High Noon (1952)

High Noon (1952) is a renowned suspense classic Western that is not in any sense of the term a film noir, although it yet reflects many film noir values, and was made by many film makers associated by the style, while at the same time being a product of its exact age, and so reflects many of the concerns social and political of the film noir style, while remaining faithful to its own underlying genre. That of the Western.

Not even in this sense then can High Noon (1952) be quantified as a film noir western, like many movies of the period may be. And yet there are so many minute noir markers placed within, and a certain sensitivity to the ailing male and some more complex female relations, as well as commentary on the public body politic, and the influence on community of criminal fear, direct from the government as much as from the villains in our midst, those determined unto lawlessness. 

Dark Passage (1947)

Dark Passage (1947) is a face-lift ex-con innocent hunted man on the run POV prison break cabbie sexual chemistry classic Warner Bros. mystery picture starring the Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, who are all over this marvel of a chemistry set of a classic film noir.

The mythology of the face-lift is deeply rooted in cultural narratives and societal expectations, particularly regarding beauty and aging. In many stories, women undergo face-lifts to retain their partners, highlighting the societal pressure for women to remain beautiful. 

This contrasts with men, who are often depicted as seeking new partners rather than maintaining their current relationships. The perceived ugliness of aging women is seen as natural and biological, though it is heavily influenced by cultural standards that do not apply equally to men.

Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946)

Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946) is an immediately post-war German Trümmerfilm, a style or genre translated as rubble film and was possibly the first film to be produced in Germany after World War Two, and maybe even the first anti-fascist film should such a canon be similarly useful.

To compare the cinema of 1946 and sample that of the US and that of Germany is to stumble upon the most severe of contrasts, and yet within this the word noir might still function to explain what we are seeing.

Die Mörder sind unter uns, known in English as The Murderers Are Among Us, is the most naturally ironic film one could imagine. The irony of anything at all happening in the rubbled remains of Berlin is strong enough without adding romance, and Christmas.

I, The Jury (1953)

I, The Jury (1953) is a violent sexified-narcotic Mike Hammer exploitation shocker Private Eye thriller film noir, in fact it was the first violent Mike Hammer exploitation shocker Private Eye thriller film noir.

Mike Hammer is explosively portrayed by newcomer Biff Elliot who walks into shot and examines the dead body of his one-armed pal, some crude jokes are made and then Hammer brutally attacks a journalist, smashing him into a rack of plates. This is as solid a character introduction as was ever made.

While not a great film nor a great effort at a film, I, The Jury (1953) is one of these movies that seems responsible for some of the truer of film noir's tropes and visions.

Champion (1949)

Champion (1949) is a sports-noir drifter narrative boxing film noir rags to riches drama of hubris and corruption, starring Kirk Douglas as a one time bum who finds he is a great boxer, and makes an all-American stab at gaining the all-American system of fight-rigging, mobsterism, and big sport gambling and media.

A remarkable and entertaining vehicle for the young Kirk Douglas, for whom this was a certain break-through role, Champion (1949) is not lauded much as a great noir, although it is, with first rate performances and high drama and emotion, sweeping through much of American social systems and presenting as well as any other high-period film noir does, the story of the individual against himself, against the country, against the insurmountable cruelty and manipulations of the system that elevates sport to the wild, corrupted and abusive focal point of life it will become.

Outrage (1950)

Outrage (1950) is a powerful woman's social message rape-discussing drama film noir from Ida Lupino, the undoubted quintessential queentessence of noir and lady noir and women's noir and femme-noir, and all things that do resolve upon the maximum that may be said of this gender and sex in the medium we best adore, and medium that best expresses the century. 

The fact is and was that America in 1950 was so neck-deep in a formal misogyny which allowed casual sexism to flourish in every look and leer, and in which even the children wolf whistle the older women.

Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960)

Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960) is a seminal and classic French horror plastic surgery father-daughter mad scientist murder noir which turned out to be one of the very first productions of the modern horror era, replete with psychological fear, gore and incidental lurking canine terror, with a dash of policer procedural.

The film centers on and at the same time revolves around and turns upon while circling the notional conceit that a plastic surgeon is determined to perform a face transplant on his daughter, who was disfigured in a car accident. 

During production, efforts were made to align with European censorship standards by minimizing graphic gore. Despite being cleared by censors, Eyes Without a Face sparked controversy upon its European release, with critics offering reactions that ranged from praise to disgust.

Hard Boiled Mahoney (1947)

Hard Boiled Mahoney (1947) is a Cy Endfield Bowery Boys comedy P.I. film noir pastiche murder spiritualist romp with Teala Loring and Betty Compson.

In early 1946, director Cy Endfield began working for Monogram Pictures, a studio known for producing low-budget B-films. Monogram, established in the early 1930s, found greater success in the late 1940s under the leadership of president Steve Broidy. 

The studio’s philosophy was to keep production costs low, focusing on well-known but not top-tier actors. Broidy once candidly remarked that some audiences preferred "stale bread" over "fresh bread," reflecting the studio's aim to cater to a specific segment of the movie-going public.

The Night Runner (1957)

The Night Runner (1957) is a social issue mental health exploitation psycho patient in the community murder film noir directed by Abner Biberman and starring Ray Danton as Roy Turner, a psychiatric patient who is released into the community as a bad board level decision made by an overcrowded Californian sanatorium.

As an interesting take on an unusual social issue, The Night Runner is one of a run of film noir B pictures from Universal, offers a unique and intense viewing experience as serious but seriously misunderstood social and medical issues are collided into exploitation fiction. 

Le Corbeau (1943)

Le Corbeau (The Raven) (1943) is a French poison pen letter rural moral paranoia classic film noir, and of all the classics of the French positioning in any canon, it's one beauty of a production that bears multiple readings, as well as offering mystery, character, love and violence.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1943 film Le Corbeau (The Raven) is a cornerstone of French cinema, notable for its controversial origins, dark narrative, and enduring legacy. Set in a small French town, the film unravels a sinister mystery involving anonymous poison pen letters accusing a local doctor, Rémy Germain, of performing illegal abortions and engaging in an affair. 

Hell Drivers (1957)

Hell Drivers (1957) is a blue-collar ex-con high energy British exploitation truck noir tale of violence, corruption and the unscrupulous carriage of aggregates across small distances within the British countryside.

Stanley Baker as per the script of this still popular tale of truckery does the ex-con going straight routine with heavy nods and grave expressions from start to finish, indicating that he has been 'away' and that he has been living 'here and there' and doing 'this and that' while being from 'around' and having lived at 'around' for several years.

It isn't really full explained what this ex-con with an upright galvanised steel morality did to wind up in prison, but we know that because of his escapade he did one year of time, although more meaningfully, it seems that his younger — brother played by the mysterious Klae Corporation's very own invisible man David McCallum — seems to have been permanently injured during the crime, and reduced to working in his mother's Welsh corner shop for life.

This Island Earth (1955)

This Island Earth (1955) is a classic nineteen-fifties sci-fi adventure monster interplanetary interocitor movie with neither film noir style nor qualities to speak of, but which yet speaks of the Cold War, the connection between pulp fiction and the cinema and the invention of styles and sciences new in the storytelling of the period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, that started in 1947, two years after the end of World War II, and lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and has film noir elements and connections in more than enough areas of style and production for it to pass unnoticed by an serious noireau looking at the year of 1955 in the United States. This island earth could take it no more.

Pickup (1951)

Pickup (1951) is a tragic Hugo Haas femme fatale on the make tale of weak and devious minor characters planning murder in a rural backwater, starring Beverly Michaels as a bored and ambitious scheming woman, who attempts in the style of The Postman Always Rings Twice, to kill an older man for his dough.

With its scuzzy setting, between the old railway shack where Hugo Haas' vulnerable old widower lives, the nearby fairground, and the rails themselves, it is a simple an exploitative tale, assuming the worst of the wicked female lead, and the worst of her husband, the sap, the mark in this matter, the man she marries for money.

Blackboard Jungle (1955)

The Blackboard Jungle (1955) is the ultimate mid-1950s juvenile delinquent scare movie and features Glenn Ford in one of his best roles as a teacher in a violent urban school for boys. 

Within The Blackboard Jungle (1955) are both significant lies and truths, as well as discussion of racism underpinned by the thin air of misogyny, and an uncomfortable sexism which is constant enough to form an almost separate movie. Unlike in noir in toto, and this is not noir, there are no interesting roles for women in this man's, man's, man's, man's movie.

The Unseen (1945)

The Unseen (1945) is an old dark house children and governess paranoid woman lousy husband old homeless woman murder mystery mansion house genuine thrillodrama film noir, from mid the paranoia period of women in crazy marriages era of the Golden Age of the Silver Screen

Watching The Unseen (1945) you will be upset into a derisory frame of mind when you hear how often the prettiness of Gail Russell's character is referred to. 

I am sure this might have contributed to her drinking herself to death, being called pretty in so many scenes.

The Wolfman (1941)

The Wolfman (1941) is a Universal horror cycle classic lycanthrope thriller adventure amalgamation of Gothic ambience and psychological film making which juxtaposes the primal and the civilized within a tragically cursed protagonist who goes on to play in a variety of non-threatening carnival of monsters-style of movies, while cycling into the larger culture notions of monsterism coded with what in film noir terms could be a kind of gothic Überwald mis en scene.

Exploring the fragility of human identity through lycanthropic metamorphosis, The Wolfman (1941) has become one of the more indelible stopping points in the narratives of horror lore, not so much creating horror as such, but forming a solid concrete base upon which to build the identity of this genre.

Scandal Sheet (1952)

Scandal Sheet (1952) is a Phil Karlson journalism and media noir secret past murder drama categorising a cheap, cruel and disgusting press as noir as the swindling murderers who run it, based on a novel by Samuel Fuller, the film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, actor, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget genre movies with controversial themes, often made outside the conventional studio system. 

Scandal Sheet (1952) does remain an engaging noir film directed by Phil Karlson, featuring Broderick Crawford as managing editor of a sensationalist newspaper, John Derek as an ambitious reporter, and Donna Reed as a principled journalist. Based on Samuel Fuller's novel The Dark Page, the film opens with the murderer's identity revealed—editor Mark Chapman (Crawford) kills his ex-wife, setting off a tense storyline as he encourages his staff to solve the very crime he committed.

The Lady Gambles (1949)

The Lady Gambles (1949) is a gambling addiction, social and moral descent romance women's film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck, turning in a stunning and brutal performance as a woman who is overcome with addiction, so as to the point of ruination.

As the film opens prepare to see Barbara Stanwyck punched 11 or 12 times in the face by three mooks in an alley, each bruising face-breaking blow leaving a great ouch across the style. It has to be one of the more terrifying noir beatings.

This leads to a hospital managed by a cynical hard smoking medical stoic played by John Hoyt, and the whole flashback, fading screen, voiceover here-is-how-it happened commences, and Double Indemnity style, the story unravels, although it ain't such a hot story.

Time Out Of Mind (1947)

Time Out Of Mind (1947) is a gothic angst failed artist faux-Gainsborough historical family drama semi-nautical film noir which was not a success in its day, and which retains curiosity for the seasoned noireaux being a Robert Siodmak film, and the certain inclusion of a certain Ella Raines, adored by the fans, for all time.

The film opens with a title card reading Rachel Field's Time Out of Mind and begins with an offscreen narration by the character Kate Fernald, who recounts the return of Chris Fortune from his first sea voyage. 

The production of this film is notable for its behind-the-scenes developments, as detailed in various news items. It's also notable for a certain lack of popularity among the guardians of noirish good taste, which makes it perennially ripe for reappraisal.

The Miami Story (1954)

The Miami Story (1954) is a Kefauver hearings inspired city-titled Florida noir tale of mobsters, massive hidden television cameras, an informant and murder suspect who come out of hiding to boss the police about, and roving cameras which film the streets of Miami as automobiles carry mooks, thugs and suspects from location to location.

The Miami Story (1954) is a delight of cheap and effective film noir from the most unconvincing period of the style, when black and white denoted cost-savings and often meant that the stock and trade shadows of noir were consigned to the cutting room floor, in order to create a brighter and whiter screen of action, better suited to the television.

Mysterious Intruder (1946)

Mysterious Intruder (1946) is a private-eye secret fortune mystery film noir based on the radio drama The Whistler. Directed by William Castle, the production features Richard Dix, Barton MacLane and Nina Vale. 

It is the fifth of Columbia Pictures' eight The Whistler films produced in the 1940s, the first seven starring Dix.

Dix plays the film noir private eye which is set up to tip top perfection complete with the flashing neon sign working the urban evening outwith and casting a technogothic glow across the office.

As a theme, sanatorium noir has never been fully proposed despite their being some decent sanatorium cinema from the 1940s in particular. Mysterious Intruder (1946) is fun and loose, not always convincing, but yet features a strong noir cast, relative to the budget and production values.

Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951)

Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951) is a violent prison gang riot escape attempt Crane Wilbur brutal warden crime exploitation jailtime film noir favourite, with docu over tones, and a blazing Steve Cochrane facing down a sadistic screwlord Ted de Corsia while good boy jailor David Brian attempts to bring peaceful methods to the brutalised American penal colony, Folsom California State Prison.

Steve Cochrane grimaces dirty smirking handsome revenge as con Chuck Daniels, a name we should have left at the cell door. Chuck it is though. Chuck is angry. Chuck is gritty. Chuck wants to chuck it all. He is pure dirty fed up with stir.

The Power of The Whistler (1945)

The Power of The Whistler (1945) is a death-prediction amnesia thriller mystery identity serial film noir movie, and is the eerie third entry into the 1940s serial noir The Whistler series.

In the film, Janis Carter plays Jean Lang, a character whose actions spark intrigue and tension as she makes some highly questionable decisions regarding a complete stranger she encounters. 

Jean, who is telling fortunes using cards, becomes concerned when her cards predict grave danger for a man she notices in a restaurant, played by Richard Dix, who is suffering from that most famous of every film noir malady available to the script writes, amnesia. 

The Argyle Secrets (1948)

The Argyle Secrets (1948) is a zany meta low budget fun and mysterious film noir parody item that while styled on such noir as The Maltese Falcon, does try to either massively plagiarise another work of art altogether, while concealing the fact in the copying of other mystery hits.

As an almighty act of cobbling together The Argyle Secrets (1948)

The Argyle Secrets (1948) exemplifies the creative opportunities and limitations of post-war Hollywood, a period marked by declining studio power and the rise of independent production. Changes in tax law, the fallout from the Paramount antitrust case, and declining audience numbers in 1947 all contributed to the weakening of the major studios, creating space for new production companies to emerge. 

Shockproof (1949)

Shockproof (1949) is a parole-officer and female murderer melodrama romance and politics film noir from Douglas Sirk, starring the at-that-time hot and noiresque married couple of Cornel Wilde and Patricia Knight.

Cornel Wilde is the mental-headed and ambitious parole officer who falls crazily in love with his super attractive sexy as the day is long charge Patricia Knight, a one-time murderer who bucks the system early on be being female. 

And not being content to be a parole-officer romance and murder thriller, with suburban melodramatic tones with the excellent feature of having a super-attractive female criminal who is distinct it must be said from any traditional femme fatale film role, and a distant but crucial arc backstory line of political ambition, and the ditto the noir-like corruption of the civil and moral mind into lawbreaking middle class tearaway, Shockproof (1949) also veers hard into a couple on the run story at around its hour mark.

Vicki (1953)

Vicki (1953) is a modelling-business murder mystery flashback violent cop remake of the earlier classic film noir I Wake Up Screaming (1941).

Richard Boone is terrific as the violent cop with a terrific hunch, found peeping, creeping, never sleeping, punching and shouting and best of all, and in the most aggravating urban New York big city cop style of noir, just deciding that a person is guilty - in this case merely from a photograph - and then simply beating them and shouting at them and others too if that's what ti takes, beating and shouting repeatedly until the case is closed.

Vicki is the ambitious young model making her way, and somehow not forgiven for her pushiness and willingness to mould the truth to her amorality, from time to time. She pays for this upfront, and is murdered, a murdered glamour girl in an uncaring city. 

The Limping Man (1953)

The Limping Man (1953) is a murder and blackmail American in England post-war mystery thriller film noir from Cy Endfield and starring Lloyd Bridges, and one with a classic unwelcome and rather dire trope ending which renders most of it somewhat pointless.

Terror Street, which is also 1953, and starring Dan Duryea is quite a similar production in many respects. There is first the trope of the American in England, a man who spreads glamour wherever he goes.

Both films of course commence in mid air, as the American hero lands in London, ready for action, love and mystery. Both films unravel in a leading mystery across the city, joined by the police, but focused on uncertain crimes and small culture clashes.

Night of the Demon (1957)

Night of the Demon (1957) is a Jacques Tourneur British horror demon special effects creepy supernatural sceptical disappearance and mystery magic murder movie, that is not a film noir, but which like all of the fifties horrorouevre does confine itself to noir, insofar as noir themes, effects and personnel will dominate. 

For who could be more noir than noir's Jacques Tourneur, director of the quintessential expression of the style, that is of course Out Of The Past from 1947, one ten year decade hence, noir incarnate no less.

Yet still who more noir than Dana Andrews, too, quite the figure of the film style, a man of noir, and one of the solids of the medium?

The Whistler (1944)

The Whistler (1944) is a murder-suicide hitman noir and the first of the The Whistler film noir film serial series, and is directed by William Castle and stars Richard Dix.

If there were ever a serial with a film noir theme or a film noir touch and style, and one of course from the Golden Age of movie serial adventures, it was The Whistler.

The Whistler is great because we never see The Whistler themselves, but we see their shadow, which is a most film noir manner of appearance, and this character, invisible and present, does speak to the noir losers and saps that are the heroes of these films, always and with one exception played by Richard Dix. 

Fear (1946)

Fear (1946) is a classic low budget Crime and Punishment derived film noir tale of murder, urban isolation, poverty, morality, and an object lesson in the nascent and embryonic video-visual techniques employed in the name of production in the 1940s, in a time even before television.

This Monogram Pictures production of  Crime and Punishment is an example of what cinema can do to a text and will do to a text, because it is barely Dostoyevsky, and yet leans into that tale not just for narrative and dramatic features, but to try and pull some of the existential magic over form the olden Russian experiences of the day to day realisations of pre-modern life in 1866. Everything stated was to come.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) is an early film noir era Alfred Hitchcock charming uncle  prototypical mainstreet serial killer psychopath philosophical murder mystery shocker oncle-noir suspense thriller drama, which is a also a classic film noir, and surely indicative of Hitchcock's effect on and contribution to the style.

It is noted in these chaumers that Alfred Hitchcock is a genre unto himself, and there is a lot of truth in that. So distinct becomes his work, from its earliest to its latest, and undoubtedly it is the same, and uses motifs and styles that only he seemed to be able to excel within. 

His to-camera photography is unique in that it never breaks the fourth wall, but looks through the fourth wall to place his target character within the mind of the audience. Compelling.

The Return of The Whistler (1948)

The Return of The Whistler (1948) is a Cornell Woolrich family plot paranoid woman cheapo The Whistler series film noir tale from the high period of American film serial and film noir cinema.

It's an old noir ruse, to frame up the female inheritor of a largescale superdoughed family estate and then persuade her that she is mad, until she almost or really does become mad, only to melt into relief after discovering that suburban and middle class, or elite living is in fact a sham, a conspiracy and an utter hoax of frauds.

The film begins with Ted meeting Alice Dupres Barkley, a young French woman played by Lenore Aubert. Despite knowing each other for only two days, the couple impulsively decides to marry.

She Played With Fire (1957)

She Played With Fire (1957) is a psychological Limey thriller noir sort of Brit insurance fraud melodrama mystery with widespread stiff upper lippery and confusion raining doubt on a lovely couple of paranoiacs.

She Played with Fire, also known as Fortune Is a Woman, is a captivating British-American film noir from 1957, directed by Sidney Gilliat. The film stars Jack Hawkins as Oliver Branwell, an insurance investigator who finds himself entangled in a web of arson, blackmail, and murder after a chance encounter with an old flame, Sarah Moreton, played by Arlene Dahl.

Women's Prison (1955)

Women's Prison (1955) is a high period women's prison drama film noir, with a wealth of noir talent and an outré head of steam as it tackles psychopathically sublimated sexual suppression in the form of a violent warder played by Ida Lupino.

Jan Sterling, Audrey Totter, Juanita Moore, Cleo Moore make a cell block of sass and noir dialogue, while outlandish banter and bravado make stir seem fun, although not for the mortally bullied cracked up manslaughter case of a gentle woman cast into hellish chokey, played by Phyllis Thaxter.

Howard Duff plays a pipe pokin heart throbbin prison doctor, who is deeply concerned for the welfare of in particular Phyliss Thaxter's broken form, as she is strait-jacketed, broken, and psychologically torn apart.

Death of a Salesman (1951)

Death of a Salesman (1951) is the first based on a play film adaptation of the Arthur Miller 1949 stage drama of the same name, starring Frederc March as the iconic and iconological Willy Loman, the American neveryman, the existential nothing of the coming decades in one staring suicidal staring contest with death.

Just before the film was about to be released, Arthur Miller threatened to sue Columbia Studios over the short that was to appear before Death of a Salesman. This short film, Career of a Salesman, showed what the producers believed was a more typical American salesman, and was an attempt to defuse possible accusations that Death of a Salesman was an anti-American film. Eventually, Columbia agreed to remove the 10-minute short from the film's theatrical run.

The Secret Of The Whistler (1946)

The Secret Of The Whistler (1946) is an infidelity lousy husband greed and murder noir tale from The Whistler series, starring Richard Dix and Leslie Brooks, directed by George Sherman.

A wealthy wife suspects her artist husband's affair with his model. He poisons his wife for inheritance but faces unexpected consequences after her death. A thriller exploring greed, betrayal, and the consequences of criminal actions.

Of all the serial movie concepts, icons, characters and themes, from the earliest moments of serialisation through the incredible eras of the 1930s and 1940s which developed the serial movie, the absolute prototypes of the infinite tankerloads of television shows we have created since 1960, through what are now generations of streaming services, the absolute origin of these is the movie serial, and of those serials none is no more noir than The Whistler.

The Shop at Sly Corner (1947)

The Shop at Sly Corner (1949) is a lightweight Limey mystery film noir with a pleasant historical creep factor and an antiques business setting, featuring a psychopathic Pinkie-like young shop boy on a noir rise to power over the mild mannered walrus faced character actor stylings of Oscar Homoloka

The Shop at Sly Corner is based on a play by Edward Percy, a Conservative MP, which debuted in London in May 1945 and received positive reviews, with Variety praising it as "good theatre." 

The play enjoyed a successful two-year run in London, generating a significant profit for its investors after an initial production cost of just $12,000. 

His Kind of Woman (1951)

His Kind of Woman (1951) is a Howard Hughes produced adventure comedy face transplant gambler noir with both light and heavy touches and an array of almost spoofily delivered scenes and lines which might have been suggestive of noir satire were it not for Howard Hughes failing movie policies, which always created slightly aberrant Hollywoodish features.

The story of His Kind of Woman (1951) tells of how a deported gangster's plan to re-enter the USA involves skulduggery at a Mexican resort, and gambler Dan Milner is caught in the middle. The end goal is a rather unspecified face transplant operation a variety of post-Nazi science that blends into the Hollywood fantasies of the day, unspoken and feared.

Lifeboat (1944)

Lifeboat (1944) is an Alfred Hitchcock John Steinbeck wartime drama-of-limited-setting Nazi paranoia romance with occasional noir reminiscent moments and qualities, although largely a stand alone and unique tension and romance drama of amputation and elegance, class-clashes and peril.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock,  ce filme la the awesome and always enjoyable and atmospheric Lifeboat is a gripping American survival film based on a story by John Steinbeck. Set entirely on a lifeboat adrift in the Atlantic during World War II, the movie explores the complexities of human nature under extreme circumstances.

The film opens with the aftermath of a naval battle: a British ship and a German U-boat have sunk each other. Eight survivors from different backgrounds find themselves crammed into a lifeboat. Among them is Willi, a German U-boat crewman who is pulled aboard. 

The Night Has Eyes (1942)

The Night Has Eyes (1942) is a Limey lunar mystery old-dark-house horror quicksand post-Spanish Civil War thriller starring the man of that moment James Mason, and which has variously been known as Moonlight Madness and Terror House.

Directed by Leslie Arliss and also starring Joyce Howard, Wilfrid Lawson, Mary Clare and Tucker McGuire, it is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Alan Kennington.

It's a tale of hidden and permanent recurrent madness, and viewers are exposed to James Mason . . . "I've made my kill for the night" he says with the placidity typical of his style  . . . murdering a monkey and then resolving himself to the firm Englishness for which he is renowned.

Eyes In The Night (1942)

Eyes In The Night (1942) is a crime and detection sleuthing espionage spy noir directed by Fred Zinnemann which features Edward Arnold as blind detective Mac MacLain, and the dog Frida, as the dog Friday.

Oddball, unusual and earnest, Eyes in the Night (1942) doesn't suffer as many of its cheapo contemporaries do from dud scripting and the ill-effects of bum-row production values.

This celluloid endeavor, which inaugurated an ill-fated B-movie detective series, featured the venerable Edward Arnold in the role of a sightless sleuth, and although the public’s tepid reception precluded the realization of subsequent instalments, super oddity and noir make good companions and this blind sleuth endeavour has a lot to say.

The Wild One (1953)

The Wild One (1953) is a classic teenage rebellion social commentary biker movie, renowned for its impact and shock, and featuring Marlon Brando as the iconic Johhny Strabler. The Wild One (1953) is in fact none other than the final word in being the classic teenage rebellion social commentary biker movie, presenting ideas for the breakaway generation to come post World War 2, a Boomer cohort that will create a division in liberal suburban democratic and generational politics and lifestyles, a splice of the 'cickle across America's brow, never to be repaired.

They boom. The bikes boom and as long as our society keeps hearing those bikes . . .

The movie captures 1950s youth rebellion and the generation gap, blending raw emotion and social commentary. Brando’s iconic performance, along with the movie's gritty portrayal of outlaw culture, cements it as a seminal work in motorcycle cinema.

House of Wax (1953)

House of Wax (1953) is a 3D remake historic horror chiller thriller non film noir blockbuster movie from the gold age of 3D cinema.

House of Wax, filmed under the working title The Wax Works, was Warner Bros.' response to the unexpected success of the 3D film Bwana Devil, which premiered in November 1952. 

Recognizing the potential of 3D technology, Warner Bros. adopted Julian and Milton Gunzburg's Natural Vision 3D system, the same system used in Bwana Devil.

 They chose to remake their 1933 Technicolor thriller, Mystery of the Wax Museum, originally based on Charles S. Belden's play The Wax Works. 

While Mystery included a newspaper subplot and was set in its release year, House of Wax, set around 1902, retained much of the original's plot and dialogue.

Hold Back Tomorrow (1955)

Hold Back Tomorrow (1955) is a serious but strange outré death row doomed couple fantasy film noir about two lost romantic souls converging in the darkest of circumstances.

In a dramatic move so odd it could only materialise in the liberally weird machination fantasies of the Hollywood machine in the death-of-film-noir period, which ranges across the five years between 1955 and 1960, a condemned man is offered the chance to have whatever he so desires, under the law, offering a crazed film premise that only a bluff and wild film noir producer in the 1950s could never refuse.

Donovan's Brain (1953)

Donovan's Brain (1953) is a body-horror exploitation mad scientist conscious disembodied brain thriller horror science fiction fantasy crime drama both embedded in and invested in and owing a debt to the film noir style.

As much an outré noir as it is a horror and as much a mad scientist romance drama as it is an exploitation shocker, Donovan's Brain retains charms far beyond its modest origins and becomes semantically more interesting with every year that passes since 1953.

Spoilers Alert the forgiving concluding moral dramatic termination and completing moral moments of this crime and weakness madness drama, does ask questions about body stealing, corpse desecration and other post-mortem brutalities which we must strangely brush aside.

Affair in Trinidad (1952)

Affair in Trinidad (1952) is an exotically located crypto-Nazi post-war thriller vehicle for the return of Rita Hayworth who had wowed the world in Gilda, and appears here collided once more with some of the same cast including the rough and sarcastically toned Glenn Ford and the bumbling native idiotically styled  craven lackey themed performance by Steven Geray.

It is not as bad as it sounds, and although not a classic noir nor even a noir much discussed, nor a classic of any kind of noir not even non-noir or faux-Caribbean noir, for anyone in the swing of the full film noir journey much of the usual enjoyment is found here, in both the slightly angrier than usual performance from mug in the tropics, Glenn Ford, and the constant soft-focus camera lingering on the multiply costume changed gorgeousness of Rita Hayworth.

The Wrong Man (1956)

The Wrong Man (1956) is a classic Alfred Hitchcock wrongfully accused man film noir movie, starring Henry Fonda as the man accused, and Vera Miles as the wife-at-home who loses her mind in the process.

One of the most moving of all classic film noir, in terms of the dramatic effect, The Wrong Man is a powerful procedural object lesson in legal terror and powerlessness, framing up the wrong guy as only Hitchcock can, and bringing deep and dangerous emotions to the tableau.

The duet of Henry Fonda and Vera Miles is well cast, and both face their demons. Unlike in many a film noir there is no slippery slope within this classic, in the sense of the wrong side of the tracks and one-false-step style noir that the style favours.

Brighton Rock (1948)

Brighton Rock (1948) is a classic limey gangland early youth violence exploitation and murder film noir, and a classic of the style, a classic of British cinema, a classic of the cinema of Graham Greene, and a ground-breaking and block-rocking belter of its day, offering some of the purest cinema of the post-war British age.

And this in a classic Graham Greene pre-war tale, a combination of multiple efforts of genius to create a quite uniquely British noir experience.

One will be warned that entire books have been written about the film of Brighton Rock (1948) and even about Richard Attenborough’s ran-sackingly riveting portrayal of Pinkie Brown. 

Borderline (1950)

Borderline (1950) is an undercover female cop narcotic smuggling romantic copper couple on the run chase caper noir starring Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor as undercover narcotic cops on the job in Mexico, unaware that each of the other is an undercover narcotic cop on the job in Mexico.

A gentle noir, with no profound moments of existential threat, anxiety, peril nor paranoia, Borderline (1950) is an undecided film noir, capering with the caper format at times and nudging on occasion into comedy, especially as it adopts and parades a standard series of idle Mexicana, example in the made up typecast stereo of the bumbling sombrero and the old "Si senor" routine, which blocks out the light at every turn in this cheapish escapade.

Naked Alibi (1954)

Naked Alibi (1954) is a cop on the edge psycho killer chase thriller that endeavours to spill the ills of suburban America into the criminal wilds of Mexico, as an unhinged killer baker bridges the merciless and pointless gap between the normative strains of the American Dream and the animal flavours of the real world of criminal human agony.

The two tend to meet flatly in the face of the stylistically drowning form of mid 50s noir, when the residues of dramatised psychologically criminality, portrayed with such fun in the 1940s, turn to sour and serious and usually quite odd and unexplained abnormality, as the noir ideals begin to fade mid-decade.

Naked Alibi  (1954) stands as a testament to the enduring allure of film-noir, even as the genre evolved through the 1950s. The film brings together a trio that guarantees a noir masterpiece: Sterling Hayden, Gloria Grahame, and the shadowy ambiance of noir cinematography.