Film-Noir

Flamarion, expert marksman, is entertaining people in a show which features Connie, beautiful woman and her husband Al. Flamarion and Connie fall in love and decide to get rid of the alcoholic husband.
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On a crowded subway, Skip McCoy picks the purse of Candy. Among his take, although he does not know it at the time, is a piece of top-secret microfilm that was being passed by Candy’s consort, a Communist agent. Candy discovers the whereabouts of the film through Moe Williams, a police informer. She attempts to seduce McCoy to recover the film. She fails to get back the film and falls in love with him. The desperate agent exterminates Moe and savagely beats Candy. McCoy, now goaded into action, confronts the agent in a particularly brutal fight in a subway.
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A man, despondent over the death of his wife, wants to commit suicide but can’t bring himself to do it. He hires a man to hire a professional killer to do the job. However, he soon finds out that his wife isn’t really dead – but the man he paid to hire the hitman is, and he has no idea who the man hired or how to get him to call off the hit.
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Not by any means a great film, The Devil Thumbs a Ride nonetheless has an indefinable audience allure that sucks the viewer into its labyrinthine storyline and doesn’t let go until the fade-out. Lawrence Tierney plays Steve Morgan, a charming but utterly sociopathic criminal who has just robbed and killed a movie theater cashier. Morgan hitches a ride with inebriated conventioneer Jimmy Furguson (Ted North). Later on, Furguson picks up two more hitchhikers: virginal Beulah Zorn (Nan Leslie) and good-time girl Agnes Smith (Betty Lawford). When circumstances lead Jimmy to believe that Steve is the fugitive whom the cops are looking for, Morgan sweet-talks his way into everyone’s confidence. Before he knows what’s happening, Jimmy is holed up in a beach house while Steve parties with Beulah and Agnes. Not even the most fervent of film noir fans will be able to predict the outcome of this one. Long ignored by movie buffs, The Devil Thumbs a Ride gained a large following through repeated TV showings in the 1960s and ’70s. It is now considered so representative of its genre that one film historian used the film’s title for a collection of his essays on B-melodramas.
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One night on a lonely highway, a speeding car tosses a satchel of money, meant for somebody else, into Jane and Alan Palmer’s back seat. Alan wants to turn it over to the police, but Jane, with luxury within her reach, persuades him to hang onto it “for a while.” Soon, the Palmers are traced by one Danny Fuller, a sleazy character who claims the money is his. To hang onto it, Jane will need all the qualities of an ultimate femme fatale…and does she ever have them!
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An artist married to a wealthy but ill woman begins an affair with one of his models, who is after him solely for his money. His wife discovers the affair and threatens to cut him out of her will. In order to be able to keep both the wife’s money and his girlfriend, he begins to secretly poison his wife – but events take a surprising turn after she eventually dies.
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The 4th film of the Columbia series based on the CBS radio program, “The Whistler”, finds wealthy John Sinclair, with no health or friends, being advised by his doctor to take a long vacation. Heading for the Great Lakes, he becomes ill in the cab operated by Ernie Sparrow an is taken to a clinic where he meets nurse Joan Martin, who is engaged to intern Fred Graham. Doctors now tell him he has only a few months to live and advise him to go to Maine (where, evidently, it will seem longer.) He asks Joan to marry him, promising to leave her his fortune.
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Fishing boat captain Harry Morgan charters his boat. Due to strained finances, he is none too careful as to whom he does business with. Real trouble erupts when Harry hires out his boat to transport four men who turn out to be criminals on the lam from a racetrack heist.
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A private detective is hired by the owner of a music store to find a young girl he grew up with. Suspicious as to why someone would pay a lot of money to find someone he hasn’t seen in years, the detective digs further and soon winds up in a scheme involving a set of valuable old phonograph records, a dead millionaire and murder.
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In Houston, a man working as an oil driller comes up with a scheme for stealing millions of dollars worth of oil from the fields. He insinuates himself with a local mobster in order to get financing for his scheme.
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In Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s thriller, tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is enraged by his trampy wife’s refusal to finalize their divorce so he can wed senator’s daughter Anne (Ruth Roman). He strikes up a conversation with a stranger, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), and unwittingly sets in motion a deadly chain of events. Psychopathic Bruno kills Guy’s wife, then urges Guy to reciprocate by killing Bruno’s father. Meanwhile, Guy is murder suspect number one.
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Vicky Barton and her brother, Johnny, take a trip to the 1896 Paris Exhibition. They both sleep in seperate rooms in a hotel. When the sister gets up the next morning, she finds her brother and his room had disappeared and no one will even acknowledge that he was ever there. Now Vicky must find out what exactly happened to her brother.
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At Bellvue Hospital, New York, an intern is shot in the head by an unknown killer. Inspector Gordon of the 9th Precinct finds no obvious leads but senses an undercurrent of mystery at the hospital; enter Detective Fred Rowan, whose medical background enables him to pose as an intern. Through wheels within wheels, Rowan finally penetrates to a secret, dirty racket…and nurse Ann Sebastian, whom he’s been dating, may be mixed up in it.
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Helen Gordon hires Howard Wilton as a handyman to do chores around her house. She doesn’t know what she’s let herself in for. Insecure and paranoid, Wilton thinks everyone, including Helen, is against him. He suffers from memory lapses and extreme mood swings. She’s soon a prisoner in her own house after Wilton locks the doors and tears out the telephone. His mood swings from violence to complacency but after Helen gets a message to the police via a telephone repairman, she finds he is still in the house.
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Badly injured and hunted by the police, Lin Vanner takes refuge in a priest’s home, and tells him what has happened. When Vanner was working in a Mexican oil field, he captured a man who was suspected of a payroll robbery, but then felt responsible when the man died in police custody. As a result of the incident, Vanner’s fiancée broke off their engagement, and he resigned from his job. He later felt compelled to visit the dead man’s widow, and ended up working on her ranch. But, as he now explains to the priest, the past has quickly caught up with him.
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