Despite heavy studio cuts, The Lady from Shanghai remains a film noir classic and one of Orson Welles’ best movies. Intended to be a much longer picture than it was, Welles might […]
Mystery and Menace Was… – The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
A Thumb, a Gun and Bad Intentions – The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
The Hitch-Hiker, like many movies before and after it, is based upon real-world events, specifically the story of killer Billy Cook. It stars William Tallman as sociopath Emmett Myers who has been […]
A Door Not Fully Closed – Crime Wave (1954)
Steve had thought that after two years away, he had left his former life of crime behind. He is on parole, has a job, a wife and leads what some might call […]
Treachery and Treason in… – Hell’s Half Acre (1954)
A man is accused of a murder he did not commit while half a country away, a woman hears his voice on a record and believes it is her husband, long-dead from […]
Not as Tough as He Seems – Pushover (1954)
Fred MacMurray stars in Pushover, a Columbia Pictures release from 1954 and while one can always count on the man for a good performance, the film feels more like Double Indemnity-lite than […]
More Than His Appearance – The Face Behind the Mask (1941)
Peter Lorre is Janos, a poor immigrant who has come to America looking for work in order to get enough money that he might marry his fiancé in The Face Behind the […]
A Reality Worth Fighting For – The Chase (1946)
The Chase, released in 1946, follows the familiar pattern seen in many a film of the down-on-his-luck, war-torn veteran, yet still honest to a fault, fall in with the wrong crowd. Here, […]
Problems With Memory and Murder – Two O’Clock Courage (1945)
Two O’Clock Courage is a film noir about a man with amnesia and a dead body that is inexplicably tied to him. Running into a female cabbie, she decides to help the […]
Framed… For Murder! – I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
Whether one wants to call this film I Wake up Screaming or Hot Spot, it is a captivating little noir starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable and Carole Landis. In it, Mature and […]
Murder and Nightmares From Out of… – The Dark Past (1948)
William Holden plays a man on the run who takes a family hostage while Lee J. Cobb plays a psychoanalyst who means to help him. Holden is Al Walker – a killer […]
