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“Wicked” Lily Bishop joins a wagon train to California, led by Michael Fabian and Johnny Trumbo, but news of the Gold Rush scatters the train. When Johnny and Michael finally arrive, Lily is rich from her saloon and storekeeper (former slaver) Pharaoh Coffin is bleeding the miners dry. But worse troubles are ahead: California is inching toward statehood, and certain people want to make it their private empire. Read More »
Faith Domergue, the latest of Howard Hughes’ protegees, made her film debut in 1950’s Where Danger Lives. Domergue plays Margo Lannington the wife of Frederick Lannington (Claude Rains), an elderly millionaire possessed of a sadistic streak. Robert Mitchum co-stars as Jeff Cameron, a poor soul who falls in love with Margo without knowing that she’s married. During a violent confrontation with the jealous Frederick, Cameron knocks the older man out and stumbles out of the room. Upon his return, he discovers that Frederick is dead. Margo had smothered her husband during Cameron’s absence, but she insists that Cameron is the killer. Read More »
John Farrow’s true-to-life propaganda history of the resistible rise of A Hitler. Der Fuhrer is played by lookalike Bobby Watson, and his “gang” are an unbeatable group of WWII era refugee German actors, all inhabiting their roles rather convincingly. Martin Kosleck is a superb Goebbels. Read More »
UCLA Film & Television Archive writes:
Right from the opening sequence in which a seemingly possessed young heiress (Gail Russell) throws herself desperately in front of a moving train, this haunted noir comes packed with “highly-charged atmosphere” (Variety). At the center of all the doom is Edward G. Robinson as John Triton, a stage mentalist who suddenly discovers he can actually see the future and becomes overwhelmed by grim, fatalistic visions. Jerome Cowan plays his partner who exploits Triton’s powers for profit until Triton disappears. Ironically enough, this saga of man tormented by the future unfolds largely in flashback as the young woman’s boyfriend (John Lund) searches for the reason behind her suicide attempt. Director John Farrow keeps this adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich novel moving at a brisk thriller’s pace through deepening shadows. Read More »
ArtsEmerson writes: An update of the Faust story set in urban modernity, with Milland as the mysterious Nick Beal, the Mephistophelean tempter. District Attorney Joseph Foster (Mitchell) is after an elusive gangster when Beal—emerging from the fog—offers his assistance. The price to be paid is clear, as Farrow chillingly charts the initially law-abiding lawyer’s descent into corruption. With a notable hard-boiled turn from noir regular Audrey Totter, as the fallen woman Beal enlists to draw Foster away from his marriage. Read More »
Dennis Schwartz writes:
John Farrow’s Calcutta is a fast-paced old-fashioned adventure yarn, shot entirely in Paramount’s backlot. Seton Miller does the screenplay. It’s an entertaining potboiler, though a minor work … Ladd gives an icy action-hero performance as someone who revels in his disdain for women as untrustworthy companions. By Ladd’s politically incorrect moves, he takes on the characteristics of the film noir protagonist–which gives this programmer its energy. Ladd quotes an ancient Hindu saying ‘Man who trust woman walk on duckweed over pond,’ which tells us all we want to know about how he has stayed alive for so long while in the company of dangerous women, ones like Virginia, while Bill so easily succumbed to the beauty of the femme fatale Read More »
Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
A young woman (Jean Simmons) manages a remote California sheep ranch with her father (Brian Aherne). A plane carrying a sheriff (Stephen McNally) and a convicted murderer (Rory Calhoun) crashes nearby. Both men are cared for by the girl, who doesn’t know at first which is the cop and which is the criminal. She falls in love with the convicted man and believes protestations of innocence, but the vindictive sheriff tries to dissuade her of these feelings. Given several chances to finish each other off, both sheriff and convict relent. Under the influence of the girl, they agree to return to Utah together, where (it is implied) the criminal will be given a bias-free trial. Read More »