commercials strung together in a desperate attempt to create a titillating, Lynchian-style neo noir. Amber Heard is terribly miscast as a vamping, sexed-up temptress, Jim Sturgess' mugging puts Timothy Carey to shame, and *director* Mathew Cullen mucks up what was an interesting Martin Amis novel (to be fair, Amis co-wrote the script). The end result is an obnoxious, boring, sort of lads mag take on life and death with a 1980s skinemax look and soundtrack. Simply godawful. 1/2*     


The Long Good Friday, 1980 (John McKenzie). Bob Hoskins delivers an explosive performance in this study of a British gangster trying to go legit, but unable to escape his own brutal nature. Helen Mirren is his classy girlfriend. Film's cheesy, synth-heavy score dates it a bit, but otherwise this still packs a heckuva punch. ***1/2


The Long Goodbye, 1973. Robert Altman's revisioning of Raymond Chandler's novel -- and the private eye genre in general -- is either a meandering mess and a nose-thumb at the idea of Chandler's Marlowe, or a brilliant work of genius and originality, depending on your point of view. Despite (or perhaps because of) Elliott Gould's virtuoso performance as Chandler's knight-detective Philip Marlowe -- recreated here as a rumpled, incongruous man woefully out of place in modern society -- I tend to fall into both camps at the same time, if that's possible. Sure, it's fun to see Altman pushing against the conventions of the detective story, and Gould is absolutely brilliant as this mumbling, bumbling version of Marlowe (whose most prized possession -- in a world where everyone else is dressed in '70s beach attire -- is his tie), but the movie founders on some of the choices Altman made to drastically change the story from Chandler's original novel, most notably the ending, which flies in the face of Marlowe's core. Still, this is a beautiful, even haunting work, tinged with a melancholia that captures the soul of Marlowe perhaps better than any other Chandler adaptation has -- at least up until that ending. Some odd casting features ex-big league pitcher-turned author Jim Bouton as Terry Lennox, and watch for a young Arnold Schwarzenegger (as if you could miss him) in a minor, uncredited role. ***1/2


The Long Night, 1947. Anatole Litvak's scrubbed-up remake of Le jour se leve, though touching in spots, drowns in an ocean of talk. Henry Fonda's naive character, Joe Adams, celebrated as a man of few words who can't stand too much yapping, shoots sleazy magician Maximilian the Great (Vincent Price), in large part because the wand-waver won't shut his big bazoo. Well, if Joe plunked down a nickel to see this gabfest, he'd probably start blasting away at the screen before he finished his popcorn. **1/2


Loophole, 1954 (Harold D. Schuster)  Barry Sullivan, Dorothy Malone, Charles McGraw.  One day, bank teller Barry Sullivan’s world is all right. The next, it’s nowhere. Hard-working guy Sullivan lacks the dark side to his character for a real noir. A simple slip-up puts the finger on him for a crime he didn’t commit. McGraw is a mean-spirited insurance investigator who hounds him and makes his life hell. **1/2 


The Lookout, 2007. Taut, engaging Midwestern heist tale from writer-director Scott Frank, who wrote Out of Sight (1998) and Logan (2017). Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Chris Pratt, former high school hockey star trying to recover from a devastating mistake -- he was driving a car on prom night with the lights off to show his girlfriend, Kelly, the fireflies, when he crashed, killing two friends in the back seat, injuring Kelly, and leaving himself with a serious brain injury. Four years later, a mentally impaired Chris is trying to move forward, working nights as a janitor at a bank, and living with Lewis, a charismatic blind man, when he's approached by the shady Gary (Matthew Goode), who is the leader of a gang of thieves. Gary uses Luvlee Lemons (Isla Fisher) to seduce Chris into helping them rob the bank. Things, of course, go very awry, leading to a tense standoff, which then leads to a bit of a limp denouement, which is just about the only unsatisfying thing about this snowy thriller. *** 


Lost Highway, 1997 (David Lynch). It's a film by David Lynch, which means it could be a subliminal message to paint your house with peanut butter for all I know, but let me take a run at this. Fred (Bill Pullman) -- a typically hairless Lynchian protagonist -- is a jazz saxophone player who lives in a nice, clean, quiet suburban neighborhood with his beautiful wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette). They have a strange, withdrawn, passionless relationship. Their quietly disconnected life is disturbed when they start receiving video tapes left at their door, showing footage of their house. The tapes keep arriving, and escalate in their disturbing nature, showing the unseen cameraman coming inside their home, walking up the stairs at night and filming the couple as they sleep. The final tape shows Fred screaming as he sits beside the bloody corpse of his dead wife. After being tried and convicted of murder, Fred is on death row, awaiting his execution, still denying he committed the crime. He begins to have weird visions and nightmares, and suffering seizures. One of these visions is of a burning cabin. The next morning, the prison guards find Fred is no longer in his cell, having been inexplicably replaced by a different, younger man named Pete (stone-faced Balthazar Getty), who has no idea how he got there. This is where the movie really goes Lynchian, seemingly leaving the character of Fred behind to follow Pete, who is released from jail to continue his aimless existence. He's a mechanic who still lives with his parents, and has sex with his girlfriend, Sheila. Enter Alice (also played by Patricia Arquette), who looks just like Renee except she is blonde. Alice is married to Mr. Eddy, a volatile gangster played with explosive zest by Robert Loggia. Alice seduces Pete, which leads to a murder, and the two of them fleeing. Much weirdness ensues, until it all culminates at that burning cabin that Fred had dreamed about, and Pete turns back into Fred, who ends up fleeing from the police while screaming like a maniac. My best guess on what's happening here: Fred can't face the reality that he murdered Renee, so he either went nuts or "escaped" his reality by creating this alternate reality in his mind, which allows him to become Pete, get out of prison, and try again with Renee, only to see it all fail spectacularly again, until he is forced to face the reality -- the electric chair -- at the end. Then again, that's just my best guess, so take it with a grain of salt. And stock up on peanut butter and paint brushes. **
 

The Lost Weekend, 1945 (Billy Wilder) Ray Milland goes on a bender in Billy Wilder's tough, ground-breaking, Oscar-winning tale of an alcoholic fighting his demons. Tour de force performance by Ray Milland as alcoholic New York writer Don Birnam earned the actor a statuette as well. Wilder got unprecedented access to film inside Bellevue's alcoholic ward. He also filmed on location on New York's upper East side, using hidden cameras to capture Milland walking up 3rd Avenue among pedestrians, who were unaware a film was being made. Look for the running gag as Birnam keeps putting the wrong end of the cigarette in his mouth.  ***1/2


Macao, 1952 (Josef Von Sternberg/Nicholas Ray)  Jaded torch singer (Jane Russell -- brassy as ever) and laconic drifter (Robert Mitchum) get entangled in smuggling plot in "exotic" locale, which is really the RKO backlot. Russell was never better than she was when working with Mitchum. Here she plays Julie Benson, belting out torch songs and tossing insults -- and shoes -- at the sleepy-eyed Mitchum with equal aplomb. Also good -- as usual -- is Thomas Gomez as Sebastian, the portly, corrupt police lieutenant. Unfortunately, a pedestrian story, cheesy sets, and a wooden Brad Dexter as the villain make this a bit of a missed opportunity. Still, there's Gloria Grahame in a small role and the banter and innuendo between Mitchum and Russell make this fun.  **1/2


The Maltese Falcon, 1941 (John Huston). Based on Dashiell Hammett's extraordinary novel, this was screen legend John Huston's directorial debut. Humphrey Bogart is flawless as San Francisco P.I. Sam Spade, hired -- along with his leering partner, Miles Archer -- by the attractive and seemingly naïve Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) to follow a man named Floyd Thursby. When Archer ends up dead with a bullet in his pump, the pressure is on Spade to unravel the ever-deepening mystery. Yes, it's a bit talky, but this early noir still holds up as one of the classic mysteries of all time, with great performances from a great cast, including Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet (in his film debut), and Elisha Cook, Jr. The tragic ending grows more powerful with every viewing. Simply splendid, or, as Sam Spade might say, "The stuff that dreams are made of." ****1/2


Man Bait (aka The Last Page), 1952. Hammer Films mystery melodrama features George Brent as the nice guy owner of a cramped little London bookshop that somehow employs a small army of clerks, one of whom is the sexy but not very bright Ruby Bruce, played by British Marilyn Monroe lookalike Diana Dors. Ruby gets mixed up with a smalltime creep (Peter Reynolds), who pressures her into blackmailing the mostly innocent Brent for the princely sum of 100 pounds. Things spiral south from there for Ruby and Brent, who is saved by his loyal secretary (Marguerite Chapman), who is secretly in love with him, natch. Brent was favored as a co-star by Bette Davis because he was so bland she knew he'd never upstage her, and he delivers the pablum once again. Chapman is film's real female lead, but she takes a back seat to Dors in the publicity, which is much more salacious than anything in the actual film. This was the first noir made by Hammer, and first Hammer film directed by Fisher, who went on to helm several of the studio's most famous horror pics of the late '50s and '60s. This one, however, is pretty weak tea. **1/2


The Man I Love, 1947. This Raoul Walsh drama has a lot going for it, starting with Ida Lupino as a peripatetic torch singer, and a wonderful jazzy score by Max Steiner, as well as great Gershwin songs like the title tune. It's also got a lot of noirish atmosphere, but that's really the closest this gets to being noir. It's really a melodrama about three sisters in love with difficult men. This film inspired Scorsese's New York, New York. **1/2


Man in the Dark, 1953 (Lew Landers). Remake of 1936's The Man Who Lived Twice. Edmond O'Brien is a prison inmate who undergoes "experimental brain surgery" to get early parole from a 10-year sentence after taking part in a factory robbery. He's released into the custody of his doctor, who performs the brain surgery, but his former accomplices are lurking, trying to find out where he hid the loot from the robbery. O'Brien's always great fun, but there's not much more worth watching here. Filmed in 3D, which adds some unintentional laughs to the mix. **


The Man With My Face, 1951 (Edward Montagne). Surprisingly entertaining B-movie is unique in that it's the only noir shot on location in Puerto Rico. Inventive, if ludicrous, premise has ex-GI accountant Charles "Chick" Graham (Barry Nelson) living in San Juan after the war, running a bookkeeping business with his partner and former army buddy Buster Cox, and married to Buster's fetching blonde sister, Cora. Then, one day, he comes home from work to find a perfect lookalike in his place, drinking and playing cards with his wife and brother-in-law. His wife doesn't believe him, and even his dog doesn't recognize him. Turns out the lookalike is a wanted criminal who's part of a long con scheme -- along with his wife and old buddy, Buster -- somehow involving bonds of some kind. It's not anywhere near clear. In fact, the crooks' plot is so murky it makes The Big Sleep look simple. While Chick flees the police and tries to unravel the plot against him, he's shadowed by a sinister-looking dog trainer with a vicious Doberman that's been trained to kill. Turns out they're in cahoots with the other Chick, his wife and his brother-in-law. Chick contacts Mary (Carole Mathews) -- an old flame he threw over for Cora -- who lives with her protective brother, Walt (Jack Warden in his first credited role), as she can prove his identity. In fact, if they just went immediately to the police, the whole ordeal could have been over. Luckily, they don't, because we've got more entertaining goofiness ahead. The whole thing is so wacky and creative -- with a deadly Doberman running around knocking off witnesses -- that, despite its wackiness, it's as entertaining as a barrel of monkeys. Or trained killer dogs running around ripping people's throats out in a noir filmed on location in Puerto Rico. **1/2


Manpower, 1941 (Raoul Walsh). George Raft and Edward G. Robinson are L.A. powerline workers and best pals in love with the same dame (Marlene Dietrich) -- sort of -- in this rip-roaring, high-voltage blast of adventure and melodrama from Raoul Walsh. Raft, in the role he turned The Maltese Falcon down for, actually has some moments in which he doesn't resemble a block of wood. Marlene Dietrich brings her terrific world-weary sex appeal in this typical Walsh story of manly men courageously performing feats of on-the-job derring-do, with lots of great stuntwork and high-flying action, and a love triangle to boot. Sparks flew on set, too, but not in a romantic way. Apparently, the wooden one wasn't happy about having to share top billing with Robinson, and the two famously duked it out on set during production. Toss in enough hokey laughs and pratfalls provided by Alan Hale and Frank McHugh to fill a 3 Stooges feature. Delivers the juice, but it's not noir. *** 


Mean Streets, 1973 (Martin Scorsese) Yes, it's groundbreaking and influential, and one of the most important films of the '70s, with bravura performances from Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro as a couple of young Italian-American punks trying to be somebody in the jungles of New York's Little Italy, if you can call lazing about in your undershirt, hanging out in seedy bars, getting drunk, wearing goofy porkpie hats, getting into comical bar fights, borrowing money from loan sharks and not working "trying to be somebody." But I can think of several hundred ways I'd rather spend my time than watching it again. Still, Scorsese's genius and feel for the streets where he grew up is undeniable, as is the film's influence. ****   
 

Memento, 2000. Christopher Nolan's one-of-a-kind thriller, told backwards, is an astounding achievement in matching a narrative style to the main character's psychological condition. Guy Pearce plays Leonard, a man who lost his short-term memory after being knocked unconscious when his wife was raped and murdered. Maybe. The film's main narrative is told in reverse chronological order, in color. It begins at the end and ends at the beginning, with Leonard -- a man whose memory is fine up until the catastrophic event of his wife's murder -- unable to remember anything that happens after the murder for more than a few minutes. This is sometimes played for laughs, like the moment when Leonard finds himself chasing a man with a gun -- until he realizes he's the one being chased. Leonard uses a complex system of hand-scribbled notes, Polaroid photos, and tattoos (for the really important stuff) to recall even the most mundane facts of his life, as well as to conduct his own investigation into his wife's murder. His one goal is to find the second attacker (he managed to kill one of the attackers before being knocked unconscious by a second man) and exact his revenge. Aiding him (or not) are a man called Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who may or may not be a cop, and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), who could be using him to eliminate a rival of her drug-dealer boyfriend. Adding to the confusion is a second narrative, one told in flashback, and in black-and-white. This is mostly Leonard, talking on the phone, recounting a story about Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowski), a client of Leonard's when he was an insurance investigator, before his wife's death. Jankis suffered from the same memory condition -- anterograde amnesia -- that Leonard now has, and Leonard had denied Jankis and his wife's (Harriet Sansom-Harris) insurance claim. Jankis' wife, a diabetic, distraught because she didn't know whether her husband was faking his memory condition, has Sammy give her repeated insulin injections to try to get him to break his "act." When he doesn't, she falls into a coma and dies. While the backwards narrative feels, in the end, like a gimmick, and the main feeling one gets from watching the film is that of confusion, there is no denying that Nolan's creation is a breathtaking accomplishment. However, remove that gimmick and tell the tale in a simple, linear style and what do you have? In the end, that may be Memento's ultimate question. ***1/2 


Miller's Crossing, 1990 (Joel and Ethan Coen) The Coen Brothers' dark, moody and stylish paen to the gangster film of the 1930's and film noir of the 1940s is based on elements from two Dashiell Hammett novels: The Glass Key and Red Harvest. The Coens' typically complex plot unspools in an unnamed Eastern city in the 1930s, where dim but ambitious Italian gangster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) has a problem named Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro). Caspar wants approval from the city’s Irish political boss, Leo (Albert Finney), to rub out the cause of his complaint, but Leo’s not giving in. He’s fallen in love with Bernie’s sister, Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), who wants Bernie protected. Leo’s cool, brainy aide-de-camp, Tom (Gabriel Byrne), sees that Leo is making a big mistake, and it’s up to Tom to save him as Leo's empire begins to crumble. The complication is that Tom also is in love with Verna, though he’s loath to admit it. Filled with brilliant performances by virtually the entire cast, this is a darkly humorous, bullet-riddled tommy-gun burst of a movie. ***1/2


The Missing Person, 2008 (Noah Buschell). Slow-burning, melancholy neo-noir about a hard-drinking private eye hired to follow a man on The California Zephyr -- a train from Chicago to Los Angeles (the real California Zephyr goes to San Francisco, but who cares). Michael Shannon is terrific as John Rosow, a former New York City cop-turned Chicago gumshoe with a tragic past -- his wife died in the Twin Towers on 9/11 while he raced to the scene in his police cruiser after taking her desperate last phone call. Gulp. Gloomy and sardonic, Rosow tracks a man who has been reported missing, and who is mysteriously traveling with a small boy. The mystery -- and everything else in this atmospheric, existential mood piece -- unfolds slowly, but the payoff packs an emotional punch. *** 


Moonrise, 1948 (Frank Borzage) Dane Clark, Gail Russell. Grows tedious after stunning opening scene **


Mulholland Falls, 1996 (Lee Tamahori) Bloodless, emotionless neo-noir wants to be the next Chinatown but never makes you believe you're watching anything other than a bunch of guys in costume reciting lines. A great cast -- including Nick Nolte, Chazz Palminteri, John Malkovich, Treat Williams, Jennifer Connelly, Bruce Dern, Melanie Griffith, Titus Welliver, William Petersen, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Louise Fletcher, and Andrew McCarthy -- is wasted by a muddled and lackluster script. All the attempted atmospherics don't amount to a hill of beans, none of the talented cast rises above the limp material, and the end result is a too self-conscious, inauthentic and forced attempt at creating a timeless noir. **


Murder By Contract, 1958 (Irving Lerner) Low-budget, late model minimalist noir about a supposedly "existentialist" hit man, who's really just a hollow, ice-blooded killer for hire. Played with his usual detached cool by Vince Edwards, the killer, known only as Claude, views contract killing as simply a transaction, equal to any other form of business. Film is notable for its spare style and also for the fact that Martin Scorsese cites this film as having a large influence over his work. Perry Botkin's slightly jarring, repetitive guitar score -- which is reminiscent of the use of the zither in The Third Man - stands out as well (Botkin would go on to compose the background music for The Beverly Hillbillies). While there's no doubt that Murder by Contract was ahead of its time, it's only for those who like their noir slow and morally desolate. **1/2


Murder Is My Beat, 1955. Edgar G. Ulmer made this cheapie 10 years after his classic Detour, and it starts out like gangbusters, with a good old noirish flashback leading to a good old noirish voice over by a hard-bitten detective investigating the murder of a businessman who had his face and fingerprints burned off in a fire. This leads to the detective tromping through a snowy landscape to arrest his suspect, a dame on the run (Barbara Payton in what was essentially her last film role). The detective (Paul Langton -- sort of a poor man's Dennis O'Keefe) quickly comes to believe the dame could be innocent, and the two jump off a moving train to take it on the lam so the detective can find the real killer. That's all pretty fun stuff, but it's not long before a string of unlikely coincidences and absurd plot twists derail this train and the whole thing just runs out of steam. Interestingly, Ulmer's male star from his greatest achievement, Detour, was Tom Neal -- whose affair with Payton sank both of their careers and led to tragic ends for both stars. Payton, of course, is the poster girl for Hollywood tragedies, ending up an alcoholic prostitute on Sunset Boulevard, dying of heart and liver failure at the age of 39. **  


Murder, My Sweet, 1944 (Edward Dmytryck). Dick Powell reinvented himself from 1930s light comedy and musical star to glib tough guy, and is stunning in this stark and unyielding adaptation of Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. Mike Mazurki is fine as Moose Malloy -- a giant, brutish ex-con who hires Marlowe to find Velma, his lost flame, unaware that she's morphed into a dangerously duplicitous femme fatale (Claire Trevor in yet another fine performance). From its strongly accented camera angles and darkness-drenched nighttime ambience to the hard-boiled narration of cynical Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, this is pure Detective Noir 101. This taut thriller is the best attempt at bringing Raymond Chandler to the screen. ****


My Gun is Quick, 1957. The third of UA's 1950s Mike Hammer films -- based on Mickey Spillane's tough-guy detective novels -- after '53's I, The Jury and Robert Aldrich's 1955 classic Kiss Me Deadly. This time big he-man Robert Bray (the forest ranger from TV's Lassie) dons the Hammer pants in a run-of-the-mill actioner full of fisticuffs, sex, and gun violence. Pales in comparison to Kiss Me Deadly, or even the non-Hammer-related Hell Bound, released the same year. Even 1963's The Girl Hunters has the curiosity of Spillane playing his title character. Not that there's anything really wrong with this one, but it's strictly a two-dollar slab of meat without the trimmings. **1/2

 
My Name is Julia Ross, 1945 (Joseph H. Lewis)  More gothic gaslight drama than noir, but Nina Foch gives her usual strong performance and director Joseph H. Lewis's pacing is perfect. George Macready is sufficiently menacing, adding a bit of homicidal maniac to his familiar scheming creep routine. ***

 
Mystery Street, 1950. Early CSI procedural directed by John Sturges and shot by John Alton stars Ricardo Montalban as a Boston detective using forensics to investigate the murder of a young woman. Shot on location in Boston, this low-budget procedural is told in a straight-forward fashion, features a solid cast, including Jan Sterling, Elsa Lanchester, and Bruce Bennett, and remains engaging throughout. **1/2

 
The Naked City, 1948 (Jules Dassin) It was groundbreaking in its day as one of the first procedurals, shot on location in NYC. Feels a bit dated at times, but still packs a punch, particularly in the final chase through the streets of New York. ***


The Naked Kiss, 1964 (Samuel Fuller) Sam Fuller's low-budget shocker is a hard look at the nightmarish world of prostitution and perversion, with Constance Towers portraying a call girl trying to go straight, with every card in the deck stacked against her. Towers gives an emotionally raw performance as Kelly, a bald-headed beauty who, at the film's outset, is beating her drunken pimp into submission after he stole from her and then cut all her hair off when she was unconscious. But when the tables are turned, Kelly only takes the $75 the pimp owes her out of a roll of $800. Fleeing town (we later learn the pimp put an acid-hit out on her), she lands in the small town of Grantville, where she attempts to turn her life around, becoming a nurse in a hospital for handicapped kids. She's an angel of mercy, and not just for the children, but for other young women teetering on the brink of disaster. But just as she's about to live out her dreams and marry the wealthy scion of Grantville's founding fathers, it all comes crashing down around her in a lurid nightmare scenario. Fuller never pulls his punches, and he certainly doesn't here. Though the story takes some ludicrous turns at times, The Naked Kiss still has the power to shock 50 years after its release. ***

 
The Naked Street, 1955 (Maxwell Shane) Talented cast can’t bust out of clunky script. Big time racketeer Anthony Quinn came up from the mean streets to become boss gangster. He’s as hard as they come, but when it comes to his ma and sister (Anne Bancroft), he’s got a heart of gold. So when Bancroft falls for cheap hood Farley Granger, Quinn laughably gets him freed from the death house so he can marry sis, who Granger’s knocked up. Tough, adult themes and a stellar cast could have made for something special, but instead it sinks like a corpse tied to a slot machine and tossed in the river. **
 

The Narrow Margin, 1952. Tense, taut thriller about a hard-boiled cop (gravel-voiced noir god Charles McGraw) assigned to bring a mob boss's widow (sultry noir goddess Marie Windsor) from Chicago to L.A. by train to testify before a grand jury. Also aboard the train are mob assassins determined to get her. Fantastic, low-budget, pulpish noir, flawlessly directed by Richard Fleischer, with a well-executed twist and two of noir's best in McGraw and Windsor going at it. While on the way to pick up their witness, McGraw bets his partner (Don Beddoe) what kind of dame she'll be. "She's the sixty-cent special," McGraw snaps. "Cheap, flashy. Strictly poison under the gravy." Noir doesn't get much better than this. ***1/2


Narrow Margin, 1990. Remake of the 1952 noir classic is a fast-paced, flashy, action-packed thriller, with exploding helicopters, machine guns, and desperate fights atop a fast-moving train. It's a fun, if flimsy ride. What it is not is noir. Gene Hackman and Anne Archer star, Peter Hyams directs from his script. **1/2


New York Confidential, 1955. A top-notch cast in peak form lifts this uncompromising, hard-as-nails Warner Brothers docudrama about "The Syndicate." Big Brod Crawford is rough, tough, fast-talking New York mob boss Charlie Lupo, a widower who runs everything with an iron fist. That includes his grown daughter, Kathy (Anne Bancroft), who despises his gangster life and wants out. Enter tough, icy, cool-headed hit man Nick Magellan (Richard Conte, slick as ever) out of Chi-town. Nick does a job for Lupo, and Lupo decides to keep him around. The mob boss knew Nick's father and likes and trusts the kid. There's an attraction, which is kept under wraps, between Nick, who looks good in a suit, and Kathy. There's also some mild one-way flirting between Lupo's moll, tall blonde Iris (Marilyn Maxwell), and Nick, who's steadfast in his loyalty to his boss. A third female, Lupo's ailing mother, who lives with the gangster and his daughter, constantly warns her son of the perils of his life of crime. Things take a turn when Kathy runs off to live her own life, which breaks her gangster father's heart. Only Nick knows where she is, but he's not talking. The usual mob shenanigans ensue, involving a political lobbyist who double-crosses the syndicate -- never a good idea. A hit is arranged, despite Lupo's misgivings, and, in a mildly tense scene, carried out, but with complications. It all shakes down in unusually hard-boiled fashion, leaving virtually no one unscathed.
   Bancroft stands out from the terrific cast and gives the otherwise cold proceedings some heart, which the picture could use more of. Russell Rouse directs from his own excellent screenplay, co-written with Clarence Greene (the two also teamed up to write the noir classic DOA). 
   Bogs down a bit in the middle, with too much talk in too many meetings of mob bosses discussing their problems and taking votes, but it revs back up for the ending. Not perfect, by any means, but the film influenced many that came after it, including The Godfather. ***


Night and the City, 1950 (Jules Dassin) If Charles Dickens had to make some extra cash by writing Hollywood B-movies in the '40s and '50s, he might have come up with something like Night and the City. Set against the seedy backdrop of London’s wrestling scene, Jules Dassin’s tale of an ambitious hustler whose plans just keep going wrong is noir heaven. Richard Widmark soars as snakebitten conman Harry Fabian, who’d sell out his own mother for a buck, yet somehow gets you to root for him. Gene Tierney is all shiny and radiant as the woman who loves him, despite everything. One of the classic noir endings. ****1/2


The Night Clerk, 2020. Supposed psychological thriller that has no thrills, no chills, no suspense, no tension, and very little emotion or anything that's realistic, believable, or logical. But if you're looking for something to help you with your eye exercises, this is your movie, bud. It'll have you rolling your orbs like you wouldn't believe.
   Bart (Tye Sheridan), who has Asperger's, works as the night man at a middling motel chain, and he gives Touch of Evil's Dennis Weaver a run for his money as the oddest motel clerk ever. By comparison, Norman Bates is high-functioning. Before you have a chance to ask the question, "Who on God's green earth would hire this guy to work with the public?" we find that Bart is not only barely able to converse with people, but he's a peeping Tom, having placed hidden cameras in all the motel rooms so he can watch the guests surreptitiously. It's not quite as bad as it sounds, as the only reason Bart's watching the guests is so that he can ape how they talk and act with other people. Oh, good. Because I thought it was going to be something weird.
   One night at home, he's watching an attractive woman in her room (yes, he watches them at home, too!) as she is attacked by her lover, a man with a distinctive tattoo. He rushes back to the hotel, arriving at the woman's room to find her dead by gunshot. His coworker finds him sitting there on the bed. Police, obviously, suspect Bart, and begin investigating him, which upsets Bart's mother, played by the ever lipless Helen Hunt, as grim and joyless as always.
   The motel, meanwhile, doesn't fire him. No. This motel, they're like the Vatican, apparently. Just quietly move the problem around. They transfer Bart to another motel, where -- wait for it! -- another attractive woman -- Andrea (Ana de Armas) -- checks in, and Bart starts watching her, too! Hey, that wasn't predictable at all! But this time it's more than just academic. He's in love with her. A lot of awkward attempts at conversation ensue. But then Bart sees Andrea in her room with Mr. Tattoo, which sends him into a tailspin. Some final, utterly unconvincing machinations lead to a listless, bloodless, deadpan conclusion. The End. Leaving just one giant unanswered question: who greenlights these things? *1/2
 

Night Editor, 1946 (Henry Levin) Illicit lovers witness a murder, but can’t report it in this low-budget B-picture, notable for its sadomasochistic femme fatale, one of noir's most obscenely venomous vixens, played deliciously by Janis Carter. William Gargan plays Tony Cochrane, a veteran homicide dick who's married with a kid he dotes on. The problem is, he's got himself entangled with the viperous society dame Jill Merrill (Carter), who gets sexually excited at the idea of murder. The biggest mystery is how they got some of this past the Production Code censors. Cheap, fast, and entertaining.  **1/2


The Night Holds Terror, 1955. Tight, suspenseful little Hoodlum/Home Invasion Noir produced in typical straightforward fashion by the husband-and-wife team of writer/director/producer Andrew L. Stone and editor Virginia. Based on actual events, film chronicles the case of the kidnapping/home invasion of Gene and Doris Courtier (the Stones paid the Courtiers to use their actual names in the film) and their two little kids by three young hoods, played by Vince Edwards, John Cassavetes, and David Cross. Jack Kelly, of Maverick fame, as Gene, is driving back from Los Angeles to Edwards Air Force Base -- where he works -- when he picks up a hitchhiker on the desert highway. Big mistake. The next thing he knows, he's being threatened with death at gunpoint by the three young thugs, who take him home and spend the night terrorizing his family. The hoods then take Gene for a drive, making a $200,000 ransom demand of Gene's father, who, they've discovered, is a wealthy businessman. Suspense is ratcheted up as the film cuts between the desperate wife (Hildy Parks) waiting for the phone to ring, the bad guys, the cops, and the phone company, circa 1955, as they try desperately to trace the kidnappers' calls. There's nothing too special going on here, but what goes on is well done straight down the line.  **1/2


Night Moves, 1975. Gene Hackman is subtly terrific as weary Los Angeles P.I. Harry Moseby, a retired pro football player who's hired by a washed-up movie actress to find her meal ticket, runaway trust-fund daughter Delly (played by a 17-year-old Melanie Griffith). Distracting Harry from his work is the fact that his wife, Ellen (Susan Clark), is having an affair. Harry follows Delly's trail first to a film set in New Mexico -- where Delly had a fling with a stuntman who had also slept with her mother -- and then to the Florida Keys, where Delly's stepfather runs a charter boat business along with his comely companion, Paula, played by Jennifer Warren. Director Arthur Penn's comment on the futility, hopelessness and despair of post-Watergate America is exemplified by the depravity of the characters, and the film's poignant ending, in which a wounded Harry lies nearly immobile as the boat in which he lies (named "Point of View") circles endlessly off the Florida coast. This is an excellent and underrated noir. ***1/2  


The Night of the Hunter, 1955 Charles Laughton's only directorial effort is a masterpiece mixture of creepy fairy tale, garish nightmare, Southern gothic murder story, and German expressionism with some black humor thrown in for seasoning. In one of the all-time great performances, Robert Mitchum plays "Reverend" Harry Powell, a self-anointed preacher, con man and serial killer who both lusts after and is repulsed by women. On one hand, the word "Love" is tatotooed; on the other: "Hate." As the story opens, Powell, fleeing the scene of his latest crime, is arrested in a burlesque house for driving a stolen car, and ends up sharing a cell with bank robber Ben Harper (Peter Graves) who is awaiting the gallows for a robbery in which he killed two men. The Reverend becomes fixated on the 10 grand that Harper stole and hid, which has yet to be found. While Harper refuses to divulge where he hid the loot, he does let slip that his two small children, young John and Pearl, know its location. After Harper's execution and his own release, Powell heads like a force of evil for Powell's home, where he quickly woos Harper's simple widow, Willa (Shelley Winters), and goes to work on the kids. When Willa finally figures out what her new hubby is up to, Powell murders her. The last third of the film becomes a battle between good and evil, in which the two children are on the run from the nearly purely evil Reverend. There are plenty of lasting images that have haunted many filmgoers' dreams, and become a model for horror directors since. An expressionistic oddity, and a unique and utterly compelling film. **** 

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Nightfall, 1957. Under-the-radar gem from Jacques Tourneur, based on a novel by David Goodis. While much of the film is shot in bright, sunny L.A. and even brighter snowy Wyoming, its dark, paranoid heart is pure noir. Aldo Ray is terrific as an all-American ex-G.I. hounded by fate, and Anne Bancroft as a model who may or may not be a femme fatale, is great as well. James Gregory, as an insurance investigator, is likeable, as always, while Brian Keith and Rudy Bond, as a pair of brutal killers, lend surprising dark humor to the flicker, which culminates in an unusual and memorable climax featuring a deadly duel with a snowplow. ***


Nightmare, 1956. Unremarkable psychological thriller based on Cornell Woolrich's novel And So To Death. Kevin McCarthy plays a nightclub clarinetist who thinks a nightmare in which he committed murder actually happened. Haunted by his conscience, the flute-tooter seeks the help of his brother in law, who just happens to be a homicide cop, played by Edward G. Robinson. Lots of sweaty histrionics and even the presence of Eddie G. can't drag this out of the doldrums. **1/2


Nightmare Alley, 1947. Sordid carny noir, directed by Edmund Goulding, with a great performance from Tyrone Power at its center. Power plays Stanton Carlisle, a carnival con man who dreams of hitting the big time as a fake clairvoyant. Lucky for him he's got "Mademoiselle Zeena," a fake mind reader (Joan Blondell), and her pitifully alcoholic husband, Pete, working in the next tent. Zeena and Pete at one time were a top-billed act using an ingenious code to make it appear as if Zeena had extraordinary mental powers, until Zeena's infidelity drove Pete to drink and reduced them to a third-rate carnival act. Then one night, Stanton accidentally gives Pete a bottle of wood alcohol instead of moonshine, killing him, and Zeena is forced to team up with Stanton and teach him the code. Their team doesn't last long, however, as Stanton soon ups and marries the younger Molly (Colleen Gray), and the two of them strike out on their own. The next thing you know, Stanton has become "The Great Stanton," and is performing before enraptured audiences in expensive nightclubs, assisted by Molly. Still not satisfied, he hooks up with scheming Chicago psychoanalyst Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker), who feeds him information about her patients, which Stan uses in his act, pretending to be able to communicate with the dead. Of course, it all comes crashing down around Stanton in a nightmarish conclusion. A brilliantly grim assessment of humanity's place in the cruel circus of life. ****


Nightmare Alley, 2021. Celebrated director Guillermo del Toro remakes the 1947 classic -- based on the 1946 William Lindsay Gresham novel -- in his usual obsessively sumptuous style. The result is a period picture that is a full 40 minutes longer than the '47 version, lovely and luxurious to look at, but falling short of its predecessor's cold, darkness that lies at the bottom of Stanton Carlisle's despairing soul. Del Toro's camera swoops and glides, lingering on the gorgeous set and costume design, brooding over the macabre and grotesque horrors that populate the shelves or writhe in the geek pit beneath the carnival tent, and everything is gorgeous and ominous in that hauntingly decadent del Toro style, but the thing just becomes too damn long (sort of like this sentence) and loses some of its power along the way. Bradley Cooper is quietly excellent as a more sympathetic Stanton Carlisle than centered the '47 version. At least up to a point. There's more of Stanton's backstory here than in the earlier version, but it just makes him even more of a mystery. Rooney Mara plays Molly, the innocent young woman he plucks out of the carnival on his way to the big time. Cate Blanchett is wonderfully dark and carnivorous as Dr. Lilith Ritter, the femme fatale who proves Stan's undoing. Richard Jenkins is also terrific as Ezra Grindle, the evil, wealthy, possibly serial-murderous old bastard who Stan cons. Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Mary Steenburgen, David Straithairn, and Ron Perlman fill out a big-name cast, splendid all. A feast for the eyes, and a terrific noir in its own right, but a tick below the original for my money. ***


The Nile Hilton Incident, 2017. Swedish writer-director Tarik Saleh's moody, atmospheric mystery, set in Cairo on the eve of the fall of the Mubarak regime, manages to evoke such great noir films as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential while carving out its own utterly unique place in the noir canon.
   Chain-smoking police detective Noredin Mostafa -- played with a morose, hangdog brilliance by the Swedish-Lebanese actor Fares Fares -- is as casually corrupt as the rest of his colleagues, having been mentored by his uncle, a senior official on the force. Noredin spends his days taking bribes, trying to get someone to fix his comically outdated, tiny, rabbit-eared TV, mourning his dead wife, and single-handedly keeping the tobacco industry in business. Then he's assigned to investigate the murder of a singer/prostitute at the Nile Hilton, and something changes. He may be as corrupt a cop as the rest, but as the case leads him straight to the heart of Egypt's powerful ruling elite, Noredin reveals an innate, dogged decency, which makes him persist and follow the clues wherever they lead him, even as he exudes an air of resigned pessimism and quiet subservience to those he's investigating.
   There is a lot here for noiraholics to love, including a gorgeous femme fatale, played by French-Algerian actress Hania Amar, who sings a beautiful, haunting tune in a Cairo nightclub while descending a staircase bathed in the glow of a spotlight as Noredin stares, transfixed in a haze of cigarette smoke. But Saleh's film is also a political thriller, with a lot of familiar cliches of that genre -- rich and powerful bad guys who own the police; an anonymous, undocumented hotel maid (Mari Malek) who must lam it after witnessing the murder; a blackmail scheme involving a hidden camera in a prostitute's love nest, with photos of rich and powerful men doing things they shouldn't; and a relentless hired killer who'll stop at nothing to satisfy his powerful bosses. With an ironic, slam-bang ending in the middle of the Tahrir Square revolution, this is a memorable noir, made even more powerful by the fact that its central crime is based on the real-life murder of Lebanese Arab singer Suzanne Tamim in Dubai in 2008. ***1/2



No Man's Woman, 1955. Paint-by-numbers Poverty Row whodunnit that plays like a cut-rate 1950s version of a Columbo episode, without the engaging central character to tie it all together. Noir queen Marie Windsor plays a wicked woman who seems to delight in ruining other people's lives, leaving plenty of suspects when she gets bumped off. Her stunt double's fall down a flight of stairs is probably the most impressive thing about this Republic cheapie. At least there's a Percy Helton appearance, as our favorite hunchbacked homunculus fills one of his usual minor character roles, this time as the janitor -- I mean caretaker. There's nothing offensive about No Man's Woman, but there's really nothing very good about it either, and it certainly isn't noir. **


No Questions Asked, 1951. B-level potboiler about Steve Keiver, a lawyer, played by Barry Sullivan, who gets his heart broken by his fiancee, Ellen (Arlene Dahl), a cold-blooded dame who runs off with a rich man without even so much as a Dear Steve. Bitter from being stiffed like a sap, Keiver breaks bad to a life of crime, making go-between deals with crooks for returned stolen goods, no questions asked by the insurance company. Jean Hagen plays Joan, the loyal, true-hearted gal who loves him. They canoodle, but Steve still carries the torch for Ellen, who suddenly drops back into the picture. Now that he's got dough, Steve drops Joan like a hot tomato and goes back to Ellen. Things take a dark turn when Kiever gets mixed up with ruthless gangster Franko -- who masterminded a robbery pulled off by two guys disguised as dames. The lawyer's life unravels after he's doublecrossed by the black-hearted Ellen, who, as it turns out, was using him all along. The whole thing is told in flashback, and culminates in a surprisingly brutal scene in which the bad girl gets her comeuppance in a way that must have been a bit shocking for audiences at the time. Directed by Harold Kress from a script by Sidney Sheldon, this is a brisk little noir that never rises much above the middling crowd. **1/2


No Sudden Move, 2021. Steven Soderbergh's HBO crime/caper movie set in 1950s Detroit is gorgeous to look at, stylish, well-acted, and will keep you guessing right up to the end. In an ensemble cast filled with big names, Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro stand out as two small-time crooks who get involved in a seemingly simple plot to steal a document from the safe of a car company executive. After the first of many double-and triple-crosses, things get a lot more complicated, and deadly. Beautifully shot by Peter Andrews, and with a fantastic score reminiscent of Chinatown, among other films, this is a delight for eyes and ears. My only quibble is that the script, by Ed Solomon, has a few too many jarring anachronisms. And, frankly, just one would be sloppy. Still, this is a lot of fun and a very likable film. ***1/2


Nocturne, 1946. Not bad, for a movie with George Raft in it. The Wooden One plays a tough cop (surprise, surprise!) investigating the supposed suicide of a cad composer. Script by pulp writer extraordinaire Jonathan Latimer keeps this one interesting. **1/2


Nora Prentiss, 1947. Bland Kent Smith is Dr. Richard Talbot, one of the saddest shlubs of noir. He starts the film a straight-arrow San Francisco physician with a daily routine you can set your watch by. He's got the seemingly perfect family, except for the fact that his wife and kids treat him like he's not even there. Then he meets oomph-girl nightclub crooner Nora Prentiss (Ann Sheridan -- who gets two tunes to croon) and her legs, and his perfectly-ordered little life goes up in flames. Before you know it, he is faking his death (because that always works!), using the corpse of a patient who dropped dead on him, and running off to New York with his beloved to start a new life. Except that, of course, it all unravels like a mummy with a loose bandage, and the next thing you know the poor shlub has wrecked his car, burned his face off and been arrested for his own murder. Hey, at least he's not so bland any more. Instead, he's one of the biggest losers ever put to celluloid. ***


Nowhere to Go, 1958. Bleak British tale about a smarmy con man (George Nader) on the run from the police after breaking out of prison. Maggie Smith plays a disillusioned ex-debutante who gets taken in by the fugitive, only to watch all her pretty dreams turn to mud. ** 


Odd Man Out, 1947. If James Joyce had gone to Hollywood to write a crime film, he might have come up with something like Odd Man Out. Most people know the director Carol Reed for The Third Man, but for my money, this is Reed's more powerful film. Transcendent and heartbreaking noir set amongst Northern Ireland's troubles. James Mason is luminous as wounded IRA fighter Johnny McQueen, trying desperately to navigate his way to safety after a botched heist. Kathleen Ryan is the pure-of-heart Irish lass who loves him. "It's a long way, Johnny, but I'm coming with you!" One of the most exquisite noir endings ever. **** 


Odds Against Tomorrow, 1959. Robert Wise's gritty and superb heist film with racial overtones features Harry Belafonte in a powerhouse performance as a nightclub singer desperate for cash. Belafonte is Johnny Ingram, whose gambling addiction has left him in hock to gangsters. With an ex-wife he still pines for and a young daughter he dotes on, Ingram is one of noir’s most sympathetic leads. Or, co-leads, as he teams here with ex-cop David Burke (Ed Begley, superb) and racist ex-con Earl Slater (Robert Ryan, ditto) to pull off a bank heist in a small New York town. Of course, it all goes spectacularly wrong. Shelley Winters is the hard-working gal who loves Ryan no matter what, and Gloria Grahame is their sexy neighbor. Belafonte’s performance, including Johnny’s fantastic nightclub act, make this one a can’t miss. The last great noir of the classic period. ****


On Dangerous Ground, 1951. Nicholas Ray's powerful story of an embittered big-city cop (Robert Ryan, excellent, as usual), sent to a rural town up north after severely beating several suspects. Detective Jim Wilson, full of rage and hatred after years of dealing with low-life criminals, is assigned to a case far from the city to find the killer of a young girl. There, in a small, snow-covered hamlet, Wilson finds himself paired with Walter Brent, the victim's enraged, rifle-toting father (Ward Bond), whose only plan is to shoot the killer himself on sight. The chase leads the two to the isolated home of Mary, a kind and beautiful blind woman (the lovely and supremely talented Ida Lupino), whose young, mentally handicapped brother is the killer. Despite her blindness, Mary has been caring for her brother since their parents died. Wilson sees himself mirrored in the blindly enraged Brent, and also sees his salvation in Mary. Ray, who co-wrote the script with A.I. Bezzerides, handles it all with his usual deft touch. Brilliant and touching. ***1/2


One Way Street, 1950. Starts with a bang, as, after a bank robbery, fatalistic mob doctor Frank Matson (James Mason) is summoned by mob boss John Wheeler (Dan Duryea) to treat one of his henchmen, Ollie (William Conrad), and brazenly steals the $200 grand they stole plus Wheeler's girlfriend, Laura (the luminous Marta Toren), who's in love with the doc. How does he do it, you ask? By giving Wheeler a couple of pills for his headache, and then telling him they're poison; he'll phone once they're safe and tell the gangster where to pick up the antidote. The couple flees to Mexico with the loot, where they eventually find an idyllic life, but Wheeler and Ollie are lurking. Matson and Laura return to Los Angeles to make a deal with Wheeler: Matson will return the money if he'll let the doc and Laura alone. But Wheeler, Ollie, and fate, have other plans. ***1/2


Out of the Blue, 2022. Writer-director Neil LaBute got his checklist out for this James M. Cain rehash: "How to Write a Neo-Noir Just Like the Pros!" Lots of scenes of classic old black-and-white films noir on TV? Check. Lots of "steamy" sex scenes with sexy femme fatale? Check. Allegedly "shocking" plot twist? Check. Witty banter filled with fun double-entendres between the two leads? Oops. Forgot about that one. There is nothing here we haven't seen done much better a hundred times before. Which is okay. It's not the first failed attempt to copy the classics. It may, however, be the laziest.
   The "story," or what passes for it, has ex-con Connor, played by Ray Nicholson (son of Jack -- who starred in the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice) working at a middle-schooler's idea of what a public library is like. One day, while out jogging shirtless, he meets sexy, married Marilyn Chambers (yes, really), played by Diane Kruger. They quickly hop in the sack (well, more on the rug, kitchen table, picnic blanket, whatever's handy) and, after lots of James M. Cain references, they decide to murder her rich and supposedly abusive husband. All of this comes at us with all the verve and atmosphere of a deodorant commercial. Character development? Not checked! Pacing? Ditto. Suspense? Not here, bub. James M. Cain? More like this thing was written by James M. Bland. 
​   And, a personal note: Mr. LaBute, for your information, libraries don't use rubber stamps to check out books anymore. Not for at least 40 years now. And, for the love of Mike, if you're going to write a movie in which your main character is a librarian (who somehow got hired straight out of prison because the library "was the only place that would hire me" -- um, wut?!?), at least take a cursory glance at the Dewey Decimal System. Or, better yet: maybe visit a library sometime after, say, 1970. Here's a hint: they have computers now. And homeless people. And... oh, what's the use. *1/2
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Out of the Past, 1947. Quintessential noir, featuring perhaps noir's quintessential leading man: Robert Mitchum at his "Baby I don't care!" best. Look up "femme fatale" in the dictionary and you'll find an etching of Jane Greer's Kathy Moffat. Add Kirk Douglas (in just his second film role) as the slick heavy, a deliciously dark and convoluted storyline based on James M. Cain's novel Build My Gallows High, Nicholas Musuraca's dark cinematography, and Jacques Tourneur's direction, and it equals near noir perfection. A must for noir fans. ****1/2


Over-Exposed, 1956. Limp Cleo Moore vehicle about an ambitious and supposedly vivacious gal who's arrested in a nameless city for rolling drunks and told by the cops to take the next bus out of town. Instead she bunks up with kindly old shutterbug Max West, who teaches her how to be a photographer. Cleo heads to the Big Apple and gets a job as a "flash girl," taking pictures in a nightclub. Then she meets newshound Russ Bassett (played by a young Richard Crenna), who wants Cleo to settle down. But Cleo has other ideas, and her single-minded drive for fame and fortune cause complications. Some shenanigans involving gangsters, extortion, and a kidnapping lead to young Russ playing the hero. A medium-sized load of hooey. **

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Pale Flower, 1964. Highly stylized, fatalistic, existential Japanese noir, directed by Masahiro Shinoda, about a yakuza hitman -- just released from prison after doing a 3-year stretch for murder -- drawn into a mutually destructive relationship with a murderous young woman. Ryo Ikebe -- who was at a low point in his career after being disgraced when he was fired from a play for freezing onstage -- plays Muraki, the elegantly dressed yakuza. ***


Palmetto, 1998 (Volker Schlondorff). Good idea and a great cast are wasted by an idiotic script and inept direction. We all know by now that Florida is home to some of the world's dumbest criminals. You know, the naked guy covered in nacho cheese who steals a police car and drives to the hotel where they're holding a police convention. Florida Man. Well, Florida Man could be Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson), the dim bulb ex-reporter fresh out of prison who gets drawn into a seemingly simple kidnapping scheme by the sexy wife of a much older, very rich man. Elisabeth Shue plays the wife, while Gina Gershon holds down the fort as Nina, Harry's loyal artist girlfriend. There's another problem: the two actresses are cast backwards. Gershon's a natural at playing the femme fatale, while Shue has the good-girl dimples. Not that they're bad cast against type -- they're fine -- but you can't help but think how things might be if they were each playing the other's part. 
   The scheme has Shue's step-daughter, Odette (Chloe Sevigny), fake her own kidnapping. Harry's hired to call in the ransom demand and make the pickup when the cash is delivered, and when the husband comes through with the payoff -- half a million bucks -- the three of them will split it, with Harry's cut being 50 grand. Of course, this being noir, nothing is that simple. Twists and double-crosses abound, but none of it feels surprising, especially when Harry gets the fuzzy end of the sucker, because he's just that dumb. He keeps making one brain-boggling mistake after another, smacking face-first into a fate that a blind man should see coming. Not only that, he makes it easy for anyone to frame him. The guy has to be the most careless kidnapper put to the page this side of a Carl Hiassen novel. He leaves clues a mile wide everywhere he goes, from footprints in the mud to cigarette butts, to meeting the kidnapping victim practically in plain sight, at the bungalow he rents from a caretaker who knows him by name. Face-palmetto.
   There are echoes here of far better films, including another Florida neo-noir, 1981's Body Heat, and even The Big Lebowski, the Coen Brothers fabulous comedy involving stupid criminals who fake the kidnapping of a young woman, only to be double-and-triple-crossed. Lebowski was released just one month before Palmetto, and the similarities in the fake kidnapping plots are uncanny, even down to how the payoffs are made, with the bag of ransom money hurled from the window of a moving vehicle. Only the bag in Palmetto isn't filled with Walter's dirty undies, and nobody in Lebowski is as dumb as Harry. Think about that for a minute. There's even a half-assed attempt to copy the famous final scene from Sunset Boulevard. Like the rest of Palmetto, it fizzles badly.
   Palmetto did get some decent reviews for its sex scenes, but even those feel staged, and there's nothing remotely risque about what's shown on screen. The whole thing plays like a series of bad set pieces -- sweaty, half-naked bodies rolling around and not a brain in sight. It's just too stupid to even get your blood boiling. *1/2


Panic In The Streets, 1950. Elia Kazan's heart-pounding thriller, shot exclusively on location in New Orleans, features a great, twitchy performance by Jack Palance as Blackie, a gangster who is wanted for murder, and who also has the plague. Richard Widmark is Dr. Clinton Reed, a U.S. Public Health Service Lieutenant Commander on a desperate hunt to track him down in 48 hours before he causes an outbreak. Reed must also convince skeptical city officials -- including Police Captain Warren (Paul Douglas) -- that if they notify the press they will cause a panic. Very well acted, particularly by Widmark and Palance, who was making his film debut.  ***1/2


Party Girl, 1958. Big, full color Nicholas Ray drama shot in Cinemascope looks great, but falls flat. Slick lawyer Thomas Farrell (Robert Taylor) has made a lucrative career out of defending Chicago mobster Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb in full Wild Man of Borneo mode) and his thugs in court. Then he meets comely chorus girl Vicki Gaye (Cyd Charisse) and the two begin a romance. But when Farrell has a change of heart about earning his living by defending gangsters, Rico threatens Vicki to keep him in line. It all builds to a boil, and then explodes in a rather goofy confrontation culminating in one of the more unintentionally hilarious endings in noir. We've seen it all before -- except for that ending! **1/2 


Phantom Lady, 1944. Robert Siodmak's noir is humming along nicely until Franchot Tone’s character comes in, staring maniacally at his murderous hands. His hackneyed crack-brain -- who just had to kill Alan Curtis’ wife because she was laughing at him, and kept on laughing! --  drags this otherwise great noir down a notch. Beautiful photography of New York’s rain-soaked streets. Elisha Cook Jr.’s feverish jazz drummer scene is off-the-charts fantastic. Ella Raines is gorgeous as always as the secretary, doggedly working to clear her boss’ (Alan Curtis) name, the guy who just wants to build model cities with “children’s play yards everywhere for everyone.” ***1/2 


Phoenix, 2014. This German drama about a Jewish concentration camp survivor with a reconstructed face returning to the ruins of post-war Berlin to find the husband she still loves, despite the fact that he may have betrayed her to the Nazis, has as haunting an ending as any noir fan could hope for. Writer-Director Christian Petzold's story centers on Nelly, a Jewish cabaret singer (played brilliantly by a luminescent Nina Hoss) who survived Auschwitz -- barely. Shot in the face by the Nazis -- who assumed she was dead -- Nelly is brought back to the rubble of bombed-out Berlin by her friend, Lene (Nina Kunzendorf), for reconstructive surgery, which leaves Nelly looking like a different person. As the only surviving member of her family, Nelly has a sizeable inheritance. The plan is for Nelly and Lene to abandon the haunted past of Germany for a new life in Palestine. At least, that's what Lene thinks. Nelly, however, seems more interested in finding her pianist husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), who Lene insists is the one who betrayed her to the Nazis. Nelly still loves him, though, and is determined to find him. Stumbling around the ruins of Berlin, her face still scarred from the surgery, the blindly faithful Nelly  eventually finds Johnny, though he doesn't recognize her. Still, there's something about Nelly that reminds Johnny of his former wife, who he thinks died at Auschwitz. In an exquisitely devastating twist, Johnny -- unaware that Nelly is, in fact, his wife -- enlists her to impersonate herself in a scheme to collect his dead wife's inheritance.
   Melancholy and heartbreaking, Phoenix brings back echoes of several classic noirs, including Detour (a singer and piano player romantically involved, a plot to impersonate a "dead" heir for the inheritance), but the gloom that envelops Phoenix is not some inescapable fate as in that poverty row classic, but the betrayal and horrors of the holocaust that looms over everything and everyone, from Lene, Nelly and Johnny, to the few friends who've "survived." These are people who've lost all, in some cases everything and everyone they loved and lived for. Even the vibrant, fiercely defiant Lene cannot seem to find a way forward out of the despair. All that's left is how each deals with the repercussions of an unforgiveable betrayal, and the knowledge of mankind's horrific capacity for evil. ***1/2 


Pickings, 2018. Usher Morgan's stylish thriller enthusiastically "pays homage to" (read: copies) the style and other elements of Tarantino's work (which, let's face it, isn't exactly original itself), spaghetti westerns, and Sin City to tell an engaging, very bloody tale of revenge. Elyse Price plays Jo, a woman with a violent and tragic past, who has picked up the pieces following the murders of her husband and youngest child, relocating from Tennessee to Michigan with her remaining three children and her brother, the cowboy-like Boone. She's bought a bar, which she runs with her eldest daughter, Scarlet, and everything seems fine until some big city gangsters try to shake her down for protection money, threatening her family in the process. But the gangsters have a surprise in store, as they don't know their victim's background and skills for violence. Not exactly a unique setup. Like Sin City, Usher intercuts his film with passages told in animation. Freeze-frames to introduce characters' names and flashy nicknames are straight out of Tarantino, and Jo is a steely facsimile of Uma Thurman's Bride from the Kill Bill films. The score is, at times, so reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western soundtracks for Sergio Leone that you'd swear Clint Eastwood is going to come swaggering onto the screen, chewing a cigar and squinting into the sun. But it's not all derivative. One character -- a gangster named "Hollywood" -- appears always in black and white, while everyone else is in color. As a whole, there's a lot to appreciate about how Morgan brings together all of these diverse styles to tell his story. It works. I just wish the clearly talented director had gone a bit lighter on the Tarantino and Sin City, and created more of his own style.  **1/2 


Pickup, 1951. Hugo Haas wrote, directed, and stars in this limp biscuit, low-rent take on The Postman Always Rings Twice, with Beverly Michaels playing the tramp who marries a much older man, "Hunky" Horak (Haas), for security. Allan Nixon, in the Garfield role, is a weak link, as is Haas's script, which turns the tables on the scheming lovers through an inventive but goofily-handled plot twist. The twist involves  Hunky going deaf, then suddenly regaining his hearing after getting hit by a car, but pretending to still be deaf so he can eavesdrop on his faithless wife and her sap boyfriend as they scheme to bump him off. This was Haas's first American film. He went on to make a series of similar bottom-of-the-barrel noirs about middle-aged men being suckered by younger femmes fatales. **


Pickup on South Street, 1953. If Samuel Fuller, director and screenwriter of Pickup on South Street, had to distill his two-fisted masterpiece down to three words, he might have chosen "Honor among thieves." In the film, Richard Widmark shines as yet another in his long line of big-city lowlifes dreaming of hitting the big-time. Widmark is crafty pickpocket Skip McCoy, a sleazy, thieving smartass with a gift for the grift, who -- on a crowded New York subway -- steals Candy's (Jean Peters) wallet. In the wallet is an envelope she was delivering as a favor for her slimy ex-boyfriend, Joey, a commie agent. In the envelope is microfilm of top-secret government information, not simple industrial espionage, as Joey had led Candy to believe. Two G-men witness the crime, having been following Candy. But before the junior J. Edgars can react, Skip is skipping off the train with the wallet, and -- unbeknownst to him -- the microfilm. The G-men then meet with NYC police Captain Dan Tiger (Murvyn Vye) to try and i.d. the thief. To help in that process, Tiger turns to an informant: a little old lady named Moe, played by Thelma Ritter, who's been saving up scratch from her legitimate business front of selling cheap men's neckties on the street and also her informant money so she can buy herself a top-of-the-line funeral with all the trimmings. As she explains to the captain: "Look, Tiger, if I was to be buried in Potter's field, it'd just about kill me." Moe quickly puts the finger on Skip, who doesn't hold it against her. "Moe's alright," he says. "She's gotta eat." When Skip learns what he's got, he tries to put the bite on the commies -- via Candy, who has fallen for Skip -- and that's when things really get interesting. The commies threaten Moe to give up Skip's whereabouts, but she refuses, even at great personal peril, and Skip becomes a sympathetic figure when he stops thinking of himself and does something selfless for Moe. And while, on the surface, the film appears to be a straight-forward, patriotic, anti-communist work, it's much sharper than that. Fuller -- who also wrote the screenplay -- fills Pickup with loads of juicy little details -- like the hilarious way Skip keeps his beer cold at his waterfront shack, or the way Lightning Louie uses chopsticks to pocket cash off the table in his Chinese restaurant. Of the cast, Widmark is great, but it's Ritter who pretty much steals the show with her portrayal of Moe, a complex woman with equal parts vulnerability, charm, and guile. This is a film that requires more than one viewing to fully appreciate. A top-notch, slyly subversive noir. ****


Pitfall, 1948. Directed by Andre De Toth. Dick Powell is the archetypal average post-war American man living out the American dream in the suburbs. He has a beautiful, loving wife (Jane Wyatt), a little boy, and a boring job as an insurance man. Then one day he meets Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott), a sultry, alluring blonde whose boyfriend is serving time for embezzlement. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, Mister Straight Arrow has fallen into a, well, pitfall. Then along comes 275 pounds of trouble in the form of  Raymond Burr, a sleazy private eye who's got his eyes on Mona, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. A quietly brilliant little morality tale with a dark undercurrent. ****


Please Murder Me, 1956 (Peter Godfrey). Raymond Burr, in a rare (big screen) good-guy role, plays a smart defense lawyer who falls for the scheming, manipulative wife (Angela Lansbury) of his best friend and war buddy (1930s and '40s singing cowboy Dick Foran) who saved his life. By the time Burr figures out that Lansbury's as evil as they come, it's too late. There are resounding echoes of Double Indemnity, especially at the film's open, which has Burr's character in trenchcoat and fedora going to his office at night (after buying a gun from a pawn shop and loading it in the cab), where he begins to dictate into a tape recorder his sordid tale. Good performances from everyone, especially Burr, and a nice twist or two before the very noirish ending. **1/2


Plunder Road, 1957. Directed by Hubert Cornfield. Starring: Gene Raymond, Elisha Cook Jr.
Low budget noir about a gang that robs a San Francisco-bound train of $10 million in gold, then loads their loot in three different trucks heading in different directions. The plan is to get to L.A., then melt the gold and put it into the bumpers and chrome of their getaway cars. Of course, this being noir, it all fails spectacularly. A sleeper of a heist film with a kicker of an ending. ***


The Poison Rose, 2019. Listless private eye story tries ever so hard to generate that hard-boiled, Long Goodbye, neo-noirish vibe, but the whole thing is a crashing bore. Warning: you might want to put your teevee on Mute as you're dozing off, lest you be rudely awakened by the ubiquitous shootouts. This is a film where even hospital orderlies are packing guns. Then again, it does take place in Texas, so maybe not all that far-fetched. John Travolta plays aging, disgraced Texas football star turned weary, down-and-out L.A. private eye Carson Phillips, who heads back home to Galveston to find out why his client's aunt -- a resident of a mysterious "sanitarium" -- has gone incommunicado. Perhaps the biggest shock of all is that Travolta isn't half bad in the role, but the script is a convoluted, ponderous, preposterous mess. Morgan Freeman dials in a paint-by-numbers performance as a rich heavy, and Famke Janssen stiffly plays Carson's old flame. Brendan Frasier at least has some fun as a shady doctor with a mystery lisp, but it's not enough to save the film, which barely generates enough heat to qualify as a trash can fire (lacking the energy to blaze an entire dumpster), the kind that burns itself out before causing much of a ruckus, leaving nothing but a bad smell in the air. *1/2


Poodle Springs, 1998. HBO adaptation of Raymond Chandler's unfinished last novel, completed after his death by Robert B. Parker. James Caan takes on the role of Philip Marlowe, following in the footsteps of Bogart, Mitchum, Powell, and others, and he does pretty well as an aging Marlowe who's married a rich heiress and moved to Palm (er, Poodle) Springs. The film starts slowly, taking some time to find its footing, but eventually immerses the viewer in a typical Chandlerian plot awash in blackmail and murder. Nothing spectacular, but a solid addition to the list of Chandler works brought to the screen. **1/2


Port of New York, 1949 (Laszlo Benedek). This B-film about federal agents pursuing a narcotics gang is completely unremarkable except for the fact that it's Yul Brynner's first film role. His turn as the slick and ruthless leader of the drugs syndicate provides a cheap thrill, as in, "Hey, that's a really young Yul Brynner starring in this otherwise completely unremarkable film!" Told in semi-documentary style, with voice-over narration by future NBC nightly newscaster Chet Huntley. Ho-hum stuff. **



The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946. Iconic noir (based on the James M. Cain novel) in which Lana Turner causes John Garfield to burn his hamburger. Platinum blonde Turner is Cora, a restless sexpot stuck in a roadside diner married to the much older Nick (Cecil Kellaway) when handsome drifter Frank Chambers (Garfield) blows her way. It's lust at first sight, a rapacious desire that neither can break off, and before you know it, Frank and Cora are having an affair and plotting to do away with jolly old Nick. But in the wicked world of Cain, nothing is that easy. Director Tay Garnett's visual approach is subdued compared to the more expressionistic film noir of the period, but he's at no loss when he films the luminous Turner in her milky-white wardrobe. She radiates repressed sexuality and uncontrollable passion while Garfield's smart-talking loner mixes street-smart swagger and scrappy toughness with vulnerability and sincere intensity. Costar Hume Cronyn cuts a cold, calculating figure as their conniving lawyer, a chilly character that only increases our feelings for the murderous couple, victims of an all consuming amour fou that drives their passions to extremes. **** 


The Pretender, 1947. A fairly inventive plot is undone when it turns into tedious hokum. Albert Dekker plays crooked businessman Kenneth Holden who embezzles a large sum of money from heiress Claire Worthington (Catherine Craig). Holden hopes to cover up his crime by marrying Claire, but when she announces she's engaged to big lug straight arrow Dr. Leonard Koster, Holden hires a hit man to bump off the competition, telling the hired killer that he can identify his target from the wedding announcement photograph in the society pages. Okay. But then Claire -- in a hilarious fit of pique -- decides to suddenly dump the doc because he chooses to work late one night saving someone's life rather than take her out on the town. Having dumped this selfish lout, she agrees to marry Holden instead. Great, thinks Holden, until he realizes that, when his picture appears in the papers with Claire, it will target him as his own hit man's victim! So he tries to contact the killer, but his go-between -- the only contact between Holden and the killer -- has, himself, died. It all goes goofily off the rails as Holden holes up in a room in Claire's mansion, refusing to show his face for fear of being bumped off, living on crackers and nuts he manages to squirrel away from the kitchen, as his bewildered fiancee wonders what in the world she's got herself into. She's not the only one! **


The Price of Fear, 1956. Wacky, cut-rate piece of cheese with a screwy twist at the end. Merle Oberon, slumming, plays successful businesswoman Jessica Warren, who, driving while tipsy one night, runs down an old man out walking his dog. Panicked, she flees the scene, then, coming to her senses, pulls over a few blocks away at a phone booth to call the police. Only, while she's on the phone, Lex Barker (Tarzan from the movies!) comes running by, fleeing gangsters who are out to gun him down. Tarz--er, Lex, hops in Jessica's idling car and takes off, thereby setting himself up nicely as a fall guy for the hit and run, which Jessica coldly goes along with. Meanwhile, across town, the gangster that wants Tarz--er, Lex, dead, frames him for the murder of his ex-business partner. Now Lex is on the hook for not one but two crimes! Wacky enough for you? Wait, it gets better! Tarz--er, Lex, and Jessica fall in love! And not only that, but there's Gia Scala as the daughter of the hit-and-run victim who gets to sit around mooning over dear old dad, who's in a coma. Or is she mooning over Tarz--er, Lex? Both, maybe? Anyway, there's more slightly fuzzy goofiness, until the somewhat surprising and poorly edited but still marginally chilling end. **


Private Hell 36, 1954. One of the best entries in the "bad cop" wing of Noirvana, this tight little gem focuses on two honest L.A. police detectives, Cal Bruner (Steve Cochran in one of his best performances) and Jack Farnham (Howard Duff), partners and best friends, who go bad one night when they decide to keep a pile of loot they find on a murdered counterfeiter, then are assigned by their police captain (Dean Jagger) to look for the missing cash. Things get worse when Bruner gets romantically involved with nightclub singer Lili Marlowe (Ida Lupino, who also cowrote the script), who he thinks will only stick with him if he has a lot of cash. Farnham is torn and wants to turn the money in, but Bruner goes all the way sour, and wants to keep it all. Well-written and acted, and stylishly directed by Don Siegel, this is a nice little gem of a noir. ***1/2


The Prowler, 1951. Top-notch noir, directed by Joseph Losey, that’s a twist on Double Indemnity – in this one it’s the man who seduces the wife into an affair. But there's a lot more going on here than just a rehash of other films. Twitchy Van Heflin plays Webb Garwood, a prowl cop who sees in housewife Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) an opportunity to do some social climbing. While investigating a prowler at Susan's house one night, Webb falls for her -- as much as the psychopathic Garwood can fall for anyone. Webb (the name is no coincidence, as the spidery cipher weaves his silky netting around his prey) woos her, and concocts a murder scheme to do away with her husband – without her knowledge. But there’s a catch, and it’s a doozy. Webb’s gotten Susan pregnant. The two get married and head for the desert to have the baby without anyone knowing. Only, of course, things go horribly wrong for poor Webb, who pitches one of noir's greatest hissy fits as he confesses all to the horrified Susan. "So I'm no good!" Webb snarls. "But I'm no worse than anyone else!" Terrific performances by the two leads and a fantastic script written by blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, though uncredited (a bit of trivia: The voice of Susan's radio d.j. husband is voiced by none other than Trumbo). A truly great and subversive noir. ****


Pulp, 1972. Mike Hodges' spoof of pulp mysteries is definitely not noir. Is it neo-noir? Meh. Not in my book, but it is a lot of fun for noir fans, as Spillane-style pulp novelist Mickey King (a very droll Michael Caine) gets involved in a sordidly goofy case of rape and murder, featuring assorted gangsters, actors, princesses and politicians. With great supporting performances by a hilariously over-the-top Mickey Rooney as a dying washed-up actor with underworld ties, and Lizabeth Scott, who came out of retirement to play a man-hungry princess now married to a fascist politician. ***


Raw Deal, 1948. The visual storytelling is off the charts in Anthony Mann's beautiful, fatalistic, intense noir, shot by famed noir cinematographer John Alton. Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe), in prison after taking the fall for his sadistic, pyromaniacal boss, chubby dynamo Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr), busts out with the help of his loyal girlfriend, Pat (Claire Trevor). Unbeknownst to either Joe or Pat, however, Coyle has facilitated the escape as a set-up to have Joe killed to avoid paying him the 50 grand he owes him. But Joe manages to escape anyway, which causes Coyle to send his hired killer Fantail (John Ireland) to finish the job. Meanwhile, Joe kidnaps Ann (Marsha Hunt), a social worker who's been visiting Joe in prison in an attempt to reform him, setting up one of noir's great doomed love triangles. The cast is uniformly great, but it's Trevor's melancholic voice-over -- a noir rarity for a woman -- that stands out and undercurrents the story. Unusual, dreamlike crime thriller with a powerful finale. ****


The Reckless Moment, 1949. California housewife Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) attempts to cover up what she believes to be her daughter, Bea's (Geraldine Brooks), accidental killing of Darby, a slimy ex-lover. Martin Donnelly (James Mason), a smooth-talker involved in organized crime, shows up with a package of love letters from Bea to Darby, and blackmail on his mind. With her husband out of town, Lucia has no choice but to give in to his demands, and brings him along on a desperate quest to raise the money that takes them from bank to loan office to pawn shop. Along the way, Donnelly develops sympathy -- and perhaps more -- for Lucia, but when his ruthless boss shows up to pressure him into finishing the job, Donnelly makes a decision that sets up the film's startling climax. Superior noir, directed by Max Ophuls. ***1/2


Red Light, 1949. One of George Raft's best performances (which is somewhat akin to being the world's tallest midget), superior noir atmospherics, some fabulous staging and sets, a top-notch supporting cast of the Film Noir All-Stars, and even Raymond Burr bowling. All that in one noir, and they're all needed to overcome the hokey bible-thumping script that keeps slapping you in the face with its proselytizing. Raft plays the owner of a San Francisco trucking company whose kid brother -- an angelic army chaplain -- is just home from the war and makes a convenient target for a vengeful Burr, who's doing a stretch in the big house for embezzling from Raft's company. Burr and his toadie (Harry Morgan) happen to catch a newsreel at prison movie night in which Raft greets little bro at the airport, which gives Burr sweaty ideas of making Raft pay the cowardly way, by bumping off his brother. He hires Morgan -- who's released a week ahead of Burr -- to murder the priest, who's staying in a dingy San Francisco hotel room before heading to the Redwoods to take over his own parish. In a beautifully shot scene straight out of Noir 101, Morgan plugs the padre in the darkened hotel room, with neon blinking on and off through the window. Raft finds his dying brother on the floor, and when he asks who shot him, all the lead-filled father can croak out is that it's "written in the Bible." This sets Raft off on a search for the missing hotel Bible. He has help from Virginia Mayo, so things could be worse. Barton MacLane gives his usual solid performance in the familiar role of the tough detective who's inclined to give Raft a break, and Burr shines, as usual, as the hulking, sadistic heavy. Morgan is great also, as one of the quietly menacing stubby mooks he was so good at playing in noirs like The Big Clock, Appointment With Danger, and The Gangster. The big shootout at the end, shot atop a giant, blinking neon sign, is imaginative and well executed. Director Roy Del Ruth and cinematographer Bert Glennon do great work stylistically creating a terrific noir look that gives John Alton a run for his money. If only Don "Red" Barry's script had been a little less lead-footed on the preaching, this could have been really special, even with The Wooden One leading the cast. ***


Ride the Pink Horse, 1947. Robert Montgomery directs and stars in this odd little off-kilter border noir, based on Dorothy B. Hughes' novel. Montgomery, a veteran of scores of pre-war screwball comedies, channels the same abrasive, hard-jawed, tough guy persona he cultivated playing Chandler's Philip Marlowe in "Lady in the Lake," this time inhabiting the role of hard-edged ex-G.I. Lucky Gagin, who gets off a bus in San Pablo, a New Mexican resort town busy celebrating an annual fiesta in which the "God of Bad Luck" is burned. Gagin is hunting the rich and powerful gangster who killed his war buddy. When he finally catches up to his target, the smarmy, hearing-impaired heavy tells him, "You used to think if you were a square guy, worked hard, played on the level, things would come your way. You found out you were wrong. All you get is pushed around." Gagin is aided in his quest by the operator of the carousel from which the film's title is derived, Pancho (Thomas Gomez, the first Latin American to be nominated for an Oscar for his performance), a big-bellied, silver-tongued souse with a heart of gold, and Pila (Wanda Hendrix), an otherworldly, big-eyed country bumpkin Indian girl who Gagin derisively calls "Sitting Bull." Upon first meeting Gagin, Pila foresees the pugnacious gringo dead, and, despite his surliness, she spends the rest of the movie trying to save him from that vision. While "Pink Horse" doesn't rise to the level of Orson Welles' border noir, "Touch of Evil," it has its moments, such as the shocking and powerful scene in which two brutal thugs mercilessly beat Pancho behind the carousel while dozens of kids watch in horror from the rotating horses. *** 


Riffraff, 1947 (Ted Tetzlaff). A great six-minute, dialog-free opening kicks off this underrated, almost forgotten B-cheapie from RKO. The film opens memorably on a horned lizard in the middle of a thunderstorm of near biblical proportions raining down on an airstrip in Peru, where two pilots and one swarthy passenger stand around smoking and waiting for the other passenger, a nervous little guy with something important in his briefcase. They board a cargo plane full of live chickens and take off for Panama in the thunderstorm. A couple of tense minutes later, only one of the passengers is left, the nervous guy having gone out the open door -- jumped, according to the swarthy fellow. It's a slam-bang opening, played entirely without a word, everything drowned out by the storm and the plane's engines. After that, Riffraff settles down to a rather familiar south-of-the-border adventure tale, though a very entertaining one, thanks to snappy script and a good cast headed by the fast-talking Pat O'Brien as Dan Hammer, two-fisted private detective and fast-operating man about Panama. The plot involves a missing map, which shows the locations of rich, South American oil deposits, and the whole thing is fast and fun, with that terrific opening raising this one above most of the other Panama hat "noirs."  ***


Rififi, 1955. American director Jules Dassin directed this heist noir after being blacklisted from Hollywood and moving to France. Aging gangster Tony "le Stephanois" (Jean Servais) has served a five-year prison sentence for a jewel heist and is out on the street and down on his luck. His friend Jo approaches him about going in on a robbery. Tony declines, but then learns that his old girlfriend, Mado, has taken up with gangster nightclub owner Pierre Grutter, causing Tony to change his mind about the proposed robbery. Tony, Jo, Mario, and Cesar plan an almost impossible theft -- the burglary of an exclusive jewelry shop on the Rue de Rivoli. There is a half-hour heist scene depicting the crime in detail, as the gang gets away with the loot. But when the ruthless Grutter finds out that Tony and his pals have committed the robbery, he decides to steal the jewels from them. What follows is a series of brutal murders and the kidnapping of Jo's young son, and a memorable final scene with Tony driving maniacally through the streets of Paris in a desperate attempt to rescue the boy and bring him home. ***1/2 


Road House, 1948. Directed by Jean Negulesco. Ida Lupino as the smoldering chanteuse Lily Stevens elevates this potboiler, set in a Midwestern road house, complete with bowling alley. Richard Widmark is Jefty, the owner of the joint who's crazy about Lily, but when Lily chooses Jefty's boyhood chum Pete (Cornell Wilde) instead, Jefty goes nuts, as noir characters played by Widmark are wont to do. Lupino, proving she could do it all, torches the joint when she sings the Johnny Mercer classic "One For My Baby (and One More For the Road)."  ***


Roadblock, 1951. Hard-boiled straight-arrow insurance detective Joe Peters (gravel-voiced noir god Charles McGraw) falls for gold digger (Joan Dixon) in this RKO programmer. The gold digger likes him too, but not his salary. He's the kind of guy who spends Christmas sitting alone in his shabby apartment with a bottle of cheap rotgut, smoking and brooding. Before you can say Walter Neff, Peters is crossing the line to keep the gold digger in mink. Silly plotting and corny dialog nearly put this one in the self-parody clinker, but McGraw keeps it afloat. He's perfect as the gruff, squeaky-clean shlub with a sudden yen for a vixen who's out of his league. Dixon looks fetching enough as a tough dame trying to go straight for her man, but she's as lifelike as a blow-up doll with a slow leak. She delivers hilarious lines like, "I'm on a rocket to the moon. I don't want anything holding me back," with all the oomph of a wet pretzel. Look for a humorously dapper Milburn Stone -- Gunsmoke's Doc -- playing McGraw's boss at the insurance company four years before he took the stagecoach to Dodge. **1/2



Rolling Thunder, 1977. Gritty, violent Paul Schrader-penned revenge tale about a Vietnam Vet who returns home after six years in a POW camp an empty shell of a man. William Devane plays Major Charles Rane with his usual cold efficiency. Upon returning home to San Antonio, Rane discovers his wife has taken up with another man, his young son doesn't even remember who he is, and the only thing he's got are a red Cadillac convertible and 2,555 silver dollars -- one for each day of his captivity -- presented to him by the town at a grand welcome home celebration. The next thing you know, four vicious thugs have broken into his home to steal the silver dollars. While torturing Rane to find out where he's hid them, they stick his hand down the garbage disposal, and then, after Rane's son shows them where the modest boodle is, they shoot Rane, his wife, and son. Only Rane survives, and the only thing he's living for is revenge. Tommy Lee Jones plays Rane's equally damaged POW pal, who joins Rane on his quest for vengeance. Linda Haynes plays a comely Texas waitress who has a thing for Rane and goes along for the ride. Exploitation flick that offers a stoic peek at the pain of post-war readjustment.  ***


Rusty Knife, 1958. Former yakuza flunky Tachibana (Yujiro Ishihada), who's gone straight after serving a 5-year sentence for stabbing to death the man he thought responsible for his girlfriend's rape and suicide, picks up the knife again and goes after the rest of the gang responsible, and the syndicate boss calling the shots. There's a lot going on in this hard-boiled crime story, including at least two witnesses to a murder trying to shake down a brutal crime lord (spoiler alert: it doesn't end well for them), a corrupt cop who gets his orders by secret ham radio set-up, dueling dump trucks, a crazy scooter ride, a sword vs. knife fight, a guy being hurled out of one train into the path of another... you get the idea; it's a busy hour-and-a-half. Though some of the fight scenes and action sequences are not staged particularly well and the big reveal of the crime lord's identity at the end should come as a surprise to no one, there's still a lot to like here for noir fans. **1/2


Scarlet Street, 1945. Directed by Fritz Lang, this remake of Jean Renoir's La Chienne was a reunion of the director and his three stars from 1944's The Woman in the Window. Edward G. Robinson is mesmerizing as middle-aged milquetoast Chris Cross, a lowly henpecked clerk and amateur painter who falls for gorgeous, heartless prostitute Kitty (Joan Bennett). The more Chris gives her, the more she leads him on, steered from the shadows by Johnny, her sleazy, brutish pimp/lover (the fantastic Dan Duryea). As the pressure builds on Chris to satisfy the scheming Kitty (and Johnny), he plunges headlong into a whirlpool of lust, larceny, and revenge. Full of delicious twists and turns, this is an uncompromising, groundbreaking noir. ****1/2


Sea of Love, 1989. Steamy thriller features loads of chemistry between stars Al Pacino and the fabulous Ellen Barkin. Pacino plays a high-strung big apple detective investigating a series of murders of lotharios who placed ads in singles magazines, and they think the killer is a woman. Enter Barkin, who chews up the screen with her tigress-in-heat performance. Lots of big '80s hair and padded shoulders -- along with the performances of the two leads and John Goodman in a supporting role -- make this fun, even if the ending is a cop-out. **1/2



The Set-Up, 1949. Robert Wise's powerful noir is a character study of over-the-hill boxer Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan), just one pug in a locker-room full of palookas. Stoker is 35 going on 50, yet still thinks he's just one punch away from the big time. The fiercely proud prizefighter is determined to beat his next opponent, while his wife, Julie (Audrey Totter) fears for his safety and his future, and begs him to forfeit the bout. Stoker's manager, meanwhile, is so sure he'll lose that he takes money from a mobster for Stoker to take a dive and doesn't even bother to tell him. While Stoker gets laced up in the locker-room, Julie, who can't stand to see him get beat up any more, waits for him back in their seedy hotel, until she gets restless and wanders the streets that are filled with arcades, bars, and chop suey places. The film, which plays out in something close to real-time, is a fine showcase for Ryan, the tall, craggy noir stalwart, so excellent in so many film noirs. Ryan, a boxer in real life before becoming an actor, is one of the great underappreciated actors in American film, and this is one of his greatest performances. A riveting, gut-punch of a boxing picture. ****



Shack Out On 101, 1955. This one-of-a-kind, stagey noir, directed and cowritten by Edward Dein -- whose other claim to fame is that he helmed 1959's "Curse of the Undead," which is credited as being the first vampire western -- is easily the oddest and most entertaining of the Red Scare noirs, and perhaps the weirdest noir of them all. All the action takes place at a dumpy seaside greasy spoon, which is actually a hotbed of commie spies, led by Slob, the fry cook (Lee Marvin). Slob, who is posing as a lecherous knuckledragger, but is really a commie mastermind, works for George (Keenan Wynn), owner of the diner and a D-Day veteran whose life was saved by his good friend Eddie (Whit Bissell), a traveling jewelry salesman who suffers from PTSD, or what used to be called "shell shock." The main target for Slob's (well, everyone's) amorous gropings is Kotty (Terry Moore), the diner's fetching waitress, who Slob calls "The Tomato," much to the chagrin of George, who's hopelessly in love with her. Meanwhile, The Tomato is romantically entwined with Sam, a big-brained scientist from the nearby nuclear research facility who may or may not be selling secrets to the commies through Slob. It all sounds quite campy -- and at times it is -- but, surprisingly, it works, sort of, thanks to Dein -- who also cowrote with his wife, Mildred Dein -- and the stellar work of Marvin and Wynn. Speaking of Marvin and Wynn, there's a fabulous scene, dripping with homoeroticism, in which the two compare pecs in a shirtless weightlifting competition that has to be seen to be believed. There's also Wynn flopping around the diner in scuba gear, flippers and a spear gun, a couple of undercover FBI agents posing as Acme chicken pluckers, and even a man-eating monster fish. And it's all captured beautifully by cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who shot the classic western High Noon. Not to be missed. ***


Shallow Grave, 1994 (Danny Boyle). Three despicable assholes -- Edinburgh flatmates -- who get their kicks by tormenting those they don't think are as "cool" as they are, eventually turn on each other after a fourth flatmate, who just moved in, dies and leaves behind a suitcase full of cash. Forget trying to find someone in this film to root for, just see if you can find one character -- one! -- who is not so vile and despicable that you can sit through this violent, bloody, nihilistic tripe. One thing's for sure, it won't be Alex. As played by Ewan McGregor, Alex may be the single, most unlikeable character ever brought to film. I'm talking more loathsome than Hannibal Lector. More unlikeable than Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, or any reprehensible, murderous despot, serial killer, or scumbag you can think of. Put Alex in Alien, and I'm rooting for the alien. Jaws? Bon appetit, Bruce!  Nurse Ratched? Lord Voldemort? Forget it. No one is as big a jerk as this guy, and that stands until they make a movie about Trump and the deplorables. *1/2 


Shakedown, 1950 (Joseph Pevney). Entertaining B-picture about an unscrupulus news photographer (Howard Duff) who will stop at nothing to get to the top. After using some good old fashioned hustle to get a tryout at a San Francisco newspaper, Jack Early makes a sleazy deal with racketeer Nick Palmer (Brian Donlevy), in which Early agrees to photograph Harry Colton, a vicious rival gangster (played with the usual verve by human steamroller Lawrence Tierney), as he's committing a robbery, and publish the pictures, sending Colton to the big house and getting him out of Palmer's hair. Only Early decides it would be more lucrative to blackmail Colton. Early puts the moves on Ellen, his wholesome "picture editor" (the lovely Peggy Dow) to keep him in the pink at the paper, but he secretly has the hots for Nick's sexy wife, Nita (Anne Vernon). He's so gaga for Nita that he sets her hubby up to be murdered by Colton, and is there to snap the photo as Colton's car bomb goes boom. The resulting picture is so explosive (sorry) it vaults Early to shutterbug superstardom. He promptly ditches the paper for more lucrative work as a high-end freelancer, coldly ignoring Ellen's pleas to stay. While on his globetrotting assignments, Early continues to woo Nita, '50s style. That means Nita's receiving a steady stream of flowers and gifts in the mail, and even has to listen to a couple of Arab flute-tooters serenade her over the phone. By this point, Ellen's realized that Early's a scumball and shows him the door. That's okay with Early, who only cares about the blackmail photos of Colton he's hidden in her apartment (in the photo frame that holds the picture of her ex- boyfriend, a dentist from Portland!). Needing more dough to keep up his pursuit of Nita, Early sets up a robbery with Colton's gang at the home of a wealthy socialite, whose fancy shindig Early's been hired to shoot. But Colton doublecrosses Early, and tells Nita that her point-and-shoot paramour was the one responsible for Nick being blown up. Everything goes kablooey in Early's face, and he gets his payoff in a wild shootout at the soiree, but not before he manages to get one last scoop -- a picture-perfect photo of his own killer firing the fatal bullet. It's a great ending, and Early rivals Ace in the Hole's Chuck Tatum as perhaps the most unethical journalist in noir. But Shakedown only goes skin-deep, leaving it a couple of leagues below Billy Wilder's  classic, which came out a year later. Still, it's a fun little ride for what it is. **1/2 


Shattered, 1991 (Wolfgang Petersen). Goofy, atmospheric, psychological thriller-noir that threatens to run off the road into comedy territory more than once, but a genuinely shocking twist at the end almost redeems this bucket of pulp. Tom Berenger plays Dan Merrick, a rich San Francisco architect married to Judith (Greta Scacchi), who's having an affair with a mulleted party boy named Jack Stanton. As the film opens, Dan is comatose, disfigured and almost killed in a horrific car crash in which his wife was thrown clear and barely injuured. Dan has amnesia, gets plastic surgery to restore his face, and is nursed back to health by Judith. Though he still can't remember anything before the wreck, he finds clues to Judith's infidelity, photos taken of his wife and Jack in flagrante delicto. The photos lead him to Gus, a screwy private eye/pet shop owner (Bob Hoskins -- comic relief), who jumps back on the case. Meanwhile, his partner in a large, lucrative architecture firm, Jeb (Corbin Bernson) and his sexy wife Jenny (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) keep things interesting. There's an old shipwreck full of toxic sludge that contains a deadly secret, and Dan slowly begins to remember things as he and Gus chip away at the mystery. The story keeps getting wackier and wackier until the big twist -- which plays like something straight out of an old pulp paperback. Silly, but entertaining. ** 


Shed No Tears, 1948 (Jean Yarbrough). A honey of a plot as audacious as any in noir, full of twists, turns, and double-and-triple-crosses, make this a treat for noiraholics despite the gutter-low budget. Tubby shlub Sam Grover (Wallace Ford), a scheming goofball married way above his weight class to the much younger and very sexy Edna (June Vincent), comes up with a screwy plan to keep his money-loving wife by collecting on his $50 grand life insurance without actually dying. He rents a hotel room, makes a deal with an undertaker to get a corpse, then sets the hotel room on fire and defenestrates the flaming, unidentifiable stiff, adorned with Sam's valuables! After kissing Edna goodbye, Sam dons a disguise and heads to another city to hide out and wait for the insurance money to come in. But before Sam's car seat is even cool, Edna's canoodling with slick playboy Ray Belden. The lovers have plans to take the insurance money and leave Sam high and dry. Meanwhile, Tom, Sam's son from a previous marriage, suspects his stepmother of something and hires oddball private eye Huntington Stewart to investigate. Are you dizzy yet? Well, hold on to your hat! Sam, having grown suspicious of Edna, comes back and surreptitiously catches her firkytoodling with Ray, follows Ray home and fills him full of lead before heading back to Edna and showing himself. His wife can only stand him for a few hours before she's grabbing his gun and spilling her guts about how she hates him, can't stand him, he disgusts her, and how she's going to shoot his ugly face off. By this point your head's got to be spinning, as Edna pulls the trigger only to find that Sam's removed the bullets. She breaks down in sobs, but Sam -- resigned to the idea that his wife is a no-good tramp -- just wants his half of the loot so he can scram and reconcile with his son. After Sam splits, the cops find Ray's dead body and arrest Edna for his murder. Meanwhile, Huntington Stewart, the flowery-speechifying P.I., has things figured out, and drops in on Sam to blackmail him out of a measly $5 grand, before turning around and putting the touch on Edna, playing the two against each other to get more dough. When he goes back to Sam to bargain for more, Edna follows him with murder in her eyes, hungry for revenge. She shoots her supposedly-already-dead hubby, but then, while struggling over the gun with Stewart, Edna takes a Jane Palmer (from Too Late For Tears)-style swan dive off the balcony. There's time for just one last snide quip before the curtain comes down, and we can finally catch our breath. The thing is way too talky, and every centimeter of the celluloid screams poverty row, but this is so noir it's almost a parody of itself. **1/2
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Shield for Murder, 1954 (Edmond O'Brien and Howard W. Koch). Edmond O'Brien is a hurtling bowling ball of desperation as "dame-hungry" cop gone sour Barney Nolan. Barney's a 16-year veteran of the force who's had it and decides it's time to get a piece of the American dream for himself, so he guns down a bookie in cold blood and pockets the 25 grand he's carrying. Barney claims he was forced to shoot because the bookie made a break for it. His friend and protege, Sgt. Mark Brewster (an able John Agar) believes him, as does his precinct captain (Emile Meyer -- terrific). Barney takes his va-va-va-voom girlfriend, Patty, to see the new model home he plans to buy -- the American dream, circa 1954 -- and buries the boodle in the backyard while Patty's ogling the radar range and furniture. Things start to unravel, however, when a witness shows up at the precinct -- a deaf mute who saw the entire shooting, except for Barney's face.
   O'Brien, who co-directed from a script cowritten by noir specialist John C. Higgins (T-Men, Raw Deal, He Walked By Night), is at his best as he grows more unhinged and desperate with each scene, barreling through the streets in doomed desperation that equals his performance in D.O.A. Film flashes with brilliance as a frantic Barney pummels two sleazy private eyes (including Claude Akins) in the middle of a restaurant while patrons scream and cringe. It's the kind of scene that, made today, would focus on the violence and gore. Here, however, the camera stays on the faces of the horrified witnesses, and it's all the more powerful for it. Later a meet-up at a public pool explodes into a violent chase and shoot-out as terrified locals in swimsuits dive underwater for cover. Rarely has anything like it been done better. Terrific performances are turned in by the entire cast, most notably Carolyn Jones as a boozy bar floozy who flirts with Barney over drinks and spaghetti, and Emile Meyer as Barney's captain. This is a breakneck, top of the heap B-movie that deserves to take its place among the very best of the rogue cop subgenre of noir. ***1/2 


Shock, 1946 (Alfred L. Werker). Completely ridiculous but still semi-entertaining thriller about a woman (Annabel Shaw) who, while waiting to be reunited with her soldier boy husband, witnesses psychologist Vincent Price murder his wife through the window of her hotel room, then goes into a catatonic state and guess who is called in to treat her? Price takes her to his sanitarium, where he and his scheming nurse-with-benefits (Lynn Bari) plot to do away with the witness. Lots of goofy histrionics, but Price keeps it mildly interesting. **1/2  


Shock Corridor, 1963. Surreal, big-mouthed film noir with a lot to say about the good ol' U.S. of A. from film's original excitable boy, Samuel Fuller. Fuller novices may find his work to be nothing more than lurid, unintentionally hilarious exploitation B-films. Under more careful scrutiny, however, Fuller's brilliant, subversive nature reveals itself, and the masterpiece emerges. This is especially true in the case of Shock Corridor, Fuller's 1963 missile launch against social injustice, racism, militarism, and sexual repression in post-war America.
   Peter Breck (most recognizable as Barbara Stanwyck's hot-tempered middle son Nick Barkley in the 1960s TV western The Big Valley) plays Johnny Barrett, an ambitious reporter chasing fame in the form of a Pulitzer Prize, who has himself committed to a mental hospital to investigate a murder. To accomplish this, Johnny pretends to be possessed by crazed incestuous urges for his sister. To play the part of sis, he's recruited his girlfriend, Cathy (Constance Towers), a voluptuous exotic dancer who's very much in love with Johnny. Cathy is the only person in on the scheme who exhibits any reluctance or common sense about Johnny's screwball plan, telling him, "You've got to be crazy! You want to be committed to an insane asylum to solve a murder!" Johnny's publisher and his psychiatrist pal -- who coaches him to appear insane -- are all gung-ho for the idea.
   To solve the murder of an inmate stabbed to death inside the asylum, Johnny must interview three witnesses: Stuart -- whose parents branded bigotry and hatred into him as a child -- was captured by the Reds in the Korean War and brainwashed into becoming a Commie, which led to his being shunned as a traitor. Stuart now imagines himself to be Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart. The second witness, Trent, was one of the first black students to integrate a segregated Southern university. Driven mad by the racism of his fellow students and white America in general, he now believes himself to be a white supremacist, a grand dragon of the KKK. He spends his time making Klan hoods out of pillowcases and then, donning the hood, railing against African-Americans (he uses the N-word, repeatedly), even attacking another black inmate. "Get him before he marries my daughter!" he screams, leading a crazed charge against the hapless victim. Boden, the third witness, was an atomic scientist driven insane by the knowledge of the devastating power of the weapons he helped invent. He has regressed to the mentality of a six-year-old child.
​   To get any information out of the three nutcases, Johnny must wait for the rare moments of lucidity when sanity returns, however briefly, to them. Which it does, allowing him to start piecing together the clues to the murder. But as Johnny closes in on the killer, insanity closes in on him, just as Cathy feared. Pretty soon, he's starting to believe that she really is his sister. 
   With its over-the-top performances and wildly stylized effects, there's no doubt that Shock Corridor ventures into the realm of pulp sensationalism. One of the most memorable scenes has Johnny wander accidentally into the women's Nymphomaniac ward. As he realizes where he is, he gasps, "Nymphos!" just before the hyper-excited females swarm him, wrestling him to the ground in a writhing sex attack. 
   But there's a lot more going on than just cheap thrills. Fuller, a former newspaperman and World War II vet who'd seen the madness of the world for himself when he helped liberate a German concentration camp, looked around the country he'd fought for and saw a nuthouse full of racists, warmongers, and citizens so repressed they'd driven themselves nearly mad trying to conform to postwar American ideals. Shock Corridor was the result, and it is a thundering pulp tour de force. ***1/2



Sign of the Ram, 1948 (John Sturges). More English manor house suspense thriller than noir, this stagy psychodrama features Susan Peters (who earned a Best Supporting Actress nom for 1942's Random Harvest) in her dramatic return to movies following a hunting accident that left her a paraplegic at age 23. Peters plays wheelchair-bound wife and step-mother Leah St. Aubyn, whose attempts to control everyone around her lead to trouble for her family and her own tragic undoing. Meant to recreate the success of Hitchcock's Rebecca, there's a lot of simmering here, but nothing ever comes to boil. **



Sirocco, 1951 (Curtis Bernhardt). Underrated fez noir that gets unfairly compared with Casablanca, much to its detriment (Bogart himself called Sirocco "a stinker"). Sure, there are superficial similarities in plot to the 1942 classic -- a seemingly amoral, staunchly neutral American ex-pat Bogie involved in a love triangle with a foreign beauty, set against a wartime backdrop in the exotic world of fezes -- but this is a much darker film, a true noir, which Casablanca isn't. Also, there are not-so-subtle differences between Casablanca's Rick Blaine and Sirocco's Harry Smith, the suave American businessman secretly running guns to the Syrian rebels to use in their fight against the French occupiers in 1925 Damascus. Harry's only out for one thing: profit. Sure, he's interested in the gorgeous Violette (Marta Toren, perfect), the unhappy mistress to Colonel Feroud (Lee J. Cobb), the idealistic French head of military intelligence. But as soon as the chips are down Harry drops Violette like a hot potato, leaving her in the lurch as he scurries off in the night to save himself. Can you imagine Rick doing that to Ilsa? For her part, Violette is no Ilsa, either. Not in the morals department, anyway. Superficial, spoiled, and seemingly indifferent to the suffering around her, she desperately wants out of war-torn Damascus and her gone-sour relationship with Feroud, and to return to her easy life of shopping and fancy food in Cairo. There's great supporting work from Zero Mostel (soon-to-be-blacklisted), Gerald Mohr, and Nick Dennis, and the art direction (Robert Peterson) and cinematography (Burnett Guffey) combine to make exotic, black and white perfection, turning the Columbia backlot into a byzantine maze of Damascus alleys and catacombs. Also shining is the work of scriptwriter A.I. Bezzerides, the noir hall of famer who also penned the classics Kiss Me Deadly, They Drive By Night, Desert Fury, On Dangerous Ground, and Thieves' Highway. Credit must also go to stars Bogart and Toren for sacrificing glamour for the sake of the story. Bogie was willing to play the mostly craven anti-hero Smith, while Toren, in one remarkable scene, greets Bogie at her door clad only in a robe and towel, with her hair all a mess. In another scene, she tells Bogie, "You're so ugly. Yes you are. How can a man so ugly be so handsome?" Has any other line so perfectly captured the paradoxical mystery of Bogie's charm? Sure, it's not Casablanca (what is?), but it's still entertaining and underappreciated stuff. *** 
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Someone to Watch Over Me, 1987.  Ridley Scott's high-gloss romantic thriller about a working class married detective and the beautiful high society dame who fall for each other is great to look at, but someone should have been watching over the scriptwriters. If they had, maybe they'd have pointed out that everyone in this thing is a walking cliche. ** 
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Somewhere in the Night, 1946 (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)  Dark, moody noir about a returning G.I. (John Hodiak) who, after being blown up on Okinawa, suffers from acute amnesia to the point of not knowing who he is. Upon returning to Los Angeles, he discovers he's caught up in an old murder case and $2 million in missing Nazi loot. Has the noir atmospherics, but never really rises above middling. **1/2


Spin a Dark Web (Soho Incident), 1956 (Vernon Sewell). Low budget but mildly compelling British noir stars Lee Patterson as Jim Bankley, a Canadian war vet/boxer living in London who gets tempted by alluring femme fatale Bella Francesi (former Howard Hughes discoveree Faith Domergue). Bella, pure poison under her sultry veneer, is the controlling sister of a local Sicilian mob boss. She lures Jim away from good girl Betty Walker (Rona Anderson), and into the family crime gang, down a path that leads to violence and murder. Fast-moving film has some solid performances and interesting location shooting in Soho. **1/2
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Split Second, 1953. Dick Powell, in his directorial debut, gives us a tense noir about a desperate killer on the run in the Nevada desert. Sam Hurley (Stephan McNally) busts out of the big house with his buddy, Bart (Paul Kelly), who gets gutshot during the escape. The two meet up with a mute accomplice, "Dummy," take several hostages, and hole up in an abandoned mining town while they wait for a doctor to arrive and patch Bart up. The catch: the ghost town is ground zero for an A-bomb test, scheduled to go off in a few hours! The script nearly careens into melodrama, with various hostages falling in love, divorcing, or shamelessly throwing themselves at Hurley in a desperate attempt to save themselves, but Powell keeps things humming along as the clock ticks down to a nice, atomic twist at the end, with a mushroom cloud on top. ***


Spring Breakers, 2012. Glitzy, fizzy, flashy, trashy, fluorescent neon noir from writer-director Harmony Korine. Four vacuous college friends go wild, steal a car and rob a chicken restaurant to get enough money to go to Florida for spring break, go even wilder, meet a lowlife gangster rapper and become hard-core gangsters for a week. Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine play indistinguishable thrill-seekers Candy, Brit, and Cotty, and Selena Gomez plays their Christian goody-two-shoes friend, Faith, who let loose at spring break. After they get arrested for partying too hardy and are bailed out by silver-toothed scuzzball Alien (James Franco, who sinks his metal teeth into the role), Faith sees where this is all headed and wisely gets out while the gettin' is good. The other three stay with Alien, robbing other spring breakers and doing various clueless, thoughtless, trashy, criminal activities like guzzling booze out of garden hoses, snorting cocaine, playing with guns, and having sex, until Cotty gets shot in the arm, which ruins all the pretty, dopey fun and she follows Faith's footsteps by hopping a bus home, leaving Candy and Brit to seek revenge against Alien's ex-bestie-turned-nemesis, the drug dealer Big Arch (Gucci Mane). After more drunken, drug-fueled, soft-core shenanigans in Alien's pool, the three storm Big Arch's drug palace in a completely unbelievable, dreamlike shootout that leaves pretty much everyone but Candy and Brit dead. Yup, two pretty little blonde coeds armed with automatic weapons they've just learned how to use take on a small army of hardcore gangstas and blow them all away in neon fluorescent slow-motion, and get away without a scratch on them. The thing is either a beautifully shot, melancholic reflection on modern American superficiality, or an exploitative, repulsive attempt to shock, covered in a glossy, writhing mass of naked boobies sprung in a series of colorful music video montages and set to a glitzy soundtrack, depending on your perspective. It's probably a little of both, or, for my money, a little of the former and a whole lot of the latter. ** 


Still of the Night, 1982. Cliche-ridden Hitchcockian psychological thriller about a New York shrink (Roy Scheider) who becomes obsessed with the beautiful young woman (Meryl Streep) who may be the psycho killer who murdered one of his patients (cue the jarring stabbing music from the shower scene in Psycho). This is the kind of film where the protagonist is alone in a spooky basement when he hears strange noises, goes to investigate, the eerie music ramping up as he walks through the dark shadows, until ... meow! It's that darn cat again! You know, the one from about a thousand other thrillers. It's also the kind of film where the psychiatrist has to unlock a spooky dream to solve the case. Director Robert Benton's script, which he co-wrote with David Newman, is filled with references to Hitchcock films, all of which are better than this. Not noir, just another bad Hitchcock clone. ** 


Storm Fear, 1955. Intense melodrama about a gang of bank robbers on the lam, led by Charlie (Cornel Wilde, who also directs), who hide out at the remote New England farm of his embittered older brother, Fred (Dan Duryea, great as always). The arrival of Charlie and his gang causes an upheaval in the already unhappy marriage between Fred and his beautiful blonde wife, Elizabeth (Jean Wallace). Fred, a sickly, unsuccessful writer, reluctantly agrees to harbor the fugitive and his gang members -- the brutal Benjie (Steven Hill) and their moll, Edna (Lee Grant) -- but tensions boil over as we learn that Charlie and Elizabeth were once an item and that Fred and Liz's 12-year-old son, David, is really Charlie's. Complicating matters is their hired man, Hank (Dennis Weaver), who is in love with Elizabeth. Wilde makes his directorial debut from a script by Horton Foote. Bleak, but powerful. **1/2 


Storm Warning, 1951. When producer Jerry Wald set out to make Storm Warning for Warner Brothers, he wanted to make a message picture about the evils of the KKK. He hired Richard Brooks, who'd written the source novel for the 1947 noir Crossfire -- which deals with the theme of anti-Semitism -- to cowrite the script. But somewhere between these grand ambitions and director Stuart Heisler's first call of "Action!", the studio heads went lily-livered and neutered the script, omitting any mention of the Klan's racism or religious bigotry, totally defanging the film. Instead of the Klan terrorizing black people, Jews or Catholics, they're pictured as a bunch of garden-variety goons, an evil lodge whose corrupt boss is mismanaging the members' dues. However, despite this spineless sabotage of what could have been a great and important picture, there's still a lot to like about Storm Warning. First and foremost is the work of cinematographer Carl Guthrie, who turns the fictional southern town of Rock Point into a chiaruscuro'd noir nightscape, with its small-town diners, bus depots, and bowling alleys. Simply put, the look of this film is pure noir, and it's spectacular. Heisler's direction is top notch as well, as is the cast, starting with Ginger Rogers. Rogers is terrific as Marsha Mitchell, a New York model on her way (by bus!) to a job, stopping over in this backwards burg to visit her sister, Lucy, played by Doris Day. These two actresses  could have passed as sisters anytime. It's brilliant casting, and Day is fantastic in her role, too. Lucy's recently married to Hank Rice, a blue-collar goober who could be Stanley Kowalski's dumber cousin. There's even a drunken Stanley -- I mean Hank -- trying to rape his sister in law!
   Marsha's no sooner stepped off the bus in this klanhole before she walks right past a group of white-robed peckerwoods -- including Hank -- murdering an "outsider" -- a nosy reporter who'd been investigating the Klan's activities in town. Enter crusading county prosecutor Burt Rainey, played by Ronald Reagan with his usual big-pantsed All-American uprightness. Rainey wants Marsha to testify at the inquest, but the local grand wizard makes it clear that, if she does, it will be her pregnant sister's hubby who'll take the fall. There are some shocks at the climactic Klan meeting, with Ginger getting bullwhipped beneath a burning cross, and -- SPOILER ALERT! -- Doris Day getting plugged in the belly by her dumb-as-rocks hubby, who'd been aiming at Ginger. But all of this goes down like watered-down mush, or the bite of a toothless hound. If only Warner's had the guts to leave in the racist nature of the Klan, and to put some hard edges into the characters, this could have been a contender. Instead, you'll just have to be satisfied with what it is: a very well made, engrossing, and completely gutless thriller. **1/2 


Stormy Monday, 1988. A paper-thin plot sinks this curious, sometimes atmospheric, highly stylized homage to rain-washed noir classics. Melanie Griffith, Sean Bean, Sting, and Tommy Lee Jones head the cast in Mike Figgis' directorial debut. Unfortunately, for the director, Mike Figgis the screenwriter let him down. **


The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, 1945. Robert Siodmak's psychological noir about the hypocrisy of small-town America is fine until the ridiculous ending, forced on the studio by censors. George Sanders plays Harry Melville Quincey, last remaining male heir of a small New Hampshire town's most famous citizen, Civil War general Melville Quincey. Unfortunately, the family lost its fortune in the Great Depression. Harry -- a henpecked middle-aged bachelor -- works as a designer at the town's fabric mill and lives in the old family mansion with his two sisters, the hard-working widow Hester (Moyna McGill) and younger sister Lettie (Geraldine Fitzgerald), a lazy hypochondriac who clearly has more than filial feelings for Harry. Into this twisted incestuous drama steps Miss Deborah Brown (Ella Raines), an attractive bachelorette and fashion maven from the company's New York City office, who's on a working visit at the mill. She and Harry -- who, until now, had been content in his prison-like life -- fall in love and plan to marry. Only Lettie's having none of it, and schemes to break the pair up. This leads to a murder plot, which "works" in a tragic, roundabout way, leading to some sweet revenge for Harry. But then it's all undone by that daffy ending, which caused producer Joan Harrison to walk away from her Universal Pictures contract when the studio caved to the censors and added the disastrous dream-sequence finale they demanded. Some critics overlook the film's ridiculous conclusion, but the problem with that is, it's part of the movie. And it's awful. **


Strange Bargain, 1949. Cheapo RKO whodunnit has an intriguing premise that gets undercut by a ho-hum "twist" and pat ending. Jeffrey Lynn plays Sam Wilson, an upright Mr. Everyman assistant bookkeeper struggling to provide for his family -- wife Georgia (Martha Scott) and two Leave It to Beaver-ish kids. Sam's boss, Malcolm Jarvis (Richard Gaines), is a bigshot who's secretly broke. Desperate to insure his wife and son continue to live a life of luxury, he has a plan to kill himself, but he needs help to cover up the suicide so the insurance company will pay out, so he asks trusty Sam to help. Sam refuses, but gets drawn into Jarvis' goofy plot anyway. But before Jarvis can put a bullet in his bean, it looks like someone did the deed for him. That's right: it's murder, and not only that, but hotshot celebrity detective Richard Webb's on the case, and he always gets his man! Webb is played by Harry Morgan. When Harry Morgan's the most exciting thing about your movie, you haven't exactly got a thrill-ride on your hands. The B-picture is strictly yesterday's fishsticks without the tartar sauce, and before you know it dinner's over and there's no dessert, so you go to bed hungry with a queasy feeling in your gut, wondering "what the hell happened to my tartar sauce???"  **



The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946. Directed by Lewis Milestone. Haunting, dark melodrama spans decades telling the story of three children whose lives are inextricably bound by a murder. Young orphan Martha Ivers -- played as a grownup by Barbara Stanwyck -- is being raised by her rich, cruel aunt (the ever-creepy Judith Anderson) in a giant, shadowy mansion. 13-year-old Martha keeps trying to run away with ne'er-do-well scamp Sam Masterson (played as an adult by Van Heflin), but is constantly thwarted by the long reach of her aunt, who owns enough of the Pennsylvania factory town of Iverstown to control the police. One stormy night, Martha is returned home by the cops after another foiled escape attempt, but aunty goes too far when she starts whaling on Martha's kitty with her cane. Aunty winds up dead, the murder witnessed by Walter O'Neil, the wimpy son of Martha's tutor, who -- also in the mansion that night -- seizes upon this fact to secure half of Martha's inherited fortune for his son by blackmailing the girl. Years later, when Walter (played as an adult by Kirk Douglas, in his first film role) is the D.A. and married to Martha in a twisted, loveless marriage, the two frame an innocent shlub for the crime, and the shlub is hanged. Meanwhile, Sam -- who had vanished that night after witnessing the crime (Martha and Walter assume)-- drifts back into town. He's a combat veteran and somewhat mysterious gambler now, just passing through, but his car gets banged up and he's stuck in Iverstown until it gets fixed. While waiting, he meets fetching jailbird Toni Marachek (played fetchingly by Lizabeth Scott), who has troubles of her own. Walter assumes Sam is there to blackmail them over the murder, but really, all Sam wants to do is get his car back and head west with the sultry Toni. But Martha, still obsessing over Sam, has other ideas. In the film's climax, Martha pleads with Sam to murder Walter and take his place beside the throne. All three leads are terrific, but it is Stanwyck who again brings the chills as a cold-blooded murderess. ***1/2 


Strangers in the Night, 1944. Anthony Mann's first "noir" (it was his fifth film as a director) is more low budget psychological mystery/melodrama than noir, with one of the goofiest endings you'll ever see. The largely forgotten William Terry -- who appears to have attended the Sonny Tufts Acting School -- plays big lug Marine Sgt. Johnny Meadows, who's wounded in the South Pacific. While recuperating, he reads a book donated to the Red Cross by Rosemary Blake, who wrote her name and address in the book. Johnny writes to her, and the two form an attachment via the postal service. As soon as he's healed up, Johnny heads for the California coastal town where Rosemary lives for some real-life romancin'. On the train, he meets comely Leslie Ross (Virginia Grey), who, brace yourselves, is a doctor! Yes, a FEMALE doctor! Oh, the shock! As Leslie explains, "most people feel that female doctors should be seen only in cages." Ah, to be a white man in 1940's America! Somehow, despite Leslie's fanatical feminism, the two have an immediate connection. But, in a bit of unintentionally hilarious timing, just as Johnny's about to tell her about Rosemary, the train derails, allowing for some filler material of the attractive doctor heroically tending to the victims of the train crash, which conveniently pads the film's 56-minute runtime. Johnny eventually tells the lady doc about his penpal paramour, then hightails it up to the clifftop mansion where Rosemary "lives" with her mother, Hilda (Austrain actress Helene Thimig), and Hilda's companion/servant, Ivy (Edith Barrett). But the only sign of Rosemary is her giant portrait hanging in the drawing room, and her pristine bedroom, tricked out with all the finest fripperies, furniture, and a closetful of swell dresses. Johnny hangs out at the mansion for a couple of days, waiting for Rosemary to show up, but she never does. It becomes quickly apparent that Hilda is out there where the busses don't run. Virtually everyone will assume that Rosemary is long dead, but the truth is even wackier. SPOILER ALERT: Rosemary doesn't exist! She's a figment of her mother's imagination. See, Hilda always wanted a daughter, but she couldn't have kids, so she made one up, and now, her entire life revolves around her imaginary daughter. She even paid an artist 1,000 beans to paint Rosemary's portrait. Some mysterious (and sometimes laughable) hijinks ensue, until that wacky ending, when Hilda, having been caught after poisoning Ivy and trying to murder Johnny and the Lady Doctor, is crushed to death by her imaginary daughter's portrait, which inexplicably falls off the wall and somehow kills her dead. The End. **   
 

Sunset Boulevard, 1950. If anyone tries to tell you that Billy Wilder's masterpiece isn't noir, point out the fact that the story is told in flashback by a guy who -- at the beginning of the film -- is found floating face down in the fancy Hollywood swimming pool he always wanted, and sold his soul to get. Top-notch writing and Billy Wilder's uncanny direction, a powerhouse performance for the ages by Gloria Swanson, plus great work from the rest of the cast, led by William Holden, who plays Joe Gillis, a down-on-his-luck Hollywood screenwriter. Gillis, fleeing two repo men who are after his car, turns into the driveway of what he thinks is an old abandoned Hollywood mansion. Only it's not abandoned. It's the home of long-forgotten star Norma Desmond, played to the hilt by Swanson as a grotesque, predatory silent movie queen, and her creepy butler, Max (Erich von Stroheim). Norma convinces Gillis to move into an apartment over the garage and help her work on her screenplay -- an epic about Salome for which she plans to play the lead in her glorious comeback to the screen. She's deluding herself, of course, only no one has the heart to tell her. Before long, Gillis has moved into the mansion and become the slightly insane Desmond's kept lover. Enter the young, innocent, beautiful and full of life writer Betty Schaefer (wholesome Nancy Olson) -- who happens to be engaged to Joe's pal Artie (Jack Webb) -- and Joe begins to realize what he's given up. A romance blossoms, but Norma, going further and further off the deep end, tightens her web around the doomed Joe. One of the all-time great American films. *****


Suspense, 1946. Monogram Pictures' rare "million dollar release" is a one-of-a-kind ice skating noir starring Barry Sullivan and skating champion Belita. Made after Double Indemnity set Hollywood on its ear and all the studios were desperate for James M. Cain-style noirs, this would be pretty run of the mill stuff if not for the skating numbers, which give the film its unique quality. Albert Dekker, Bonita Granville, and Eugene Pallette (in his last film role) do fine supporting work. Frank Tuttle -- who also helmed This Gun For Hire -- directs from the very Gilda-light Philip Yordan script. **1/2   


Sweet Smell of Success, 1957. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. There are no guns, bullets, or blood in Sweet Smell of Success; no shootouts and no dead bodies. But no film is more dark or cruel or filled with the hateful, spiteful, vicious ways in which people treat each other. Tony Curtis gave his best performance as Sidney Falco, a sleazy PR man who will do anything to get publicity for his clients, which means currying favor with powerful, amoral, Walter Winchell-like columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster -- never better). Hunsecker has 60 million readers and an obsession with his little sister, Suzy (Susan Harrison). When Suzy falls for jazz guitarist Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), Hunsecker will do anything to squash the affair, including smearing Dallas. To that end, he uses the fawning Falco. The screenplay by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehmann crackles with razor-sharp dialog, and James Wong Howe's black and white photography is dazzling. Add the jazzy score by Elmer Bernstein, which hits all the right notes, and you have one of Hollywood's most intelligent masterpieces. ****1/2


T-Men, 1947. Semidocumentary Anthony Mann procedural, starring noir hall-of-famers Dennis O'Keefe and Charles McGraw, about treasury agents going undercover to crack a counterfeit ring. Shot on location in Detroit and Los Angeles by famed noir cinematographer John Alton, whose brilliant camerawork gives this film a gritty, realistic feel. Charles McGraw wants to know, “Are you getting the whim-whams?” ***1/2


Take Aim At the Police Van, 1960. Kinky, convoluted Nikkatsu action film from director Seijun Suzuki, before he fully blossomed into the "abstract" artist he later became with movies like Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. This one is a dizzy thrill-ride about a disgraced prison guard, suspended -- for some reason -- after killers ambush the police van he's escorting, killing two prisoners, so he decides to investigate the case himself. Suzuki's kinetic comic book style with constant pop culture nods might remind some of Don Siegel, or an earlier, less showy version (at least here) of Quentin Tarantino. The corpses pile up in manic pulp-action scenes, as victims are tossed off cliffs, run over by cars and trains, and even one who's shot through the boob by an arrow. By the end, you're not sure what happened or why, but at least you had fun getting there. **1/2


The Tattooed Stranger, 1950. Lifeless RKO procedural cheapie meant to capitalize on the success of The Naked City, but other than a few wisecracks by Walter Kinsella as the wizened detective mentoring "college boy" John Miles, there isn't much to elevate this from the mundane, other than the location shots of New York City. Novice director Edward Montagne doesn't have a clue how to direct the mostly wooden cast, and lead John Miles -- who quit the business after this film -- goes through the whole thing with a goofy smirk, like he knows something no one else does. Whatever it was, it was most likely more interesting than this. **


Tension, 1949. Hard-boiled police lieutenant Collier Bonnabel (Barry Sullivan, having way too much fun) of the Homicide squad explains that he only knows one way to solve a case: by applying pressure to all the suspects until one of them snaps under the ... TENSION! To illustrate, he cites a murder case involving bespectacled milquetoast Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart), driven daffy by his floozy wife Claire (Audrey Totter, memorable as one of the worst wives to ever sashay across the screen). The story is told in flashback. Quimby -- "four-eyed" night manager of a drugstore in Culver City -- works non-stop to keep his two-timing wife happy. When Claire leaves Quimby for her latest conquest, rich beach bum Barney Deager, Quimby tries to get her back but is beaten up and humiliated by hairy he-man Deager, so he decides to get even by killing him. Quimby rents an apartment under a fake identity to carry out his goofy plan, but complications ensue when he meets his fetching new neighbor, Mary (Cyd Charisse), while using his new identity. Throw in an amusing supporting performance by hefty noir stalwart William Conrad as Bonnabel's sidekick, and a jazzy score cheesily punched up to accentuate the sleaze whenever Totter enters the frame, and you have all the ingredients for ... tension! While much of this never rises to the level of believable, it's still a good example of noirish post-war disillusionment. And if that's too faancy for you, ya four-eyed punk, then settle for just this: it's a lot of cheeseball laughs. ***1/2


Terror Street (36 Hours), 1953. Lippert Studios production stars the always watchable Dan Duryea as Bill Rogers, a U.S. Air Force pilot framed for murdering his wife. Rogers is on a 36-hour leave, returning to post-war England from the states -- where he's been on assignment -- to find out why he hasn't heard from his English wife. When he sees her at her apartment, he's knocked out, and awakens to find she's been shot with his gun. So, he must find the real killer before the coppers find him, natch. Duryea is great, as always, but this time in one of his rare leading roles, and even more rare, a sympathetic one to boot. The story -- reminiscent of The Blue Dahlia, among others -- is a bit garden variety on the surface but contains nuances that, along with the cast (especially Duryea) lift this a shade above the middling crowd. Released as 36 Hours in the U.K. **1/2


They Live By Night, 1948. Nicholas Ray burst onto the scene with a bang with this, his debut feature about two lovers on the run. Farley Granger is Bowie, a young kid wrongly convicted of murder who escapes from prison with a pair of older, hardened convicts, Chicamaw (Howard Da Silva) and T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen). Bowie, injured in a car wreck, is nursed to health by Keechie (Cathy O'Donnell), the sensitive, scruffy-at-first, then luminous daughter of the owner of a gas station. The two fall in love, marry, and plan to live an honest life. But Chicamaw and T-Dub return, demanding that Bowie go with them on one last job -- a bank robbery, which goes horribly wrong. A melancholic beauty, this is one of the most poignant, touching, and unforgettable noirs ever made. ****


They Won't Believe Me, 1947. Directed by Irving Pichel. Terrific noir about a feckless philanderer (Robert Young) with a rich wife (Rita Johnson) and having affairs with first one woman (Jane Greer), then another (Susan Hayward), with tragic consequences. Story has often been compared to James M. Cain's novels, with good reason, only in this one it's the male in the femme fatale role. Young, particularly, does extremely well, cast against type as a gutless, cheating louse who attempts to change his ways, but it's too late. Fate, he intones, has dealt him one from the bottom of the deck. Some great twists -- including a knockout final scene -- make this a top notch, and underrated, noir. ***1/2


Thieves' Highway, 1949. Jules Dassin's indictment of postwar American capitalism stars Richard Conte as returning war veteran Nico "Nick" Garcos, who comes home to find that his father, a fruit trucker, was cheated out of his money and crippled by unscrupulous San Francisco produce king Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb). Nick vows revenge, and goes into business with pal Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell), who bought his father's truck, and the two drive a truckload of golden delicious apples to San Francisco, where he runs into guess who. The femme fatale is Rica, played by Valentine Cortese, who tries to keep Nick occupied while Cobb's goons unload his apples, planning to cheat Nick too. A.I. Bezzerides (Kiss Me Deadly) wrote the novel and the screenplay, and Daryl Zanuck and the Fox machine tried to ruin it all with a cheap, cop-out ending that doesn't work, but until then this a tough, uncompromising noir. ****


The Third Man, 1949. Carol Reed's atmospheric thriller of conscience and betrayal features the director's entire bag of Wellesian cinematic tricks, Robert Krasker's gorgeous black-and-white photography of post-war Vienna, and Anton Karas's unforgettable zither music. Joseph Cotten stars as American pulp western writer Holly Martins, who's come to Vienna seeking his childhood friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who's offered him a job, only to learn that Lime was (supposedly) killed just days earlier by a speeding truck while crossing the street. Martins sticks around, growing more and more suspicious about his friend's death, and falling for Lime's beautiful, fatalistic actress girlfriend, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli). The chase through the sewers of Vienna is one of noir's most memorable sequences. ****


This Gun For Hire, 1942. Based on the 1936 novel by Graham Greene, this is a bit silly but wildly entertaining noir, with loads of chemistry between Alan Ladd’s hit man and Veronica Lake. Ladd plays Philip Raven, a near cypher, who appears to have no life other than his job, which is to assassinate people. When Raven is double-crossed by his latest employer, Willard Gates (Laird Cregar), he sets out to get revenge, meeting the sweetly innocent Ellen Graham (Lake) along the way. The film's climax during a gas attack drill is brilliantly and uniquely staged. This is the film that made Ladd (who received fourth billing) a star. ***1/2


This Side of the Law, 1950. Kent Smith, noir's blandest leading man and perennially unlucky schlub (he's the guy who managed to get sentenced to death for his own murder in Nora Prentiss) has outdone himself this time. As this B-movie from Warner's opens, Smith finds himself trapped at the bottom of an old, abandoned cistern on a mysterious, clifftop estate, having been "measured for a patsy. And it fit, but good!" Smith then takes us back to the beginning, employing noir's old reliable plot device -- the flashback. Smith, playing David Cummins, a vagrant on the drift in some nameless town, shuffles into a plot involving a missing millionaire, adultery, family intrigue, and murder. As his luck would have it, Cummins is the spitting image of rich cad Malcolm Taylor, owner of that mysterious estate, who went missing seven years ago and is about to be declared legally croaked. But Taylor's lawyer, Philip Cagle (Robert Douglas), spots the bum in court, where he's been sentenced to 30 days for vagrancy, and makes him a tasty noirish offer: pass himself off as the missing millionaire to Taylor's lovely wife (Viveca Lindfors), his sniveling, weakling brother and his scheming, vampy wife (Janis Paige) in return for a cool $5,000. Of course, it all blows up in the poor sucker's face, because it's Kent Smith, and it's noir.
​   The second act is astoundingly dull, the plot has more holes than a hobo's socks, and you'll probably figure out the villain about two minutes in, but there's some joy to be had in finding out how the poor sap ends up at the bottom of a cistern (and how -- or if -- he's going to get out). There's also Lindfors, who has very little to do, but she looks gorgeous not doing it. There are worse ways to spend 74 minutes. **1/2


This Woman Is Dangerous, 1952. Minor potboiler featuring Joan Crawford as a gun moll who's going blind and falls for her optometrist, putting him in her pistol-packin' paramour's crosshairs. Joan does her hard girl with a heart of gold schtick, David Brian does his big ape hothead schtick, Dennis Morgan does his his nice, wholesome guy schtick, and the whole thing stinks like yesterday's cornpone. **


The Threat, 1949. Charles McGraw snarls his way through this dated revenge tale as Red Kluger, escaped killer out for revenge. Kluger busts out of Folsom, and, along with a couple of toadies, proceeds -- with no trouble at all, despite his having threatened revenge at his trial -- to kidnap the D.A. and detective who put him away. The homicidal Kluger also puts the snatch on Carol (Virginia Grey), girlfriend to his partner, Tony. Kluger suspects it was Carol whose loose lips with the cops led to his arrest. Also along for the ride is innocent truck driver Joe Turner, hijacked with his moving van and driven -- with the entire gang and kidnap victims -- to a desert hideout where they await the arrival of the erstwhile Tony, who's to meet the gang with a small plane and fly them to safety. For some reason, Kluger's waiting for Tony's arrival to exact his revenge on his kidnap victims. This is the kind of stuff that probably felt scary in 1949 ("Escaped Murderer on the Loose!"), what with the sweaty, menacing McGraw slapping or shooting everyone who gets in his way, but now just seems fairly lame and nonsensical. Of particular lameness are the cops in general, and lunkheaded Police Inspector "Murph" Murphy (Robert Shayne) in particular. How Murph ever rose to such heights in the police force is beyond logic, as he misreads or ignores obvious clues, and laughs off the fact that his detective and pal has gone missing right after Kluger's breakout. But Murph's not the only dumb cop in The Threat, which is filled with incompetent law enforcement, such as the officers at a roadblock who let the moving truck carrying Kluger, his gang and kidnap victims, breeze on through without even bothering to check the back of the truck! And this despite one of the coppers grumbling about how he's seen one of the gangsters' unshaven mugs before "somewhere." That's some good police work there, Lou! Yes, McGraw is always worth watching, but this isn't one of his, or director Felix Feist's better vehicles. **



Thunder Road, 1958. Robert Mitchum is the pinnacle of cool in this hard-charging hillbilly noir about a Korean war vet running moonshine through the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee in his souped-up hot rod. Mitchum produced, co-wrote the screenplay, sings the title theme and stars as Lucas Doolin, who's keeping the family moonshine business going while dodging the feds ("revenooers") and outside gangsters, plus trying to keep little brother Robin (Mitchum's son, James!) from following in his footsteps and becoming a moonshine runner. All this while juggling two women, including a dreamy-voiced nightclub singer played by Keely Smith. Spectacular driving stunts roar throughout this film, which is more entertaining than any B-movie has a right to be. ***1/2 
 


Tomorrow Is Another Day, 1951. Bill Clark (Steve Cochran) has spent 18 years behind bars. Still a young man upon his release, he's a newborn in a strange, fast, unforgiving world. He heads to New York for a fresh start, and immediately falls for dime-a-dance girl Catherine (Ruth Roman). But their budding romance is interrupted when Catherine's ex-boyfriend, a cop, shows up and is shot and killed during an altercation. The two have no alternative but to take it on the lam, so they head west, eventually falling in with a group of "Grapes of Wrath" farmers, and they begin a new life. Only this is noir, so the past is bound to catch up with them. A hard-as-nails road picture with what feels like a tacked on soft ending. Felix Feist directs and co-wrote the script, which was originally planned for John Garfield, but he died before he could make the film. ***1/2


Tony Rome, 1967. As this dated '60s neo-noir opens, Nancy Sinatra's theme song serves as a warning: "Mothers lock your daughters in, it's too late to talk to them, 'cause Tony Rome is out and about! And Tony Rome will get 'em if you don't watch out!" This plays over the opening credits while Nancy's father, Frank, decked out in yellow turtleneck and captain's hat, swigs a beer on board his boat. As the song ends, the camera does a quick zoom into a young, bikini-clad woman's bottom, which the 51-year-old Frank is ogling from his convertible. You get the idea. Tony Rome is one swingin' middle-aged dude, baby!
   Ol' Blue Eyes plays the titular character, a swinging private dick who lives on a boat in Miami. You can tell he owns a boat because he wears his captain's hat pretty much everywhere he goes, on land or sea. At least when he's not in his porkpie. Rome gets sucked into a case involving the wayward daughter of a rich construction bigwig (Simon Oakland). The usual hard-fisted action ensues, as Tony Rome gets punched, shot at, grilled by the cops, chloroformed, and punched some more. The usual private eye stuff. He also canoodles with a sexy, rich, married redhead played by Jill St. John, who was only 27 at the time, which could be construed as just a tiny bit creepy. There are the usual Rat Packers in minor roles, including comedian Shecky Greene and boxer Rocky Graziano, and Sinatra is fine in the role, which he reprised in Lady in Cement a year later. **1/2    

 
Too Late, 2015. Stylized, overly affected, gimmicky piece of new Hollywood pulp that tries very hard to pay homage to classic noir yet somehow still manages to pack its own punch, even if it's of the sucker variety. John Hawkes is magnetic as an L.A. private eye entangled in a mystery involving a young woman from his even more mysterious past. Writer-Director Dennis Hauck shot his debut feature in five 22-minute single shots with no cuts or edits, which are presented out of chronological order. An excellent supporting cast includes Robert Forster, Crystal Reed, Joanna Cassidy, and Dichen Lachman. Not particularly memorable, but manages to hold your attention for awhile. **1/2    


Too Late For Tears, 1949. Lizabeth Scott plays a social climbing wife who will stop at nothing to rise above her middle-class existence. Jane Palmer (Scott) and her honest hubby, Alan (Arthur Kennedy), are in their convertible, on their way to a party in the Hollywood Hills one night when someone in a passing car tosses a suitcase full of cash into their back seat. Another convertible -- the one the cash was meant for -- comes speeding up behind them, chasing them down out of the hills. The couple lose their follower (they think) and head home to their apartment, where they count the money. Alan wants to turn it in to the cops, but Jane -- with dollar signs flashing in her eyes -- talks him out of it, for now. Alan puts the money in a locker at Union Station. A couple of days later, while Alan's at work, Danny (the always fun-to-watch Dan Duryea) shows up, claiming to be a detective, and quickly learns Jane's been spending the money. Jane will do anything to keep the windfall, including murder and adultery, and it isn't long before the criminal -- played beautifully by Duryea -- realizes his sexy victim-turned-accomplice has more of a stomach for evil than he does. This noir, which relates to the ambitions the middle class had during the post-war years, features one of noir's more despicable femme fatales, and Lizabeth Scott delivers a performance dripping with silky villainy. One of the best of all noir endings. ***1/2


Touch of Evil, 1958. Orson Welles wrote, directed, and co-stars in this typically stylish story of corruption and morally-compromised obsession. The only nitpick? Charlton Heston playing a Mexican -- Miguel "Mike" Vargas, a drug enforcement official in the Mexican government. Vargas, along with his wife (Janet Leigh) gets drawn into a murder investigation in a town on the Mexican-American border, a chaotic town run by the very corrupt and very large police captain Hank Quinlan (Welles). A fantastic supporting cast, led by Joseph Calleia as Quinlan's fawning deputy who develops a conscience, and Marlene Dietrich as a world-weary gypsy brothel owner, make this film one of the great noirs. Welles bravura mise en scene, along with Russel Metty's brilliant black-and-white lighting/camerawork, make this a standout. Of particular note is the famous (and deservedly so) long opening tracking shot that opens the film. ****


Trance, 2013. Kinetic, high-gloss fever dream from director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Layer Cake), that is fabulous to look at, but burrows so far down a twisty, labyrinthine rabbit-hole of a mind-hump that you can't tell what's real and what isn't. Still, it's a bitt of fun to try to follow. James McAvoy plays Simon, an art house auctioneer who sells priceless works of art, like Goya's Witches in the Air, which is stolen by a gang using Simon as the inside man. but after Franck, the gang's leader (Vincent Cassel), hits him in the head, Simon wakes up with a Memento-esque case of amnesia: he can't remember where he stashed the painting, so Franck sends him to a hypnotherapist named Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) to Freud it out of his subconscious. Many slick twists ensue -- some of them almost laughably contrived, and many of them featuring gratuitous doses of nudity, sex, gore, and violence. It's no Memento, but it is a wild, at times hypnotic rollercoaster of a neon noir. **1/2 


Trouble in Mind, 1985. If you poured Casablanca and The Rocky Horror Picture Show into a coffee pot and brewed it, then dumped in half a bowl of Alan Rudolph's Choose Me, you'd have Trouble in Mind, Rudolph's campy, atmospheric, highly stylized valentine to film noir. Kris Kristofferson plays Hawk, an ex-cop released from prison after serving a stretch for shooting an evil gangster between the eyes in order to protect his lover, Wanda (Genevieve Bujold in an odd pixie haircut), who now runs the type of coffee shop Bogie would look comfortable in. Only Trouble in Mind is set sometime in the not-too-distant future. At least I think it is. You see, in Rain City (played convincingly by Seattle), there are troops with machine guns on every street corner, breaking up protests and Communist gatherings. Hawk, dressed in overcoat and fedora, lands back at Wanda's looking to rekindle their romance, but Wanda turns him down. She does give Hawk a room above the coffee shop, however, where he can sit and brood. That is, until a camper pulls into Wanda's parking lot below his window. The camper's carrying Coop (Keith Carradine), a country boy looking to make some fast money in the big city, his lovely young gal, Georgia (Lori Singer), and their infant, Spike. Quicker than you can say trouble, Coop is falling in with the local criminal element, and Hawk is falling for Georgia. As Coop gets in deeper, his look quickly changes from Marlboro Man to Ziggy Stardust, complete with makeup, eye shadow, a wardrobe straight out of Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat, and a goofy pompadour that's so over-the-top you begin to wonder if the projectionist grabbed the wrong film can in the reel switch. Then Divine shows up -- sans drag -- as Hilly Blue, Rain City's top gangster, and proves that he can't act without a dress either. There's a wild, slapstick shootout at Hilly's mansion that would have been right at home in Tokyo Drifter -- Seijun Suzuki's eye-popping pop-art yakuza noir -- and an ending that would make Rick Blaine proud. Throw in a gorgeous, bluesy score by Mark Isham, with Marianne Faithful's equally gorgeous title and ending tracks, and you have a murky stew that slops all over the place and makes a mess, but is very hard not to like. ***


True Romance, 1993. Tony Scott (Top Gun, Days of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout) directs screenwriter Quentin Tarantino's ultra-violent, adolescent boy's romance/thriller/shoot-em-up fantasy told as whimsicle fairy tale about a Detroit comic book store clerk and his prostitute-turned-wife's quest to sell a suitcase full of accidentally stolen cocaine, which they use to fuel their dreams of living on a tropical beach somewhere.
   A bunch of A-list actors give it their all (with pages full of the by now all too familiar Tarantino street jive), but the film -- fun at first -- devolves into a cartoonish bloodbath by the end. Christian Slater plays the kung fu movie-loving, comic book-reading hero, Clarence Worley, who falls in love with the somehow innocent call girl (she's only had four clients!) Alabama (Patricia Arquette), who his boss hired for him as a birthday present. After spending the night together, the two declare their undying love and head for city hall to get hitched, before Clarence -- acting on advice from Elvis' ghost -- runs off to shoot his new wife's loathsome and murderous home boy-wannabe pimp, Drexl, played to the dirtbag hilt by Gary Oldman. The confrontation -- surprise, surprise! -- turns violent, and somehow Clarence manages to blow away Drexl and his roomful of bodyguards, before grabbing what he thinks is Alabama's suitcase full of clothes, but turns out to be $500,000 worth of uncut cocaine. After a brief stop to visit his estranged ex-cop father, Clifford (Dennis Hopper), the two hightail it for Hollywood in Clarence's purple caddy. A vicious Sicilian mob lawyer (Christopher Walken) and his thugs visit Clifford's almost impossibly-messy home in search of the missing coke, and torture Clifford for his son's whereabouts. What follows is a typically Tarantinoish racist soliloquy, delivered as well as humanly possible by Hopper. This is simultaneously entertaining and so offensive to Walken that it causes him to blow Clifford away before he can divulge the information he so desperately wanted, only to almost immediately then discover that very information pinned in plain sight to Clifford's refrigerator. We then proceed with the movie, never hearing from or about either Walken's or Hopper's characters again. Walken's thugs, though, do show up in L.A., where they track the young lovers/coke thieves to the home of Clarence's childhood pal, the aspiring actor, Dick (Michael Rappaport), and his layabout stoner roommate, Floyd (Brad Pitt -- hilarious). One of the thugs, played by James Ganfolfini, in a brutal scene, beats the holy crap out of Alabama before she somehow -- despite being half his size and taking a beating that would have killed most people -- manages (in ridiculously contrived fashion) to kill the hulking goon. The rest of Walken's mooks, along with Clarence, Alabama, and Dick, some testosterone-fuled cops, and a big Hollywood producer/drug dealer and his sniveling assistant, all come together in a swanky Hollywood hotel suite with enough high-powered weaponry to invade a small country. An absurd, completely over-the-top Tarantino/John Woo-style shootout ensues, from which only our two lovers emerge alive, before credits roll over the inevitable happy tropical beach ending. All of this, of course, is accompanied by the usual blaring soundtrack of high-powered pop hits. 
   While the film carries all of Scott's bombastic stylistic crescendoes, it is, without a doubt, a Tarantino joint. Clarence is Tarantino, fercryinoutloud. With his comic books, his near encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood movies, his love of rockabilly, Elvis, and kung fu action stars, he is a pop culture creation, just like Tarantino. True Romance is a Tarantino fantasy set to rock and roll. The only female character in the entire film is a prostitute who is somehow also innocent, who falls in love with the Tarantinoesque hero almost instantly, and spends the rest of the movie doodling "you are so cool" love notes to him on cocktail napkins. Grab some popcorn, it's check your brains at the door time. **


Twilight, 1998. Terrific, low-key, and criminally underseen mystery featuring a great cast of A-listers that includes Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, James Garner, Reese Witherspoon, Stockard Channing, Liev Schrieber, Margo Martindale, Giancarlo Esposito, and M. Emmet Walsh. The story revolves around ex-L.A. cop turned private eye Harry Ross (Newman), who's entangled with aging Hollywood star couple Jack and Catherine Ames  (Hackman and Sarandon) and their teen-aged daughter, Mel (Witherspoon), who Harry brought back from Mexico after she ran off with a lowlife (Schrieber). A couple of years later, Harry's living with Jack -- who's dying of cancer -- and Catherine in their Hollywood mansion, running errands and recuperating from taking a bullet to the groin while fetching Mel back from her Mexican adventure, when he gets sucked into a case involving blackmail, several murders, and the mysterious disappearance 20 years ago of Catherine's first husband. The entire cast is superb, with Newman leading the way with a beautifully understated performance.
   Over the years there have been a lot of neo noirs that have tried -- and mostly failed -- to evoke the work of Raymond Chandler. They've failed largely because they've tried too hard, piling on what we think of as the "noir style." Twilight, however, under the direction of Robert Benton (who also cowrote), eschews all that style for a slow-but-steady, straightforward approach that puts the focus on the characters rather than phony atmospherics, and ends up miles ahead of the pack. ***1/2 


The Two Jakes, 1990. Star and Director Jack Nicholson picked up the reins of the long-troubled sequel to Chinatown and comes away with a moody, meandering neo-noir that will satisfy fans of its great predecessor if -- and this is the key -- you don't nitpick it to death trying to compare it to the original. Full disclosure here, Chinatown is not only my pick for the greatest noir ever made, but it's also my favorite film, bar none, full stop. So if I can enjoy The Two Jakes for what it is -- a really well-made, gorgeous, deeply layered neo-noir mystery that expands our knowledge and appreciation of Jake Gittes and burnishes the legacy of the original -- then so should anyone who loves and reveres Chinatown. 
   Set a full decade after Chinatown, in 1948, but produced 16 years after that classic, Nicholson looks a lot older and heavier, and that's okay. His Jake Gittes has "found himself," as Lt. (now Captain) Escobar postulated he may have back in the first film. Well, now he has. He's grown up, been to war (where he was decorated a hero), and become an extremely successful businessman, a private investigator, rubbing elbows with the city's power brokers. As Gittes puts it, in Los Angeles, he's "the leper with the most fingers." He's got a thriving, respected business, lives in a fabulous house, is a member of an elite country club, and is engaged -- for the moment -- to a beautiful, much younger woman. So it makes sense that he's put on a few pounds. But Gittes is still haunted by his past, and the tragic death of Evelyn Mulwray. So when the name of Evelyn's sister-daughter Kathryn comes up on a wire recording during his current case involving, once again, a domestic affair that turns into something much deeper -- a conspiracy swirling around the city's natural elements (in Chinatown it was water, here it's oil), we immediately know the past is not done with Jake Gittes.
   Yes, the pace is slow, the plot convoluted (which isn't necessarily a bad thing for a noir mystery), and there is no big evil to match John Huston's all-powerful Noah Cross from the original, but there's a lot here to love. Like Vilmos Zsigmund's gorgeous cinematography, Robert Towne's dialogue -- particularly Nicholson's hilarious innuendo-filled voice-overs, which alone are worth the price of admission -- the costumes, set design, and flawless recreation of postwar Los Angeles, and the performances of a terrific cast, including Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Meg Tilly, Madeleine Stowe, Ruben Blades, Eli Wallach, Frederic Forrest, Richard Farnsworth, and David Keith.
   So it's not Chinatown. What is? Relax, sit back, and let the lingering brilliance of Roman Polanski's and Robert Towne's classic wash over you. ***


Two of a Kind, 1951. Promising noir premise ruined by Hollywood ending. Noir heavyweights Edmond O'Brien and Liz Scott play Mike Farrell and Brandy Kirby, two-thirds of a threesome of grifters working a con on a wealthy old couple -- the McIntyres -- who lost their small child 30 years earlier. Scott and the couple's attorney, Vincent Mailer (Alexander Knox) have the plan: find an orphan who matches the description of the missing kid, then sell him to the McIntyres as their long-lost son. Enter ex-Navy man-turned gambler Farrell. In order to pass as the missing heir, Mike has to say goodbye to the tip of his pinky finger, which happens in the film's best scene, with Scott doing the honors via a car door. After getting Mike introduced to the couple via the McIntyre's screwball niece (Terry Moore), all that's left is to wait for their imminent demise of old age, then collect on the $10 million inheritance. The plan, of course, falls apart, and the plot moves toward a delicious noir setup, only to veer off the noirish path at the end. **1/2 


Uncut Gems 2019.  This is a movie filled with loud, boorish, shallow, obnoxious, and morally bankrupt characters, none more so than Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), the protagonist and center of this unpleasant, blaring, contentious, assault on the senses. Watching it is like listening to a car alarm go off for 2 1/2 hours. Howard, who owns a jewelry store in New York City's Diamond District, is a gambling addict, the NBA being his game of choice. He owes money all over town, including to his loan shark brother-in-law, Arno (Eric Bogosian), and he spends the entire film chasing the big score and trying to dodge Arno's goons, who, at various times slap him around, bloody his nose, toss him into a fountain, dangle him out of a high-rise window, and strip him naked and stuff him into the trunk of his own car in the parking lot of his daughter's school, where he is supposed to be inside with the rest of his family watching her in a school play. His domestic life is just as much a screeching mess as the rest of it. His wife loathes him, his kids are embarrassed of him (and who can blame them?), his mistress is unfaithful, and basically everyone -- including his kids -- treats him like the walking joke of a human being that he is. Not that they're any better -- they spend the film worshipping at the altar of shallow celebrities. If this is what our society has become, I'm rooting for a meteor. *1/2


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Under the Silver Lake 2018. Sitting through this interminable hipster doofus "noir" -- all 2 hours and 19 minutes of it -- is like spending nearly two-and-a-half hours working on a really bad puzzle only to find the last 20 (or 120) pieces missing. Only you're so exasperated that you don't even care, you're just relieved that you don't have to stay for the finish because all of the characters -- especially Andrew Garfield's hipster doofus "detective" at the center of it all -- are so unlikeable that you not only don't care what happens to them, but you can't stand to spend another minute in their company. Writer/director David Robert Mitchell's script smells like it was sprayed by a skunk, chopped up in a blender, then haphazardly pasted back together incorrectly so that nothing makes sense. It just stinks. The only joke in this "dark comic mystery" is on the viewer. The only mystery is how it got made. Simply godawful. * 



The Underneath 1995. Why in God's holy name a smart guy like Steven Soderbergh would agree to remake Robert Siodmak's brilliant 1949 noir Criss Cross is beyond me. No matter what he did, Soderbergh wasn't going to improve on the original, which is about as close to a perfect film as you're going to find. Then you take a fantastic script that crackles with poetic melancholy and turn it into a limp, plodding imitation of the original, replace brilliant stars like Burt Lancaster and Dan Duryea with the likes of Peter Gallagher and William Fichtner (nothing against either of them, they're both fine actors), and you end up with one question: Why? Start with the setting. Criss Cross took place in Los Angeles, largely around the historic Bunker Hill neighborhood. The Underneath is set in the flat wasteland of Texas. Instead of brilliant shots of DeCarlo set against the Angels Flight funicular, we're given bland, indistinguishable strip malls and bars. Then there's the script. In the original, a doomed Burt Lancaster is obsessed with his former flame, played by Yvonne DeCarlo. Here, Gallagher's soporific version of the character is obsessed only with gambling. He can barely force himself to keep his eyes open for anything or anyone else, including love interest Rachel (Alison Elliott in the DeCarlo role). It's not that this is a bad film. It's just that it's such weak tea compared to the original that there's virtually no reason to watch it. Save your nickel and watch the original. **1/2



​Underworld U.S.A. 1961.  Sam Fuller's tough, violent, anti-gangster, gut-punch of a film. Cliff Robertson plays Tolly Devlin, who, at the age of 14, sees his no-good bum of a father beaten to death by four men in an alley, then spends the rest of his life on a nihilistic revenge quest. His vendetta eventually leads him to the top of the syndicate, but robs him of his humanity, as he rejects the love of the two women who could redeem him -- his mother figure, Sandy (Beatrice Kay) and girlfriend, Cuddles (Dolores Dorn), until it's too late. Fuller's direction and script and cinematographer Hal Mohr's sharp black-and-white photography make every shot feel like a kidney punch.  ***
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​The Unfaithful 1947 (Vincent Sherman) Decent remake of 1940's The Letter, starring Ann Sheridan as the unfaithful wife who kills her lover. Zachary Scott, in a rare sympathetic role, plays the wronged husband, and Lew Ayres is Sheridan's attorney. Script is by the great noir fiction writer David Goodis. Lacks the dark bite of the original. **1/2


​The Unholy Four (A Stranger Came Home) 1954. Muddled Lippert production is dull as dishwater, filled with red herrings, and nearly incomprehensible. Worst of all, it wastes the presence of Paulette Goddard. **
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The Unsuspected, 1947 (Michael Curtiz) There's a famous quote by Raymond Chandler, writing about Dashiell Hammet, that says that Hammet took murder out of the drawing room and put it back in the gutter where it belongs. Then, in 1947, Michael Curtiz tried to put it back with this rather stately, clever drawing room noir, featuring Claude Rains and Audrey Totter. The film bears more than a passing resemblance to the classic Laura, with Rains playing the Waldo Lydecker role. Cinematographer Woody Bredell is the real star for noir fans, though, as he fills the picture with delicious noir flourishes -- creeping shadows, trick reflections, and intricately diffused lighting. Unfortunately, all Curtiz and Bredell's wizardry can't quite overcome a bland script, set in all those boring drawing rooms. **1/2 


Upgrade, 2018 (Leigh Whannell) Cyberpunk action film that, at times, feels like a video game, and at other times feels like a bad made-for-TV movie, but there's no denying the inventiveness of the story. Written by Director Leigh Whannell, the co-creator of the torture porn Saw series, Upgrade stars Logan Marshall-Green as Grey Trace, an "old school" mechanic in the near future, which is dominated by tech. Grey's life falls apart when an attack by thugs leaves him a quadriplegic and his wife murdered. But when the opportunity to walk again via a new STEM implant is offered by weirdo tech inventor Eron Keen, Grey accepts, only to find he's been implanted with a lot more than he bargained for: incredible hand-to-hand fighting skills that allow Grey to get even with the creeps who murdered his wife. Upgrade is weak in some areas, including a cast that's a bit too lightweight, and part of the "mystery" of who was behind the attack that killed Grey's wife and left him paralyzed is blatantly obvious from the get-go. But its creative premise, inspired fight scenes, and effectively noirish story make up for its shortcomings. **1/2 

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Vice Squad, 1953 (Arnold Laven). Sort of a west coast Detective Story, this excellent procedural is really a day in the life of Police Captain "Barnie" Barnaby (Edward G. Robinson), and what a day it is! Barnie's trying to bring a couple of cop killers to justice, while also dealing with a myriad of other issues throughout his day, including a marriage bunco, pickpockets, an escort service, and a bank heist with a kidnapped hostage. Robinson's great, as usual, and there's enough tension to sustain the plot all the way through. Featuring some great locations in and around Los Angeles, and a Who's Who of supporting character actors in small roles, including Percy Helton, Lee Van Cleef, Porter Hall, Edward Binns, and Adam Williams, and Paulette Goddard in a juicy cameo as a madam, this is one of the best from the police procedural wing of the Noir mansion. *** 


Vicki, 1953. By the numbers remake of I Wake Up Screaming, without the pizzazz and creative camerawork of the 1941 original. Jean Crain fills Betty Grable's shoes as the sister of the murdered title character, while Elliott Reid slips on Victor Mature's wingtips, playing the publicity hound who discovered Vicki and made her a star. Both perform capably, but Reid, especially, lacks the star power of his predecessor. Meanwhile, like Laird Cregar in the original, Richard Boone chews the scenery as the obsessed detective in charge of investigating the murder of the ambitious Vicki (Jean Peters). But it's not the cast that saps this version down, it's the lack of visual style -- in comparison with the original -- from director Harry Horner and cinematographer Milton R. Krasner. Where I Wake Up Screaming set the standard for noir style with its arresting camera angles and stunning visuals, Vicki has the bland look of a standard TV crime drama. Leigh Harline's lurid, cliche-ridden score doesn't help, either. The end result is a hefty helping of ho hum histrionics that pales in comparison to the groundbreaking original. **1/2


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Violence, 1947. From the same creative team that gave us the lurid but goofily entertaining Decoy a year earlier, this one's not nearly as fun or noteworthy, except, perhaps, for some unintentional laughs for the woefully outdated "action" sequences.
   Nancy Coleman stars as an undercover "girl reporter" who infiltrates a crime ring masquerading as a grassroots political organization representing WWII vets. She gets the goods on the boss of the outfit, True Dawson (Emory Parnell) and his main thug (Sheldon Leonard), but is injured in a car crash, which leaves her with ... amnesia! Yes, the old brain-wipe, and she's got it so bad she doesn't even remember her fiancee, two-fisted reporter Steve Fuller (Michael O'Shea). Lots of ridiculous, middle grade-level drama ensues.
​   Does get points for prescience in depicting the political rise of a soulless grifter who will happily unleash his violent goons on his enemies. Sound like anyone we know? **    
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Violent Saturday, 1955 (Richard Fleischer). This is a film that gets a lot of love from critics, film fans, and noiristas in particular, and some of it is well-deserved. There's a lot for the noir fan to love in this gorgeous-to-look-at, Deluxe color, Cinemascope production filmed largely on location in Bisbee, Arizona, by cinematographer Charles G. Clarke. The film opens with a bang -- literally. In a precursor to Touch of Evil, an explosion kicks off the proceedings, and explosive this film is. A group of violent criminals descends on the little southwestern town of Bradenville, which, as we quickly learn, is already a nest of vipers of varying stripes and shapes. There's the creepy, bumbling bank manager, played by professional nerd Tommy Noonan, who stalks comely young nurse Linda Sherman (Virginia Leith), following her everywhere she goes and even peeping at her through her apartment window at night as she undresses, despite the fact that he's married. And Linda's no angel -- perfectly willing to have a fling with married lush Boyd Fairchild (Richard Egan, who, as an actor, is a terrible drunk). Boyd loves his wife, Emily (Margaret Hayes) despite the fact that she's a self-described "tramp" who runs around with multiple men not her husband. Even the town librarian -- Elsie Braden, played by Sylvia Sidney -- is a thief, willing to steal a patron's purse to help pay the bills. There are "good" people in Bradenville, too, notably an Amish family (the father played by Ernest Borgnine!) and All-American dad Victor Mature -- who just wants his All-American kid to think he's a hero. Stir it all together and you've got all the ingredients for a Douglas Sirk melodrama. But Violent Saturday is helmed by Richard Fleischer, who knows his way around a noir (The Narrow Margin, Armored Car Robbery, Follow Me Quietly), and even though Violent Saturday may feel at times like a 1950s technicolor melodrama, at its heart it's mostly noir.
   For starters, there's the heist, as three professional bank robbers come to town, including a vicious Lee Marvin, who, in one scene is sadistically stepping on a little kid's hand and making him cry, and in the next is pouring his heart out in his pajamas to fellow crook Stephen McNally. Seems Marvin's ex used to give him colds all the time, which started his reliance on using an inhaler. It's brilliant stuff from an actor still early in his career. And McNally, whose reaction when he witnesses the librarian put the snatch on the patron's purse is amusement. The performances, too, are mostly top-notch, including Egan in his non-pixilated scenes.  
   My problem with this film, though, has to do with its 1950s misogynistic sensibilities. *SPOILER ALERT* Of all the dark-hearted sinners inhabiting this little burgh, the only one -- other than the crooks -- who ends up paying, in the end, is Emily. And what's her crime, exactly? She runs around on her husband, who's a pathetic dipso rich-boy failure, son of the wealthy copper mine owner who, through nepotism, has a front-office job that he shirks while drunk. In one dramatic scene, after she's come home from a dalliance with country club Romeo Brad Dexter, Emily finds her hubby passed out on the couch and Linda by his side. After Linda leaves, and Boyd sobers up, she breaks down, calls herself a tramp and wonders aloud if she's insane -- because she's not content to play the good housewife to her pixilated failure of a husband. And she's the one who has to pay for her sins? Not the drunken, just-as-willing-to-philander Boyd, or the lecherous, leering peeping tom bank manager, who gets to redeem himself at the end? Sorry, I find this difficult to swallow.
   My other problem with Violent Saturday is the sheer unbridled dipshittery of the crooks' plot. These guys obviously never heard the phrase "Keep It Simple, Stupid." This is a town with, apparently, two cops. All they need do is phone in a phony traffic accident outside of town to lure them away, leaving the bank ripe for the picking. So what do they do? Steal Victor Mature's car and kidnap him (Why, bank robbers? Why???), blindfold him and drive him out to the Amish family's farm, where they also bind and blindfold the family and leave them in the barn (with Victor Mature) with one guard left to watch them while the other three drive back to town to rob the bank. Then, after the robbery, they have to drive back to the farm and switch cars before fleeing town. It makes NO SENSE, and that's putting it kindly. But then, if they had done the logical, and simply brought their own getaway car and stashed it out in the desert somewhere, we wouldn't have got that terrific shootout at the Amish farm, or Ernest Borgnine, decked out in Amish beard and regalia, pitchforking Lee Marvin in the back. Or Victor Mature, having just killed three men (two with a shotgun), seen a little Amish kid shot in the shoulder and himself been shot in the knee, positively giddy later in the hospital, as he plays the hero to his son -- which is all he ever wanted. And the sniveling, cretinous stalker bank manager being ministered to in the hospital by the very object of his peeping tom psychopathy as he recovers from a gunshot wound, apologizing for his behavior and being forgiven. And, with the knockout color camerawork and locations, it's all a treat to look at. ***

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The Wages of Fear (La Salaire de la Peur), 1953. Henri-Georges Cluzot's anti-capitalist, existentialist thriller is a pulse-pounding ride down a bumpy, mountain road with a truckload of nitro. Make that two truckloads of nitro, as four down-on-their-luck truck drivers, stuck in the dusty, sweltering, isolated Central American village of Las Piedras and desperate to earn a ticket back to civilization, take on a suicide mission of a job (at $2,000 a man) with the big American oil company that seemingly owns the entire banana republic. The job: to transport two truckloads of nitroglycerine across 300 miles of dangerous road to stop an oil fire at a drilling site. In the first hour of the film, we get to know the four drivers -- Jo, an aging hood from Paris with a reputation that's outlasted his guts (Charles Vanel in a classic performance); Mario (Yves Montand, in the role that made him an international movie star), a young,  Corsican lover-boy who idolizes the older Jo; Luigi, a happy-go-lucky Italian (Fulco Lulli); and Bimba, a steely-eyed Dutchman (Peter van Eyck). The last hour-and-a-half is all white-knuckled suspense as the two teams of truckers -- Mario and Jo in one rig, Luigi and Bimba in the other -- try to navigate a series of escalating dangers on the road that are a hundred times more terrifying than any fake CGI effects Hollywood can gin up in today's green-screen-filled box-office blockbusters. Is it noir? It depends on your point of view. What it surely is, though, is one of the bleakest, most gripping and disturbingly nihilistic films ever made, and so anti-American (the film's motto: "Wherever there's oil, there's Americans") that much of it was cut out for 1950s American audiences. ****
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Walk a Crooked Mile, 1948 (Gordon Douglas) One of the first Cold War films feeding the nation's anti-Commie hysteria with its tale of enemy spies infiltrating U.S. atomic testing laboratories. Film is an exciting procedural enlivened by location photography in Los Angeles, the hulking menace of a goateed Raymond Burr, and the natural charm of Dennis O'Keefe. His interplay with costar Louis Hayward makes this also one of the first buddy cop films, with an undercurrent of gay innuendo sneaking into the proceedings. **1/2  


Walk East on Beacon, 1952 (Alfred L. Werker). Stupefyingly dull red scare propaganda procedural "inspired by" a Reader's Digest article written by J. Edgar Hoover. *1/2   


Walk Softly, Stranger, 1950 (Robert Stevenson). Studio tinkering ruined this redemptive love story/noir with a spectacularly stupid ending tacked on in post-production. Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli star in low-key but effective melodrama about a drifter with a past named Chris Hale who shows up at what he claims is his old childhood home in the small town of Ashton, Ohio, where he then takes a room from widow Spring Byington and a job at the local shoe factory. In short order, he's wooing the rich, paralyzed daughter (Valli) of the factory's owner. Things take a noirish turn when Chris (or is it Steve?) flies to an unnamed city and meets up with gambler Whitey Lake -- played by noir stalwart Paul Stewart -- and the two rob a gambling house owner of $200 grand, then split up. Returning to Ashton, Chris resumes his wooing of the wheelchair-bound shoe maven, and everything's going swimmingly until Whitey shows up, broke and terrified because Bowen's goons have found him. It all heads to a darkly satisfying noir conclusion, until producer David O. Selznick changed the ending to the ridiculous dipshittery that closes the picture. The result was so bad that RKO chief Howard Hughes shelved the can for two years, until RKO released the film hoping to cash in on the success of its stars in The Third Man, which came out in 1949. It didn't work. ** 


Wander, 2020 (April Mullen). See, this is why I don't trust films made after 2000. You find one that seems promising, you spend a small boodle to watch it, and it turns out to be something that might have been written and directed by a meth-ravaged monkey. Like Wander (shudder). On the surface, it sounds intriguing: "Hired to investigate a suspicious death in the town of Wander, a paranoid private eye (Aaron Eckhart) with a troubled past becomes convinced the case is linked to the same conspiracy and cover-up that caused the death of his daughter." It sounds like a completely sane, interesting little film, right? Heck, it's even got Tommy Lee Jones in it as the paranoid private eye's nutball conspiracy-theorist sidekick! But you see, that's their plan -- the lizard people. They suck you in with these totally normal-sounding, alluring descriptions, and then WHAM! Before you can say "pizzagate!" you're trapped in yet another jittery, dingy-looking, grade-Z piece of overwrought monkey gibberish with jumpcuts every two seconds and a couple hundred whiplash flashbacks and camerawork so jittery and editing so frenzied that it ends up giving you a migraine before you're ten minutes in. And they probably even planted a microchip in your popcorn! 1/2*  
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Where The Money Is, 2000 (Marek Kanievska). Paul Newman is as appealing as always, but it's not enough in this otherwise assembly-line light caper comedy which is not noir in any sense. Linda Fiorentino and Dermot Mulroney are a bored, small-town couple who decide way too flippantly to slip into a life of crime when aging bank robber Henry (Newman) comes rolling into their lives in a wheelchair, having faked a stroke to escape prison. Dulled by a paint-by-numbers rock soundtrack (The Cars' "My best Friend's Girl" is cued up every time Fiorentino is about to do something "sexy"), script never fails to slip back into its vacuous grooves every time you think it might just jump into something interesting. ** 


Where The Sidewalk Ends, 1950. Beautifully shot Otto Preminger noir with a great script by Ben Hecht starts in the gutter and never climbs out. Film is filled with gorgeous noir flourishes, a jazz-inflected score, and a darkness of the soul typical of Preminger. Dana Andrews -- from Preminger's Laura and Dark Angel -- plays Mark Dixon, a tough and bitter cop who hates criminals because his old man was one. Gene Tierney is back from Laura as well, playing Andrews' angelic love interest. A feast for noir lovers. **** 


Whiplash, 1948. Convoluted, cliché-ridden boxing weeper featuring Dane Clark as pugilistic artist Mike Angelo. That's right -- he's a boxer, he's a painter, he's a lover, he's a numismatist! Okay, I made that last one up. Clark works hard at his hot-headed, temperamental artist persona in this Lewis Seiler potboiler, but the writers (too numerous to mention) and Seiler can't decide whether they're making a hard-boiled mystery, a steamy romantic drama, or a screwball comedy. Judging by the lame jokes and wafer-thin caricatures, they should have stuck to the former. And then there are the fight scenes. You know the kind, 1940's style, with two smallish white guys throwing ridiculous haymakers that, if it were real life, would leave both of them laid out in a coma. Zachary Scott -- as oily as ever -- provides some depth, Alexis Smith brings the vamp, S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall plays his familiar soft-hearted uncle type, and Eve Arden is there for the comic relief, but it all just makes me want to give everyone who had a hand in this mess the old one-two. ** 


Whispering City, 1947. Promising Canadian thriller shot on location in Quebec City falls apart in the third act. The gorgeous Mary Anderson plays Mary Roberts, a spunky newspaper reporter who stumbles upon an old murder mystery when she's sent to interview a dying actress whose fiance was killed at Montmorency Falls years earlier. Paul Lukas plays a scheming heavy, and Helmut Dantine a tortured composer in director Fedor Ozep's feature. Unfortunately, the cast is much better than the script, which devolves into a lame attempt at macabre melodrama before a pat ending. A French language version was made simultaneously, also in Quebec City, by the same producer with a different cast under the title La Forteresse. ** 
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White Heat, 1949. Jimmy Cagney supercharges Raoul Walsh's gangster noir with an epic performance as crazed murderous mama's boy hoodlum Arthur "Cody" Jarrett. Cody, fighting blinding, debilitating headaches that signal the onset of his inherited mental illness and turn him into a whimpering, blubbering man-baby, leads a ruthless gang of criminals (including his mother!) that's been infiltrated by undercover T-Man Philip Evans (Edmond O'Brien). Cody only trusts one person in the whole world, and it's not his wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo), nor his right-hand, gangster "Big Ed" (Steve Cochran); it's his ma (Margaret Wycherly), who's as tough as any of the gang. But when ma dies while he's in prison, Cody goes berserk in the mess hall, and it's the undercover Evans who soothes the savage beast, so Cody takes Evans with him when he busts out. This is a gritty, pitiless and explosive film, punctuated by one of the most memorable lines in cinema. "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" ****


Wicked Woman, 1953. Trashtastic low-rent rehash of The Postman Always Rings Twice -- with a couple of twists -- is a tawdry, at times ludicrous, yet entertaining cautionary/morality tale about the dangers of getting mixed up with a floozy, played, in this case, by Beverly Michaels. The idea gets hammered home from the get-go in one of noir's greatest/worst theme songs, as Herb Jeffries splenetically croons over the opening credits, "You know that what she's doin'/is sure to cause you ruin," as a Trailways bus winds its way through desolate landscape, finally delivering the world-weary blonde bombshell Billie Nash (Michaels) to her newest destination: dingy, nameless Anytown, USA. We know by the end of the song that she's just looking for the latest in a long line of poor saps to draw "like a moth to flame" before she'll inevitably leave him "brokenhearted" and move on to her next conquest.
   The sap in the crosshairs this time is brooding bartender Matt Bannister (Richard Egan), who's married to Dora, a lush. Together they co-own a dive bar that Dora inherited from her late father, who was also a drunk. Into their comfortable but vaguely unsatisfied lives swivels Billie, a rare female vagabond. Faster than John Garfield can burn a hamburger, Matt's in Billie's encircling arms and they're scheming to forge Dora's signature so they can sell the bar out from under her and skip to Mexico, where Billie dreams of lazing around drinking cocktails all day and "getting tan, but not too tan."
   Gumming up the works is Billie's lecherous, mole-like flophouse neighbor, Charlie Borg, played to the hilt by Percy Helton, noir's pusillanimous homunculus, in a cringeworthy performance for the ages. Much to our horror -- despite the fact that he's 30 years older and a foot shorter than Billie -- when she dupes him out of a porkchop dinner and a double-sawbuck, Charlie pathetically mistakes Billie's transparent flirting for genuine interest and pursues her to the point of stalking. It's here that the film becomes really sad, because, despite the insistence of all involved, when it all comes crashing down, the one who ends up with the hirsute end of the sucker isn't Matt, or Dora, or even the worm-like, odiously lascivious Charlie. It's Billie. Constantly ogled, pawed and groped while serving drinks to the pixilated bar patrons, Billie can't even walk down the hallway to her dingy fleabag flop after a long shift without the drooling, lust-crazed, lurking Borg -- who's apparently spent the night peering through his peephole -- pouncing on her and sickeningly smooching up her arms like a pint-sized Gomez Addams. And Billie has to cringe and take it, because Borg has learned of their plans to defraud Matt's wife and uses the information to ensnare Billie in his icky web of sexual blackmail. It's made crystal clear that Borg has his marsupial way with Billie, and when Matt catches Borg osculating Billie's forearms it's Billie he takes it out on, not Borg. He calls her a tramp, slaps her around, dumps her and goes back to his boozed-up wife, none the worse for wear. And Borg is simply out 20 bucks and some pork chops, while Billie, on the other hand, gets booted out of her seedy digs and ends up homeless, jobless, penniless, and back on the Trailways Bus to oblivion. So tell me again about how she's the "wicked" one, Herb. While it's true Billie tries to introduce the idea to Matt of killing his wife, WW takes a different path, making this the rare "adultery noir" that doesn't end in murder. Just pure, unadulterated, beautiful, campy trash. ***   


Widows, 2018. Steve McQueen's explosive, exciting heist noir is much more than that. It's a meditation on race, politics, crime, sexism, and modern relationships, all wrapped up in a highly entertaining thriller. Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki star as the titular widows of a Chicago heist crew, their widowhood achieved when their husbands were all killed in a shootout/explosion with the cops after pulling their latest job, in which they stole $2 million from Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), a local gangster-turned-politician. Shortly after burying her husband, Harry (Liam Neeson), the leader of the heist gang, lead widow Veronica Rawlings (Davis) is visited by Manning, who threatens Veronica and her cute Westie unless she comes up with his money in 30 days. Veronica finds Harry's notebook, containing, among other things, Harry's detailed plans for stealing $5 million from Jack Mulligan (Colin Ferrell), scion of a corrupt Chicago family of aldermen of a South Side ward. Desperate and grieving, Veronica asks her late hubby's loyal driver, Bash (Garret Dillahunt), for the names of the other widows of the heist crew, then recruits two of them, Linda and Alice (Rodriguez and Debicki, respectively) -- also in deep financial straits -- to help her carry out Harry's heist. Linda recruits Belle, her babysitter (Cynthia Erivo), to be the crew's driver after Bash is killed by Manning's brutal brother/enforcer, Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya), and the heist plan is set in motion. There are a couple of major reveals -- one of them a surprise plot twist -- along the way, and the whole thing goes off like gangbusters. Robert Duvall, Lukas Haas, and Kevin J. O'Connor round out the sprawling cast, all terrific. Sure, it's contrived and the plot is ultimately pretty goofy, but the thing is so entertaining and well done that none of that matters. ***1/2



Wild Things, 1998. Director John McNaughton's entry into Florida Noir is, in the words of the late great Roger Ebert, "lurid trash ... It's like a three-way collision between a soft-core sex film, a soap opera, and a B-grade noir. I liked it." Released just one month after Palmetto -- a much worse example of Florida Noir -- Wild Things works better because it's played as satire. 
   The almost incomprehensibly tangled plot has Matt Damon as a high school counselor accused of rape by two students (Denise Richards and Neve Campbell). The cop on the case is played by Kevin Bacon. Comic relief is provided by Bill Murray as Damon's low-rent lawyer. The plot twists fly fast and furious. There are gratuitous sex scenes, ominous shots of snapping alligators, Robert Wagner and Therese Russell, a speargun, Denise Richards washing a jeep... you get the idea. This is cheap cheese, but it's fun. ***


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Witness to Murder, 1954. Barbara Stanwyck woman-in-danger thriller hums along, minding its own business until an ending that descends into unbridled nitwittery. Stanwyck plays Cheryl Draper, a single woman of a certain age who, one night while looking out her window, happens to see ex-Nazi turned failing author/playboy Albert Richter (George Sanders, who else?) strangling a woman in his apartment across the street. Unfortunately, Richter hides the body before the cops can get there, and then everyone -- including a kindly detective (Gary Merrill) thinks Cheryl is out there where the buses don't run. Richter then gaslights her, until even she thinks she's nuts. Then they put her in a mental hospital, where she spends a night amongst the wallpaper eaters. It all comes to a wacky conclusion with Richter chasing Cheryl through crowded streets and, of course, up a still-under-construction high rise, with Merrill in hot pursuit to save her. Still, with Stanwyck and Sanders and cinematography by the great John Alton, Witness to Murder has enough going for it to make it a worthwhile watch for any noir fan. **1/2
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The Woman In The Window, 1944. Mild-mannered criminology professor Edward G. Robinson gets in trouble with a beautiful dame (Joan Bennett) when his wife and kids are out of town in this twisting Fritz Lang tale. Dan Duryea is, as usual, eminently watchable in his familiar role as a sleazy blackmailer. The trio reunited a year later with Lang for the superb Scarlet Street. This one coulda been a contender, if only they hadn’t gone with that cheesy surprise ending. ***1/2


A Woman's Secret, 1949. Nicholas Ray's first directorial effort (it was shot before They Live By Night, but put on the shelf for a year) is a tepid, half-baked potboiler that makes about as much sense as Victor Jory romancing Gloria Grahame. The limp noodle of a story involves a singer (Maureen O'Hara) who loses her voice, and then, with the help of her pianist (Melvyn Douglas) discovers and promotes a young singer (Grahame) into stardom. There's a love triangle, or quadrangle -- or is it a quintagangle? -- a shooting, a trip to Paris, a side-trip to Algiers, some supposedly snappy dialogue, and no semblance of anything resembling film noir. Potholes on the career paths of both Ray and screenwriter Herman J. Mankieweicz. **

© The Noirharajah