Rosa Moline is bored with life in a small town. She loves Chicago industrialist Neil Latimer who has a hunting lodge nearby. Read More »
Tag Archives: Film-Noir
The Window (1949) Ted Tetzlaff, Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
In age 9, Tommy Woodry has a reputation for telling tall stories — the newest one being that his family is moving from Manhattan to a ranch out west. Read More »
Black Angel (1946) Roy William Neill, Dan Duryea, June Vincent, Peter Lorre, Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery
Kirk Bennett is falsely sentenced to death for killing blackmailer Mavis Marlowe, ex-wife of nice-guy drunk Martin Blair. Read More »
Lightning Strikes Twice (1951) King Vidor, Richard Todd, Ruth Roman, Mercedes McCambridge, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
An actress Shelley Carnes (Ruth Roman), is looking forward to an exciting vacation at a dude ranch, but she gets more than she bargained for,including a perhaps murderous new husband. Read More »
Appointment with Danger (1951) Lewis Allen, Alan Ladd, Phyllis Calvert, Paul Stewart, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
Relentless postal inspector Al Goddard is set to Gary, Indiana, when another officer is murdered. Read More »
The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) Felix E. Feist, Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt, John Dall, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Rich Lois Frazer, divorcing her fortune-hunter husband, finds he’s bought a gun. Read More »
Secret Beyond the Door (1947) Fritz Lang, Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
In this Freudian version of the Bluebeard tale, a young, trust-funded New Yorker goes to Mexico on vacation before marrying an old friend whom she considers a safe choice for a husband. Read More »
The Blue Dahlia (1946) George Marshall, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
When Johnny comes home from the navy he finds his wife Helen kissing her substitute boyfriend Eddie, the owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub. Read More »
Below the Deadline (1946) William Beaudine, Warren Douglas, Ramsay Ames, Jan Wiley, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A veteran, Joe Hilton (Warren Douglas), returns from the war to find that his brother Jeffrey Hilton (George Meeker), a gangster, has been killed. Read More »
The Brasher Doubloon (1947) John Brahm, George Montgomery, Nancy Guild, Conrad Janis, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Philip Marlowe gets involved when limp-wristed and snidely Leslie Murdock steals a rare doubloon from his mother to give to a newsreel photographer Read More »
Border Incident (1949) Anthony Mann, Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard Da Silva, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
To penetrate a gang exploiting illegal Mexican farmworkers smuggled into California (and leaving no live witnesses), Mexican federal agent Pablo Rodriguez poses as an ignorant bracero, while his American counterpart Jack Bearnes works from outside. Read More »
No Questions Asked (1951) Harold F. Kress, Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, George Murphy
Steve Keiver, young lawyer working for an insurance company Read More »
The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) Felix E. Feist, Lawrence Tierney, Ted North, Nan Leslie, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
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.
Read More »
Hells Island (1955) Phil Karlson, John Payne, Mary Murphy, Francis L. Sullivan
Down-on-his-luck Mike Cormack is hired to fly to a Caribbean island to retrieve a missing ruby. On the island, possibly involved with the ruby’s disappearance, is his ex-girlfriend.
Read More »
Affair in Trinidad (1952) Vincent Sherman, Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Alexander Scourby
When Steve Emery arrives in Trinidad at the urgent request of his brother, he is stunned to find that his brother has not only been murdered, but that his brother’s wife Chris is succumbing to the seduction attempts of the man who quite possibly is the murderer. His feelings are further exacerbated when he discovers that he, too, is becoming strongly attracted to Chris, who is a steamy cabaret singer. She, in turn, is playing off one against the other while betraying the secrets of both men to the police, for whom she is secretly working.
Read More »