1941-1950

  • Maya Deren – At Land (1944)

    1941-1950ArthouseExperimentalMaya DerenUSA

    Silently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.Read More »

  • Cecil B. De Mézig – Esprit de Famille AKA Family Spirit (1948)

    1941-1950Cecil B. De MézigEroticaExploitationFrance

    A blonde woman drops by her sister’s apartment unexpectedly and discovers her brunette sister having sex. While hiding behind a curtain, the blonde sister is so aroused that she begins to masturbate and is discovered. Angry that their sexual liaison has been disturbed, the man grabs the blonde and proceeds to spank her and then whip her with his belt. When the brunette objects to her sister’s treatment the blonde helps the man bind the brunette’s wrists and string her up from the ceiling and then beaten. The blonde and the man proceed to have sex while the tied-up sister watches. Later the sisters engage in mild lesbian familiarity.Read More »

  • Alfred Zeisler – Alimony (1949)

    1941-1950Alfred ZeislerFilm NoirUSA

    Small town girl Kitty Traves comes to New York with the idea of getting rich fast. Beginning as a ‘model’ she then becomes a divorce co-respondent in hotel room frame-ups. When her songwriting boyfriend, Dan Barker, runs out of songs and money, she send him back to his loyal, true-blue fiancée, Linda Waring. She moves on to marry a wealth industrialist, with divorce and alimony her only goal.
    (from IMDB)Read More »

  • William Beaudine – Phantom Killer (1942)

    1941-1950CrimeThrillerUSAWilliam Beaudine

    Synopsis
    Black janitor Nicodemus is surprised by the appearance of a man emerging from the Cromwell Finance Corp. office late at night. The man asks Nicodemus for the time and for a light for his cigar, then departs. Nicodemus later finds the president of Cromwell Corp. dead from strangulation. Nicodemus identifies wealthy philanthropist John G. Harrison as the man he saw in the building on the night of the murder. Assistant district attorney Edward Clark unearths information that similar murders were committed in other cities on the evenings that Harrison, a deaf-mute, was attending charity functions. Read More »

  • Seymour Friedman – Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard (1950)

    1941-1950CrimeDramaSeymour FriedmanUSA

    Story
    When enemy agents obtain leaked secrets about a guided missile reservation, the chief of America’s counterspy division (Howard St. John) and Scotland Yard’s top sleuth (Ron Randell) get on an investigative trail which quickly leads to a reservation secretary (Gunsmoke’s Miss Kitty, Amanda Blake).Read More »

  • Otto Preminger – Fallen Angel (1945)

    1941-1950250 Quintessential Film NoirsFilm NoirOtto PremingerUSA

    Quote:
    The huge success of Laura may have done more ill than good to Otto Preminger’s career, not only for setting expectations high early in the game, but also for forcing a “noir mystery master” image onto an artist much more interested in asking questions than in answering them. Fallen Angel, the director’s follow-up to his 1944 classic, is often predictably looked down as a lesser genre venture, yet its subtle analysis of shadowy tropes proves both a continuation and a deepening of Preminger’s use of moral ambiguity as a tool of human insight. Linda Darnell, a provocative bombshell caught behind the counter of a small-town California roadside café, is the flame around which the picture’s male moths circle, though the titular fallen angel is later revealed to be tainted drifter Dana Andrews, who comes to town and becomes quickly smitten with her. Read More »

  • Lesley Selander – Dakota Lil (1950)

    1941-1950Lesley SelanderUSAWestern

    Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
    Although Marie Windsor plays the title role in Dakota Lil, she is shunted away to third billing, right after male leads George Montgomery and Rod Cameron. Montgomery is cast as a secret service agent Tom Horn, sent West to round up a gang of counterfeiters. He starts by gaining the confidence of dance-hall girl Lil (Windsor), one of the ringleaders. She, in turn, leads Horn to the brains of the operation, Harve Logan(Cameron).Read More »

  • George Blair – Destination Big House (1950)

    1941-1950CrimeDramaGeorge BlairUSA

    School teacher Janet Brooks innocently involves herself in a scandal while spending the week-end alone in the mountain cabin of her fiancée, Dr. Walter Phillips. She gives first aid to a wounded racketeer, Joe Bruno, who is running out on his mob with eighty thousand dollars in cash. Unknown to Janet, Bruno hides the money in the cabin. She goes on an errand and two mobsters, Ed Somers and “Stubby” Moore), make a call on Bruno and then depart after delivering a couple of soon-to-be-fatal gunshot wounds. Bruno manages to get to the highway and hitches a ride from a passing motorist who drives him to the Coniston hospital. In front of a number of doctors as witnesses, Bruno draws up a will leaving the eighty-thousand bucks to Janet, but dies before he can reveal where the money is located.Read More »

  • R.G. Springsteen – Out of the Storm (1948)

    1941-1950CrimeDramaR.G. SpringsteenUSA

    Former “Henry Aldrich” James Lydon acquits himself nicely in a serious role in Republic’s Out of the Storm. Lydon plays Donald Lewis, a low-paid clerk in a high-profile shipbuilding firm. When the company is robbed in broad daylight, Lewis gathers up $100,000 on his own and skeedaddles, figuring that the lost funds will be attributed to the holdup. Before his girlfriend Ginny (Lois Collier) can persuade him to go straight, the hapless Lewis finds himself hotly pursued by cops and crooks alike. Top-heavy with movie “bad guys” like Marc Lawrence and Roy Barcroft, Out of the Storm is edge-of-the-seat entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

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