The suave Don Juan Ricardo ‘Rick’ De Villa (John Bromfield) and his married lover Fritzi Darvel would like to take off together, but his lack of money prevents them from doing so. A chance encounter introduces Rick to the young, but terminally ill socialite Valerie Bancroft (Martha Vickers), in whom Rick sees the solution to his predicament. Rick sweeps her off her feet and they soon marry, although Valerie’s entourage are suspicious of him. Rick then proceeds to try and bring about Valerie’s demise so he can inherit her wealth and live the good life with Fritzi.
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Directed and produced by W. Lee Wilder, written by Mindret Lord (story) and Fred Freiberger (screenplay), starring John Bromfield as Ricardo ‘Rick’ De Villa, Martha Vickers as Valerie Bancroft, Robert Hutton as Dr. Peter Kirk, Rosemarie Stack as Fritzi Darvel, Eve Miller as Marsha Jordan, Max Palmer as Detective Sgt. John Fullmer, Eddie Bee as Don Darvel, Robert Bice as Dr. Tom Harrison, Pierre Watkin as Jim Winthrop, Beal Wong as Art Dealer, Rusty Wescoatt as Husky Detective at Finale, Mitchell Kowall as Coroner, Jack, Daly as Master of Ceremonies, Paul McGuire as William (the butler), George Conrad as Bell Boy and Kay Garrett as Waiter.
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Source: “The Big Bluff” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 28 November 2012. Web. 17 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bluff.
A car containing a bullet ridden blackmailer’s corpse is left in front of the police station. The daughter of a mayoral candidate had visited the blackmailer that day, and is brought in for questioning. A newspaper editor, who does not want that candidate to win, visits Lt. Carson and pressures him to tarnish the daughter’s reputation until the election is decided. Carson resists.
The corrupt medical officer takes orders from the editor, and is commanded to get the body out of the police station before anyone else learns that the blackmailer was poisoned before being shot. Some slapstick comedy ensues during attempts to smuggle the body out of the station. After further plot complications, the murderer and his motives are revealed. The mayoral candidate’s daughter is cleared of suspicion before her father’s chance in the election is ruined.
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Directed by Otto Brower, produced by Robert Bassler, written by Charles G. Booth and Scott Darling, starring Carole Landis as Janet Bradley, William Gargan as Lt. Sam Carson, Don Beddoe as Dr. Yager (Medical Examiner), Richard Crane as Johnny Williams (Reporter), Mary Anderson as Nora Bard, John Ireland as Det. Engelhofer, Charles Russell as Arthur Templeton, Roy Roberts as Max Calvert, Mabel Paige as Flossie, Stanley Prager as Ruzinsky (Milkman) and Charles Tannen as Ames (Reporter).
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Source: “Behind Green Lights” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 17 January 2013. Web. 17 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_Green_Lights.
During World War II, J. Carrol Naish plays an optometrist who is really a Nazi spy. A book of his that he uses to decode a Nazi spy code is stolen from him while he was walking on the San Francisco waterfront at night. A Nazi agent who comes to meet him (John Carradine) is told of the theft and they team up to try to find the book.
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Directed by Steve Sekely, produced by Arthur Alexander and Alfred Stern, written by Martin Mooney (story and screenplay) and Irwin Franklyn (screenplay), starring John Carradine, J. Carrol Naish, Maris Wrixon, Edwin Maxwell, Terry Frost, John Bleifer, Marten Lamont, Olga Fabian, Claire Rochelle and Billy Nelson.
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Source: “Waterfront (1944 film)” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 7 March 2013. Web. 17 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfront_(1944_film).
The film tells the story of a psychiatrist, Dr. Cross (Vincent Price), who is treating a young woman, Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw), who is in a coma-state, brought on when she heard loud arguing, went to her window and saw a man strike his wife with a candlestick and kill her. It also stars Lynn Bari as Dr. Cross’s nurse/lover, Elaine Jordan.
As Stewart comes out of her shock, she recognizes Dr. Cross as the killer. He then takes her to his sanitarium and at Elaine’s urging, gives Janet an overdose of insulin under the pretense of administering insulin shock therapy. He can’t bring himself to murder her in cold blood, though, and asks Elaine to get the medicine to save her. Elaine refuses, they argue, and he strangles her. A colleague of Dr. Cross, Dr. Harvey, saves Janet’s life and Dr. Cross is taken into custody by a lawyer from the District Attorney’s office.
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Directed by Alfred L. Werker, produced by Aubrey Schenck, written by Eugene Ling (screenplay), Albert DeMond (story) and Martin Berkeley (dialogue), starring Vincent Price as Dr. Richard Cross, Lynn Bari as Elaine Jordan, Frank Latimore as Lt. Paul Stewart, Anabel Shaw as Janet Stewart, Stephen Dunne as Dr. Stevens, Reed Hadley as O’Neill, Renee Carson as Mrs. Hatfield and Charles Trowbridge as Dr. Franklin Harvey.
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Source: “Shock (1946 film)” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 7 March 2013. Web. 17 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_(1946_film).
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond is on a personal crusade to bring down sadistic gangster Mr. Brown. He’s also dangerously obsessed with Brown’s girlfriend, the suicidal Susan Lowell. His main objective as a detective is to uncover what happened to a woman called “Alicia” from the crime boss’s past. Mr. Brown, his second-in-command McClure and thugs Fante and Mingo kidnap and torture the lieutenant, then pour a bottle of alcohol-based hair tonic down his throat before letting him go. Diamond eventually learns through one of Brown’s past accomplices that Alicia was actually Brown’s wife. The accomplice suspects that Alicia was sent away to Sicily with former mob boss Grazzi, then murdered, tied to the boat’s anchor and permanently submerged. Diamond questions a Swede named Dreyer, who was the skipper of that boat (but now operates an antiques store as a front, bankrolled by Brown). Dreyer denies involvement, but this doesn’t prevent him from being murdered by McClure within seconds after he leaves the shop. Diamond tries to persuade Susan to leave Brown and admits he might be in love with her. He shows her a photo of Brown, Alicia and Grazzi together on the boat. Susan finally confronts Brown about his wife and is told she is still alive in Sicily, Italy, living with Grazzi.
Brown next orders a hit on Diamond. However, when his gunmen Fante and Mingo go to Diamond’s apartment, they mistakenly shoot and kill the cop’s burlesque dancer girlfriend Rita instead. Diamond sees an up-to-date photo of Alicia but realizes it wasn’t taken in Sicily (since there’s snow on the ground). This leads Diamond to suspect Brown didn’t kill Alicia but his boss Grazzi instead. Diamond is able to track Alicia to a sanitarium, where she is staying under another name. He asks for her help. Brown’s right-hand man, McClure, wants to take over. He plots with Fante and Mingo to ambush Mr. Brown, but ends up getting killed himself because they are loyal to the boss. At police headquarters, Brown shows up with a writ of habious corpus, effectively preventing Alicia to testify against her husband. Brown also brings a big stash of “money” to Fante and Mingo while they are hiding out from the police, but the box turns out to contain a bomb that apparently kills both. Brown shoots the lieutenant’s partner Sam and kidnaps Susan, planning to fly away to safety. Diamond finds a witness that could finally nail the elusive gangster — Mingo, who survived the blast and confesses that Brown was behind it all. Alicia is able to help Diamond figure out where Brown was likely to take Susan, a private airport where Brown intends to board a getaway plane.
However, the plane doesn’t show up and the film climaxes in a foggy airplane hangar shootout. Susan shines a bright light in Brown’s eyes and the lieutenant places him under arrest. The last scene shows the silhouetted figures of Diamond and Susan in the fog, considered to be one of the iconic images of film noir.
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Directed by Joseph H. Lewis, produced by Sidney Harmon, written by Philip Yordan, starring Lee J. Cobb as Lt. Ed Cullen, Jane Wyatt as Lois Frazer, John Dall as Andy Cullen, Lisa Howard as Janet Cullen, Harlan Warde as Howard Frazer, Tito Vuolo as Pietro Capa, Charles Arnt as Ernest Quimby, Marjorie Bennett as Muriel Quimby, Alan Wells as Nito Capa, Mimi Aguglia as Mrs. Capa, Bud Wolfe as Officer Blair, Morgan Farley as Rushton, Howard Negley as Detective Olson, William Gould as Doc Munson, Art Millan as United Airlines Clerk, Gordon Richards as Albert the Butler, Terry Frost as Detective, Mario Siletti as Machetti and Charles Victor as Attorney.
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Source: “The Big Combo” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 28 February 2013. Web. 12 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Combo.
Wealthy socialite Lois Frazer wants a divorce from her husband, but he’s not ready to let her go so easy. Suspecting that he intends to murder her, she calls Lieutenant Ed Cullen, with whom she’s been having an affair, in an effort to save herself from her husband’s wrath. When Ed arrives someone dies, but it’s not Lois. With his lover’s husband shot dead, Ed finds himself the ironic and dangerous position of being assigned a case that no one knows he actually witnessed. In addition to trying to control the investigation, Ed also has the misfortune of having his own younger brother, a new detective on the force, by his side every step of the way, eager to prove himself.
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Directed by Felix E. Feist, produced by Jack M. Warner, written by Seton I. Miller (screenplay), Philip MacDonald (screenplay) and Seton I. Miller (story), starring Lee J. Cobb as Lt. Ed Cullen, Jane Wyatt as Lois Frazer, John Dall as Andy Cullen, Lisa Howard as Janet Cullen, Harlan Warde as Howard Frazer, Tito Vuolo as Pietro Capa, Charles Arnt as Ernest Quimby, Marjorie Bennett as Muriel Quimby, Alan Wells as Nito Capa, Mimi Aguglia as Mrs. Capa, Bud Wolfe as Officer Blair, Morgan Farley as Rushton, Howard Negley as Detective Olson, William Gould as Doc Munson, Art Millan as United Airlines Clerk, Gordon Richards as Albert the Butler, Terry Frost as Detective, Mario Siletti as Machetti and Charles Victor as Attorney.
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Source: “The Man Who Cheated Himself” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 17 November 2013. Web. 12 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Cheated_Himself.
A physician, whose license has been revoked, poses as a practicing doctor aboard a train passing through Arizona. His presence there is part of a caper involving a fictitious patient, on whose behalf he gains access to his checked baggage, including his physician’s “black bag,” in the baggage car, whereupon he blows and then robs the safe. Then he arranges for both the fictitious patient, which he claims is infected with a communicable disease which poses an immediate and extremely serious public health risk, and himself to leave the train, presumably departing for the closest hospital, which is also far from any scheduled train stop, the two thereby escaping with $500,000 in an ambulance. The railroad officials do not discover the robbery until the train reaches Phoenix, many hours after their escape has been effected.
In response, the insurance company puts the protagonist, Charlie Norman, on the case, forcing him to postpone his previously scheduled vacation to Mexico. Joe Armstrong, an old friend who is the investigator for the railroad, works with him. Gradually evidence starts to turn up that the thieves ditched the ambulance and escaped in a rented helicopter. The scheme was thus elaborate, showing that the robbery had been carried out according to a strict timetable. But there was one misstep that kept it from being the perfect crime. As the investigators pursue this misstep, the intended timetable starts to unravel and the audience suddenly discovers who the secret mastermind is.
Finally, as the American and Mexican authorities begin to close in, the mastermind pulls his last clean-escape opportunity from his sleeve, only to have his well-intentioned wife pull a practical joke on him, in the process making a duplicate key to his locked attache case and substituting vacation travel magazines for his work papers only to discover that the robbery money is in his case, which she immediately returns, anonymously, to the railroad, thereby completely foiling what had started out to be “the perfect crime.”
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Directed by Mark Stevens, produced by Mark Stevens, written by Aben Kandel (screenplay) and Robert Angus (story), starring Mark Stevens as Charlie Norman, King Calder as Joe Armstrong, Felicia Farr as Linda Brucker, Marianne Stewart as Ruth Norman, Wesley Addy as Dr. Paul Brucker, Alan Reed as Al Wolfe, Rodolfo Hoyos Jr. as Lt. Castro, Jack Klugman as Frankie Page and John Marley as Bobik
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Source: “Time Table (film)” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 17 November 2013. Web. 12 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Table_(film).
“The Amazing Mr. X”, also known as “The Spiritualist”, is a film noir directed by Bernard Vorhaus with cinematography by John Alton. Like “Nightmare Alley” (1947), this film tells the story of a phony spiritualist racket. The film is prominently featured in Alton’s book on cinematography “Painting with Light” (1949). The film stars Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O’Donnell, and Richard Carlson. Eagle-Lion Films signed a contract with Carole Landis for the part played by Bari, but Landis committed suicide a few days before shooting began.
Two years after her husband’s death, Christine Faber (Lynn Bari) thinks she hears her late husband (Donald Curtis) calling out of the surf on the beach one night. She meets a tall dark man named Alexis (Turhan Bey) who seems to know all about her. After more ghostly manifestations, Christine and her younger sister (Cathy O’Donnell) become enmeshed in the strange life of Alexis; but he in turn finds himself manipulated into deeper cruelness than he had in mind.
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Directed by Bernard Vorhaus, produced by Benjamin Stoloff, written by Crane Wilbur, Muriel Roy Bolton and Ian McLellan Hunter, starring Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O’Donnell, and Richard Carlson.
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Source: “The Amazing Mr. X” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 10 January 2013. Web. 12 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Mr._X.
Fear in the Night is an American low budget black-and-white film noir directed by Maxwell Shane and starring Paul Kelly and DeForest Kelley (in his film debut). It is based on the Cornell Woolrich story “And So to Death” (retitled ‘”Nightmare” in 1943). Woolrich is credited under pen name William Irish. The film was remade by the same director in 1956 with the title Nightmare this time starring Edward G. Robinson playing the cop and Kevin McCarthy.
Bank teller Vince Grayson (DeForest Kelley) dreams that he stabs a man in an octagonal room of mirrors and locks the body in a closet. When he wakes up, he discovers marks on his throat, a strange key and a button in his pocket, and blood on his cuff. Cliff Herlihy (Paul Kelly), his police officer brother-in-law, tries to convince him it was just a dream. A few days later, while trying to find cover from the rain, the pair finds themselves taking shelter in the strange house from Vince’s dream. They discover that the police found two bodies in the house, one in the mirrored room and one run over in the driveway. Mrs. Belknap, who was run over by a car, gave the police a description matching Vince before she died.
At first Vince is hopeful that he is innocent because he does not know how to drive, but he recognizes the victims from his dream. Overcome with remorse, he attempts suicide, but is rescued by Cliff. The detective uncovers clues that point to an evil hypnotist (Robert Emmett Keane) manipulating Vince. They realize that the hypnotist is actually Mr. Belknap in disguise and try to trap him by pretending that Vince wants hush money. Belknap puts Vince under hypnosis and tries to get him to drown himself. Cliff rescues him from the lake and Mr. Belknap is killed in a car accident as he is trying to evade the police. It is implied that Vince will be acquitted of all charges since he killed the man in the mirrored room in self defense.
“The Amazing Mr. X”, also known as “The Spiritualist”, is a film noir directed by Bernard Vorhaus with cinematography by John Alton. Like “Nightmare Alley” (1947), this film tells the story of a phony spiritualist racket. The film is prominently featured in Alton’s book on cinematography “Painting with Light” (1949). The film stars Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O’Donnell, and Richard Carlson. Eagle-Lion Films signed a contract with Carole Landis for the part played by Bari, but Landis committed suicide a few days before shooting began.
Two years after her husband’s death, Christine Faber (Lynn Bari) thinks she hears her late husband (Donald Curtis) calling out of the surf on the beach one night.
She meets a tall dark man named Alexis (Turhan Bey) who seems to know all about her. After more ghostly manifestations, Christine and her younger sister (Cathy O’Donnell) become enmeshed in the strange life of Alexis; but he in turn finds himself manipulated into deeper cruelness than he had in mind.
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Directed by Maxwell Shane, produced by William H. Pine and William C. Thomas, written by Cornell Woolrich (story Nightmare as William Irish) and Maxwell Shane, starring Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley, Ann Doran and Kay Scott.
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Source: “Fear in the Night (1947 film)” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 9 March 2013. Web. 12 March 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_in_the_Night_(1947_film).