richard-1's - Film Noir List

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Lieutenant Diamond (Cornel Wilde) is determined to bring down mob boss Mr Brown (Richard Conte), even if it means jeopardising his own career, but the feeling is mutual and the unscrupulous gangster is more than willing to operate outside the law to get his man.

The confrontation escalates, leading to some wince-inducing set-pieces involving such handy props as a radio and a hearing aid.

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Lake is nightclub chanteuse Ellen (Veronica Lake), and her police detective boyfriend Michael (Robert Preston) is on the hunt for assassin-for-hire Philip Raven (Alan Ladd), after Raven performed a hit on a chemist with a secret formula and a taste for blackmail.

When Raven's employer Gates (Laird Cregar) double crosses him after the job is done, Raven seeks revenge, and his path crosses with Ellen after she is hired to perform at Gates' club. Raven learns that the stolen formula is for a poison gas that is to be sold to the Japanese, and his pangs of conscience - and revelations of his tortured past - turn Ellen's fear into compassion, just as dangerous forces close in on Raven. But Ellen is still unsure if Raven can be trusted...

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A young reporter, Mike Ward (John McGuire) stumbles upon a murder victim and identifies a nervous cabbie (Elisha Cook Jr) as the person he saw previously arguing with the dead man. On the strength of Mike's testimony, the cabbie is convicted.

Mike however is haunted by the knowledge that he may have sent an innocent man to the electric chair for murder and that means the real maniac is still on the loose! Things take a turn for the worse when another murder is committed, a murder which may point, ironically enough, back to Mike...

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When discharged navy officer Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) comes home from war to his old stomping ground in the Hollywood Hills, he is shocked to discover his wife Helen (Doris Dowling) having an affair with the proprietor of the glamorous Blue Dahlia nightclub.

But when Helen is murdered and Johnny is fingered as the prime suspect, he is forced to prove his innocence, aided by a woman harbouring a dark secret, the beautiful and enigmatic Joyce (Veronica Lake).

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Petty crook Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) is arrested at the scene of a robbery and takes the rap without squealing. When he learns that his accomplice has betrayed him, he decides to go against the criminal code and become an informant.

But when his testimony against psychopathic killer Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) puts his family in danger, Nick is forced to take matters into his own hands.

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Humphrey Bogart stars as Dixon Steele, a screenwriter who is faced with the odious task of scripting a trashy best-seller. He enlists hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson to tell him the story in her own words.

Later that night, Mildred is murdered and Steele is a prime suspect; his record of belligerence when angry and his macabre sense of humour implicate him. Fortunately, lovely neighbour Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) gives him an alibi. Laurel proves to be just what Steele needed. and their friendship ripens into love. m Will suspicion, doubt, and Steele's inner demons come between them?

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Richard Widmark delivers an indelible performance as Harry Fabian, a small-time American nightclub tout and desperate dreamer who tries to worm his way into the wrestling rackets of post-war London.

In his path lie the formidable obstacles posed by a vengeful club owner (Francis Sullivan) and the racketeer Kristo (Herbert Lorn). The club owner's sultry wife (Googie Withers) schemes with him, and a long-suffering girlfriend (Gene Tierney) does her best to save him. Like many a noir hero before him, Harry thinks he can outrun his fate. He's wrong. Jules Dassin, under suspicion in Hollywood for his political beliefs, made the film at great speed, shooting night scenes in a London still shattered and skeletal from wartime bombings.

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They say crime doesn't pay. Private detective Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) knows better.

The fat wad of folding money warming his breast pocket is the kind of thing that keeps him going through thick and thicker as he wades chin deep into a mystery involving a missing necklace and a missing hoodlum's moll named Velma.

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When gun fancier Bart Tare sees Annie Laurie Starr's sideshow sharpshooting act, he's a dead-bang goner. He and she go together, as Bart ultimately says, 'like guns and ammunition'.

The two become bank robbers on the run, eluding roadblocks and roaring into movie history as one of the benchmark film-noir works. Joseph H. Lewis directs this ferocious thriller, selected for the National Film Registry and often cited as a forerunner to 'Bonnie and Clyde'. Peggy Cummins and John Dall star, meeting in a sexually charged carny shooting contest and soon driven by impulses of violence and arousal they don't fully understand. They're young, foolish, doomed - and point blank in Gun Crazy's unforgiving sights.

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Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas star in this quintessential film noir which catapulted Mitchum into superstardom and set the standard for the genre for years to come.

When Kathie Moffett (Greer) shoots her admirer, Whit Sterling (Douglas), a big-time gambler, and absconds with $40,000 of his money, Starling hires private detective Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) to find her. Bailey leaves New York and catches up with Kathie in Mexico. Kathie denies taking the money and after falling for her charms, Bailey notifies Sterling that he could not find her.

Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), naive insurance man. Falls for the seductive charms of his beautiful client Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) Together they plot to get rid of her dull husband and collect on the "double indemnity" life policy.

When private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is visited by an old friend, this sets in train a series of events in which he's hired to search for a missing novelist (Sterling Hayden) and finds himself on the wrong side of vicious gangsters.

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Hollywood's hottest director Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs) assembles an all-star cast for a skillfully woven tale of small-time gangster life in a most ambitious and provocative film, 'Pulp Fiction'.

Bruce Willis (Die Hard) and Oscar Nominees John Travolta (Best Actor) and Samuel L Jackson (Best Supporting Actor) deliver career performances as petty thugs in LA's criminal underworld - where gritty confrontations, fast talk and perverse humour are all part of the daily grind. Nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award 1995, this boldly inventive and expertly orchestrated crime sage is hailed by critics as a landmark achievement in modern filmmaking!

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The film is Fritz Lang's seventh Hollywood feature, made in 1953 on a miniscule budget and shot in just twenty days by one of the best 'noir' cameramen Nicholas Musurca and is considered one of his best murder mystery films. Norah is a pretty telephone operator engaged to a soldier posted overseas.

When she receives a letter from him ending their engagement, feeling despondent, she falls for the charms of Officer Lothario and agrees to a date. They go to the Blue Gardenia Club, where he gets her drunk and then takes her back to his apartment. She is later forced to fight off his lecherous advances by bludgeoning him to death and flees, leaving behind her handkerchief, high heels and a blue gardenia at the scene. She awakes the next morning remembering nothing while a nationwide murder hunt gets underway, but journalist Casey Mayo offers his support and suggests an interview in exchange for a fair trial.

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When Uncle Charlie comes to visit his relatives in the sleepy town of Santa Rosa, the foundation is laid for one of his most engaging and suspenseful excursions.

Joseph Cotten stars as the charming Uncle Charlie, a beguiling killer who travels from Philadelphia to California just one step ahead of the law. But soon his unknowing niece and namesake, "Young Charlie" (Teresa Wright), begins to suspect her uncle of being the Merry Widow murderer, and a deadly game of cat-and-mouse begins. As his niece draws closer to the truth, the psychopathic killer has no choice but to plot the death of his favourite relative in one of Hitchcock's most riveting psychological thrillers.