Film Noir Friday: Pitfall [1948]

Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.

Tonight’s feature is PITFALL [1948] starring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Jane Wyatt, and Raymond Burr.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

Insurance agent John Forbes enjoys a comfortable, suburban home life in post World War II, Los Angeles with his wife Sue and son Tommy. He feels, however, that they should have accomplished more and expresses dissatisfaction with his work and social routine. Former policeman turned private investigator J. B. MacDonald has been investigating an embezzler, Bill Smiley, whom Forbes’ company, Olympic Mutual Insurance Co., had bonded. MacDonald reports that although the embezzler is in jail, he has traced presents bought with stolen funds to Smiley’s girl friend, May Co. model Mona Stevens.

Film Noir Friday: Johnny O’Clock [1947]

Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is JOHNNY O’CLOCK, directed by Robert Rossen and starring Dick Powell and Evelyn Keyes and Lee J. Cobb.

TCM says:

Johnny O’Clock, a sharp-witted New York gambling house overseer, has many “friends” in the city’s underworld: His associates include Pete Marchettis, Johnny’s senior partner and owner of the lavish casino he operates, and Chuck Blayden, a crooked, trigger-happy cop who is investigating other gambling houses in town. After trying to cut into the casino’s profits and warning Johnny under threat of death not to interfere with his intention to become Marchettis’ partner, Blayden ends his relationship with cigarette and coat check girl Harriet Hobson, then disappears. Harriet is later found dead of an apparent suicide in her apartment, and Inspector Koch begins his investigation into her death by questioning Johnny.

 

Film Noir Friday: Cry Danger [1951]

cry danger 1951

 Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is CRY DANGER starring Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

As he steps out of Los Angeles’ Union Station, ex-convict Rocky Mulloy, fresh from serving five years of a life sentence for robbery and murder, is greeted by Lt. Gus Cobb, the detective responsible for his incarceration. With Gus is Delong, the decorated, disabled Marine who provided Rocky with the alibi that finally freed him. The cynical Gus invites Rocky and Delong for a drink, and at the bar, Delong explains that, because he shipped out the day after the holdup, he was unaware that Rocky, with whom he and some other Marines had been drinking the night before, was in trouble.

 

Film Noir Friday — On Sunday: To The Ends of the Earth [1948]

Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH starring Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, Ludwig Donath, Vladimir Sokoloff, Edgar Barrier and Maylia. Directed by Robert Stevenson.

Yesterday’s post, HOP HEADS, was about opium addiction and tonight’s film is about a crackdown on the opium trade. I’m sensing a theme.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

In the year 1935, following a United Nations-sponsored meeting of the World Narcotics Commission, the U.S. Treasury Department, Bureau of Narcotics undertakes a crackdown on the worldwide opium trade. Assigned to the investigation is Treasury Department agent Mike Barrows, who is head of the department’s San Francisco bureau. Mike is familiar with the ruthless ways of the drug traffickers, having witnessed an unmarked Japanese freighter jettison one hundred Chinese slaves off the San Francisco coast to gain enough speed to outrun a U.S. Coast Guard patrol. A life preserver bearing the name Kira Maru , and a view of the offending captain, as seen through binoculars, are the only clues Mike has to go on as he begins his investigation in Shanghai.