Tag: noir

It is often hard to decide whether a film is noir or not.  In many regards, the 1952 feature Angel Face has the trappings of that genre.  On the other hand, it is very heavy on the melodrama.  That doesn’t automatically disqualify a film from being noir but, in my mind, it makes it more […]

I don’t know much about Richard Basehart except for a recurring gag on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 where Gypsy, one of the bots, is obsessed with him.  Not sure why she’s obsessed with this actor, only that I was reminded of this while watching him in 1950’s Outside the Wall. Basehart is a man who […]

I’m still surprised William Castle, famous for his gimmicky horror films, started out making noirs.  Pretty good ones, too, from what I have seen so far.  The first one I saw was 1949’s Johnny Stool Pigeon and now I have seen that same year’s Undertow.  Both films are similar in that each is solid, but […]

Train stations make for great locations in noir pictures, and I love to see real locations used in such films.  In a way, these films serve as a time capsule of an era not long before rail stopped being the primary mode of long-distance travel in the US. 1950’s Union Station takes place largely in […]

If 1958’s Step Down to Terror seems familiar, it’s because it is supposedly a remake of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.  That didn’t occur to me while I was watching it, but I was nagged by the feeling I had seen something very similar before. Charles Drake plays a man on the run who seeks […]

I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about 2010’s The Town while watching 1955 noir Six Bridges to Cross.  I think it is largely because both are crime pictures set in Boston and both use as a plot point the sudden closure of the city’s many bridges immediately after a heist. Aside from that development, the […]

It’s odd film noir rarely addressed mental illness, as it feels like perfect fodder for the genre.  1957’s The Night Runner is an odd film concerning a recently released patient with a violent past.  At first, I thought the film would take a sympathetic approach to such people.  In the end, it instead suggests people […]

The opening credits of 1950’s Spy Hunt say it was based on the novel Panther’s Moon.  I was willing to bet good money that title wouldn’t make any sense in regard to the movie it was adapted into. I would have lost that bet.  This quirky noir centers around two black panthers loose in the […]

While watching 1957’s Plunder Road, I found myself thinking about thinking a great deal about Henri-Georges Clouzot The Wages of Fear.  I mean that as high praise—both movies are tense and terse.  Not much dialog, but a great deal of suspense.  In both movies, that tension comes down to the transportation of nitro glycerin to […]

When you watch enough noir, you get used to seeing somebody tailing another and suddenly having to duck behind something.  Usually, the pursuer conceals themselves behind the corner of a building, or a pillar, or in a doorway.  But 1954’s Cry Vengeance has the only occurrence I have seen of somebody hiding behind a totem […]

Is there anything more instantly noir than trains?  Probably the only genre with a stronger association with that mode of transport is the western.  1951’s Cry Danger has its opening titles over various footage of trains in motion.  It is a signal we are in noir territory, and the film that follows is one of […]

1948’s An Act of Murder has a kernel of an interesting idea.  What happens when a hanging judge decides he can’t let his wife suffer any longer from an inoperable brain tumor?  Fredric March plays the judge, dubbed Old Man Maximum for his tendency to dole out maximum sentences.  He also disregards any and all […]

Another Kino three-disc noir box set, another movie named after an exotic locale.  Going into this, I had no doubt this would be another Casablanca wannabe, like Singapore or Tangier, each of which led off other sets in the series.  To my considerable surprise, 1946’s Calcutta does not follow that formula.  Instead, this is a […]

Film noir tends to be populated with characters who are dirt poor.  1950’s Try and Get Me stays truer to those characters than most films of the era—Frank Lovejoy and his family actually have a dirt yard around their crappy house. This movie was originally released as The Sound of Fury, and those who are […]

There are many people who seen vastly more film noir that I have, but I don’t know any of them personally.  And I have been slow to see some of the most legendary titles of this genre, as I simply wander through my stacks of blu-ray discs and get to the landmarks as they happen […]