Film Noir Friday: City That Never Sleeps [1953]

city that never sleeps

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 CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS starring Gig Young and Mala Powers.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

Chicago cop Johnny Kelly, dissatisfied with his job and marriage, would like to run away with his stripper girlfriend Angel Face, but keeps getting cold feet. During one crowded night, Angel Face decides she’s had enough vacillation, and crooked lawyer Biddel has an illegal mission for Johnny that could put him in a financial position to act. But other, conflicting schemes are also in progress…

Film Noir Friday: Crashout [1955]

CRASHOUT

 

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 CRASHOUT starring William Bendix, Arthur Kennedy, Luther Adler and William Talman.

Enjoy the film!

TCM says:

Convict Van Duff engineers a large-scale prison break; the six survivors hide out in a forgotten mine working near the prison, then set out on a long, dangerous journey by foot, car, train and truck to retrieve Duff’s bank loot. En route, as they touch the lives of “regular folks,” each has his own rendezvous with destiny.

 
http://youtu.be/kaevY6hgdP0

Film Noir Friday: The Hitchhiker [1953]

hitch-hiker-poster2My posts this week have been about a personal experience. Years ago my brother’s best friend and I picked up a hitchhiker — he was a guy we knew but hadn’t seen in a while. When we picked him up we didn’t know that just days later he would be arrested in connection with two murders.

I’ll be wrapping up the series The Devil in Orange County over the next day or so.

Meanwhile, it is Film Noir Friday, and tonight’s feature is THE HITCHHIKER, starring Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman and directed by Ida Lupino. The tagline for the film was great: “There’s death in his upraised thumb!”

From Wikipedia:

Critic John Krewson lauded the work of Ida Lupino, and wrote, “As a screenwriter and director, Lupino had an eye for the emotional truth hidden within the taboo or mundane, making a series of B-styled pictures which featured sympathetic, honest portrayals of such controversial subjects as unmarried mothers, bigamy, and rape…in The Hitch-Hiker, arguably Lupino’s best film and the only true noir directed by a woman, two utterly average middle-class American men are held at gunpoint and slowly psychologically broken by a serial killer. In addition to her critical but compassionate sensibility, Lupino had a great filmmaker’s eye, using the starkly beautiful street scenes in Not Wanted and the gorgeous, ever-present loneliness of empty highways in The Hitch-Hiker to set her characters apart.

ENJOY THE FILM!