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

Tonight’s feature is STREET OF CHANCE, starring Burgess Meredith, Claire Trevor, Louise Platt, and Sheldon Leonard. The screenplay is based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, The Black Curtain. There are dozens of movies based on Woolrich novels and stories. Among them, one of my favorites, REAR WINDOW, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. If you’ve never read Woolrich, I suggest you try him. I read an article in which they described him as “the twentieth-century crime fiction’s most eloquent chronicler of death and despair.” It is an accurate description. He also wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley.

TCM says:

One afternoon, Frank Thompson is knocked unconscious by wreckage falling from a building on Tillary Street in New York City. When he revives, Frank is seriously disoriented although unharmed. Frank soon discovers that his apartment has been rented out for a year and his wife Virginia has been living on her own elsewhere. Frank confronts Virginia, who is shocked to see the husband who disappeared without explanation a year earlier. Virginia is thrilled to reunite with Frank, who has no memory of the past year, and he returns to his regular life. Soon, however, he is haunted by the appearance of Joe Marucci, a threatening looking police detective who follows Frank everywhere, and eventually breaks down the door to the apartment to arrest him

Enjoy the movie.