A police detective investigating a jewel robbery discovers evidence that points to his girlfriend as the culprit, although she claims she was framed. He arrests her anyway, and she is convicted and serves several years in prison. Finally out on parole, she is soon mixed up in a murder.
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Film-Noir
Sensation Hunters / Club Paradise (1945) Christy Cabanne, Robert Lowery, Doris Merrick, Eddie Quillan, Drama, Film-Noir
A naive young girl, looking to escape from a bad family situation, falls in love with a man who turns out to be a cad, and leads her down the road to ruin.
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Berlin Express (1948) Jacques Tourneur, Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Charles Korvin
In divided Germany just after WWII, people from many different countries are passengers on a train. When one of the passengers, a German working for peace, is kidnapped by people who don’t want his ideas to work, the others must set aside their differences and work together to find him in time for an important conference.
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Party Girl (1958) Nicholas Ray, Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse, Lee J. Cobb, Drama, Film-Noir, Romance
Lawyer Thomas Farrell has made a career defending crooks in trials. He has never realized that there is a downside to his success, until he meets the dancer Vicki Gayle. She makes him decide to get a better reputation. But mob king Rico Angelo *insists* that he continues his services.
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The Asphalt Jungle (1950) John Huston, Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, Crime, Film-Noir, Drama
When the intelligent criminal Erwin “Doc” Riedenschneider is released from prison, he seeks a fifty thousand-dollar investment from the bookmaker Cobby to recruit a small gang of specialists for a million-dollar heist of jewels from a jewelry. Doc is introduced to the lawyer Alonzo D. Emmerich that offers to finance the whole operation and buy the gems immediately after the burglary. Doc hires the safecracker Louis Ciavelli, the driver Gus Minissi and the gunman Dix Handley to the heist. His plan works perfectly but bad luck and betrayals compromise the steps after the heist and the gangsters need to flee from the police.
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A Cry in the Night (1956) Frank Tuttle, Edmond O’Brien, Brian Donlevy, Natalie Wood, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Owen Marks, parked at Lovers’ Loop with girlfriend Liz Taggart, surprises a peeping Tom, who knocks him out and kidnaps Liz. The police leap into action when they learn the victim is a cop’s daughter. Kidnapper Harold Loftus, the unhinged product of a smothering mother, makes ineffectual advances toward Liz, who staves him off as the police close in, hindered as much as helped by her overprotective father Capt. Dan Taggart.
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The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) Lewis Milestone, Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Drama, Film-Noir, Romance
In 1928, young heiress Martha Ivers fails to run off with friend Sam Masterson, and is involved in fatal events. Years later, Sam returns to find Martha the power behind Iverstown and married to “good boy” Walter O’Neil, now district attorney. At first, Sam is more interested in displaced blonde Toni Marachek than in his boyhood friends; but they draw him into a convoluted web of plotting and cross-purposes.
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The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton, Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
It’s the Great Depression. In the process of robbing a bank of $10,000, Ben Harper kills two people. Before he is captured, he is able to convince his adolescent son John and his daughter Pearl not to tell anyone, including their mother Willa, where he hid the money, namely in Pearl’s favorite toy, a doll that she carries everywhere with her. Ben, who is captured, tried and convicted, is sentenced to death.
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Cry Danger (1951) Robert Parrish, Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Erdman
Rocky Mulloy, back in town after serving 5 years of a life sentence for armed robbery Read More »
I Wake Up Screaming (1941) H. Bruce Humberstone, Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Promoter Frankie Christopher, being grilled by police in the murder of model Vicky Lynn, recalls in flashback: First meeting her as a waitress, Frankie decides to parlay her beauty into social acceptance and a lucrative career. He succeeds only too well: she’s on the eve of deserting him for Hollywood…when someone kills her. Now Frankie gets the feeling that Inspector Ed Cornell is determined to pin the killing on him and only him. He’s right. And the only one he can turn to for help is Jill, the victim’s sister, who’s been cool toward him…
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The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller
An out of work pulp fiction novelist, Holly Martins, arrives in a post war Vienna divided into sectors by the victorious allies, and where a shortage of supplies has lead to a flourishing black market. He arrives at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job, only to discover that Lime has recently died in a peculiar traffic accident. From talking to Lime’s friends and associates Martins soon notices that some of the stories are inconsistent, and determines to discover what really happened to Harry Lime.
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Mord i mørket / Murder in the Dark (1986) Sune Lund-Sørensen, Michael Falch, Line Knutzon, Ove Sprogøe, Crime
A journalist is trying to find out about the murder of a friend in Copenhagen’s red light district. The victim was the owner of a bar at Halmtorvet. Soon, his investigations in the world of pimps and petty criminals opens up a pandora’s box of organised crime and the journalist finds himself caught between police and gangsters involved in drug trafficking. The culprit is brought to justice in the end. But the price is high.
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The Burglar (1957) Paul Wendkos, Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield, Martha Vickers, Film-Noir, Thriller, Drama
Professional burglar Nat Harbin (Dan Duryea) and his two associates, Baylock (Peter Capell) and Dohmer (Mickey Shaughnessy), set their sights on wealthy spiritualist Sister Sarah (Phoebe Mackay), who has inherited a fortune – including a renowned emerald necklace – from a Philadelphia financier. Using Nat’s female ward, Gladden (Jayne Mansfield), to pose as an admirer and case the mansion where the woman lives, they set up what looks like a perfect break-in; even when Nat’s car is spotted by a couple of cops, he bluffs his way through, gets the necklace, and makes the getaway. But the trio – plus Gladden – can’t agree on how to dispose of the necklace, and soon their bickering becomes a lot less important than the fact that someone is on to what they’ve done – a woman (Martha Vickers) is working on Nat, while a man (Stewart Bradley) is working on Gladden. Equally serious, the trio kills a New Jersey state trooper while on their way to warn her. And among the cops chasing them is one with larceny in his heart and murder on his mind.
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House of Strangers (1949) Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Edward G. Robinson, Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
In New York, after seven years in prison, the lawyer Max Monetti goes to the bank of his brothers Joe, Tony and Pietro Monetti and promises revenge to them. Then he visits his lover Irene Bennett that asks him to forget the past and start a new life. Max recalls the early 30s, when he is the favorite son of his father Gino Monetti, who has a bank in the East Side. Gino is a tyrannical and egocentric self-made man that raises his family in an environment of hatred and Max is a competent lawyer engaged with Maria Domenico. When Max meets the confident Irene, he has a troubled love affair with her. In 1933, with the new Banking Act reaches Gino for misapplication of funds. Max plots a plan to help his father but is betrayed by his brothers. Now Max will see his brothers that have also being raised under the motto “Never Forgive, Never Forget”.
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To the Ends of the Earth (1948) Robert Stevenson, Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, Maylia, Crime, Film-Noir, Thriller
Based on the files of the United States Department of Treasury. Commissioner Michael Barrows is an American Government Agent. On board a Coast Gaurd boat off the California coast he chases a ship. The Captain of the ship, the Kira Maru, panics and ruthlessly sends 100 Chinese slaves to a watery death. Barrows recovers a live preserver that tells him the ship is out of Shanghai. He travels there to track down the ship’s captain and discovers that these deaths point to a huge drug smuggling operation. In Shanghai, while searching for the captain of the Kira Maru, he becomes suspicious of a women, Ann Grant, believing she’s Jean Hawks the narcotics ringleader. He follows the narcotics trail “to the ends of the Earth” taking him from Shanghai to Cairo, Beirut and Havana to stop the drugs and the jean Hawks ring at the US border.
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