In late Victorian London, Jack the Ripper has been killing and maiming actresses in the night. The Burtons are forced to take in a lodger due to financial hardship. He seems like a nice young man, but Mrs. Burton suspects him of being the ripper because of some mysterious and suspicious habits, and fears for her beautiful actress niece who lives with them.Read More »
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A stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in a Mexican border town.Read More »
Fred Camper wrote:
This 1957 noir masterpiece by Jacques Tourneur stars Aldo Ray as a man fleeing a private investigator and Anne Bancroft as the barroom acquaintance who agrees to help him. Ray’s past is revealed gradually in a series of flashbacks, which are intercut with the couple’s flight and the investigator’s pursuit; by developing each narrative in a parallel space or time, Tourneur movingly articulates the theme of a character trapped by his history. The images have a smooth, almost liquid quality, the high-contrast lighting of most noirs replaced by a delicate lyricism that takes the natural world as the norm. Tourneur links this naturalism to Ray’s growing observational skills (“I know where every shadow falls,” he says), but it also contrasts with the story’s acute paranoia.Read More »
William K Everson writes:
Brute Force was touted as being by far the toughest and most violent prison film Hollywood had ever made. Many European censors felt the same way and scenes were shortened for overseas release. Actually, the violence is essentially surface violence, and earlier prison films had been rougher in a psychological sense. Nevertheless, with all of those noir icons in the cast and behind the camera (especially Miklos Rosza’s music) the film made a welcome break in the increasingly formularized cycle of big-city crime noir films. Read More »
Synopsis:
When a woman places an ad in the Chicago Times offering a $5,000 reward for information that will exonerate her son, the newspaper assigns reporter P.J. McNeal to look into the case. He learns that eleven years earlier, Frank Wiecek was convicted of killing an on duty police officer in a speakeasy and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. McNeal is quite skeptical as to his innocence and only slowly comes to realize that there was a miscarriage of justice. The real question is whether he can find evidence that would convince the pardon board and obtain Wiecek’s release.Read More »
Synopsis:
Polly and Ray Cutler finally get to go on their long delayed honeymoon – they’ve been married three years – and arrive in Niagara Falls to find that the Loomises – Rose and George – are still in what is supposed to be in their cabin. Rose Loomis is a sultry blond who catches the eye of every man around. Husband George is older and keeps to himself a great deal. The Cutlers take a different cabin but when they go off to visit the falls, Polly sees Rose passionately kissing another man. Rose and her lover are out to kill George and run off together, but things don’t quite as planned and Polly soon finds herself kidnapped and in a boat racing to the edge of the Falls.Read More »
Synopsis:
‘Guy Van Stratten, American smuggler, leaves an Italian prison term with one asset, a dying man’s words about wealthy, mysterious Gregory Arkadin. Guy finds it most pleasant to investigate Arkadin though his lovely daughter Raina, her father’s idol. To get rid of Guy, Arkadin claims amnesia about his own life prior to 1927, sending Guy off to investigate Arkadin’s unknown past. Guy’s quest spans many countries and eccentric characters who contribute clues. But the real purpose of Guy’s mission proves deadly; can Guy himself survive it?’
– Rod Crawford (IMDb)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 »
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Bill Saunders, a former prisoner of war living in England, whose experiences have left him unstable and violent, gets into a bar fight in which he in kills a man and then flees. He hides out with the assistance of a nurse, Jane Wharton, who believes his story that the killing was an accident.Read More »