Noir/Crime Flicks

Here’s a few Noir/Crime flicks that I’ve listed. All worth a watch. Dated throw backs. But they all have something that makes them watchable. Cool characters, they look great, great lines, memorable performances. Character actor city. Some cornball dialogue and some forgettable stuff but that’s part of the charm. Lots of bad guys and gals. Black and white cinematography, lots of shadows and cigarette smoking. A few punches to the head and plenty of lip locks. A genre in films that I really dig. Crime and more crime.

Turn down the lights, get some snacks and turn the clock back a few decades to catch some of these entertaining films. “So ya think you’re a tough guy huh?”

D.O.A.

 

Edmund O’Brien goes to San Francisco to have a weekend of fun and ends up on a bender that is going to kill him. O’Brien is great. It has a Twilight Zone feel. Neville Brand is one of the bad guys and he is all teeth and crazy.  ‘If I was a man I’d punch your dirty face in”. It ain’t Shakespeare.

 

The Narrow Margin

 

This is one of my favorites from this bunch. Charles McGraw is perfect in this stuff. Poster boy. Charles picks up a prize witness in a mob case and takes her back to L.A. on the train to testify. Great setting for this to play out. Mary Windsor is a hard case who goes toe to toe with the all business McGraw. Lots of bad asses and twists and a kid that I was hoping Charles would throw off the train. Everything I like. Bad guys, smoking, snappy one liners and great chemistry between the two leads. Get hard boiled on the train.

 

The Set-Up

    

Boxing mixed into the Noir thing. Lots of dated corny stuff but great camera work and the black and white cinematography enhances this one. Worth the watch just for Robert Ryan’s performance. Down and out fighter set up to lose a fight except the fighter has different ideas. Ryan’s good and looks like he spent some time in the squared circle. Not so much the other fighters.

 

His Kind Of Woman

Down on his luck gambler gets a proposition to go to Mexico. Basically 50 grand to take a holiday or so he thinks. It’s the old deal “if it seems to good to be true it probably is”. It’s all a set up with lots of bad guys (Charles McGraw again) , Jane Russell doing her thing, great location and some of that dialogue I like. Vincent Price shows up. It was like he was working on a comedy movie and walked onto the set of this one. Goofy but it worked for me. Oh yeah, Robert Mitchum is the lead and he was made for this kind of movie.

On Dangerous Ground

City cop is on the edge from dealing with to much of the bad side of life. The job is getting to him or it has got to him. He’s a good cop but getting out of control with his violence. He needs a break and is sent upstate to help with a case in the country. While up there he runs into a woman who may help him get back on track. From the dark, wet streets to the big open spaces the film is shot beautifully and pairs Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino which can only make a film worth watching. I wouldn’t want Robert Ryan pissed off at me.