GUN CRAZY aka DEADLY IS THE FEMALE (1940) Ab-noir-mal love affair

GUN CRAZY stars B-actors Peggy Cummins and John Dall, who give A+ performances as Bonnie and Clyde wanabees. Annie, a carnival sharp-shooter, loves to kill, while Bart, an out-of-work vet, loathes killing but has a fetish for guns. When the two meet at the carnival where Annie works and compete for best shot, sparks fly – and not just from their pistols. This is a remarkably erotic scene in which only body language and seductive looks communicate the pure lust each is feeling. Despite an minuscule budget, every scene is inventive in its dialog, sets, and especially camera work, which swings from documentary style to impressionist. One sequence, a bank heist, was shot on location in one long take. No one but the principal actors and people inside the bank were aware that a movie was being filmed. The dialog was improvised as the couple drive toward the bank (the cameraman sat in the back seat on a specially rigged saddle that allowed him to pivot), and when Dall as Bart adlibs "I hope we find a parking space," he really meant it! We actually hear an uninformed bystander shout, “There's been a bank robbery!” There are numberous scenes and moments that will surprise and delight you, but I urge you to get the DVD from Netflix, which includes a terrific special feature narrative, and experience them yourself. GUN CRAZY was written by Millard Kaufman, a pseudonym for famously blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, later famously hired by Kirk Douglas to write SPARTUCUS. (Trivia note: Bart as a young teenager, whose attempted theft of a pistol launches the story, is sensitively portrayed by 15-year old Rusty (later Russ) Tamblyn, who years later acted and danced in WEST SIDE STORY.)

ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952) Dead-eyed cop hunts dead woman's killer in dead of winter

Noir-and-a-half ON DANGEROUS GROUND is about believable people and emotions rather than shady dicks and stolen black falcons. In a striking performance, Robert Ryan is a hardened, withdrawn street NYC cop, whose hair-trigger temper is close to losing him his badge. Banished upstate in icy winter to help the local police find a young woman's killer, he meets a lonely, blind woman (Ida Lupino, also superb), who turns out to be the sister of the young, unbalanced killer. Study Ryan’s face. He has the look of a man running on empty, totally disgusted with the world – and later, when he meets a woman he cares about, the look turns to a flicker of hope. In one suspenseful scene, Lupino feels her way in the snow to the outside cellar where she's hidden her brother. As she gently tries talking him into turning himself in, we see the boy's face only in shadow or turned down - and the glint of a knife. It’s an effective way to telegraph his fear and shame and state of mind. Great acting by all, including Sumner Williams, who plays the young killer; and Ward Bond, as the distraught father who's out to shotgun him down the second he finds him. (Trivia note: Director Nicholas Ray, who also directed REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, abandoned ON DANGEROUS GROUND when he couldn't get the studio to buy his downbeat ending in which the cop and the woman part, with the cop returning to the city, still disillusioned. In the released version, the two wind up in romance - a false note in an otherwise fine film - rumored to have been created and directed by the co-stars, themselves.)

WHITE HEAT (1949) Cagney goes out with a bang

Toward the end of WHITE HEAT, mama's boy + psychopath Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) makes one one of the great - and most explosive - exits in all of film noirdom. One of the great exit lines, too: 'TOP OF THE WORLD, MA!" This rapid-paced prison breakout movie is basically a B movie with a couple of great A movie performances by Cagney and the underrated Virginia Mayo. Watch for “Ouch!” scene when Cagney kicks the chair she's perched on right out from under her - and another, when he empties his rod to ventilate both a car trunk and the hoodlum locked inside, while munching on a fried chicken leg.

MALTESE FALCON (1941) The stuff dreams are made of

THE MALTESE FALCON is considered by many to be the first true American film noir, but first or not, it's a true classic. No matter how many times I see this tale about a cynical private dick on the hunt for both a murderer and a valuable black bird (“The stuff dreams are made of”) while trying to stay alive and out of jail, I'm always delighted by every scene, every word of dialogue, and every twitch of Bogart’s upper lip (someone once wrote that Bogie made dialing the phone look exhausting). He was, is and always will be Dashielle Hammett's Sam Spade, whose murdered partner he coldly memorializes as “a guy who had ten thousand in insurance, no children, and a wife that didn't like him.” (Trivia note: Dash's story had been filmed twice before - a 1931 version with the same title, character names and dialog, and a 1936 version based on, but in many ways different, from the original, called SATAN MET A WOMAN. It starred Bette Davis and did little to advance her career.)

THE STRANGER (1946) Nazi what he seems

Midway into THE STRANGER, pipe-smoking Nazi hunter Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) bolts awake in the middle of the night realizing that "Who but a Nazi would deny that Karl Marx was a German ... because he was a Jew?” Of course, we viewers have known from the start of the movie that Professor Charles Rankin (Orson Welles), the man who made the thinly veiled anti-Semitic remark that led to Wilson's epiphany, is indeed the Nazi whom Wilson has come all the way from Germany to Connecticut to capture. We also know that thanks to Wilson’s tenacity, Kindler will never make it to the Fourth Reich he's plotting in America. This is a suspenseful, Wellsian noir with one heil of an ending!

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)

Either you love Sam Fuller's work or can't figure out why he and his films are so revered. Frankly, I'm in the latter group, but I do love his PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET. Richard Widmark, at his low-rent best, is a petty pickpocket named Skip McCoy who inadvertently steals a strip of microfilm intended for communist spies. His beautiful but tough mark Candy (achingly beautiful Jean Peters (playing against type) was unknowingly carrying it in her wallet for her sleazy boyfriend (Richard Kiley), who forces Candy to find the pickpocket and retrieve the film. She manages to locate Skip's shack by the river through his friend, warm-hearted stool pigeon Mo (Thelma Ritter). All this leads to a series of double-crosses. But soon, Skip and Candy are in love, which softens his edges a bit and causes her to dump her rotten boyfriend. In one swell scene, the cops try to get Skip to tell where the microfilm is by appealing to his sense of patriotic duty. His sneering reply is, "Are you wavin' the flag at me?" Widmark delivers the line in a tone that virtually defines the word "snark" 40 years before its first reference anywhere else. That scene and many others make PICKUP STREET wonderfully watchable and, according to many critics, among the best noir films of the ‘50s. I agree.

THE OXBOW INCIDENT (1943) Frontier injustice

Westerns can be film noirs. too, and this one is a dilly. Ever wonder how it feels to be strung up in the Old West for a crime you didn't commit? See THE OXBOW INCIDENT with Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews, and partner, will you ever find out!

LA JETÉE (1962) Past, present and future collide

In this riveting 28-minute long sci-fi film – composed entirely of black and white photographs linked together by quick dissolves and direct cuts and narrated by an Orson Welles soundalike – a nameless man witnesses the past, present and future of his own life. Be prepared: several viewings may be necessary to take in all that LA JETÉE offers.

GREGORY HINES (1946 - 2003) Taps for a great tapper

Five years after his death from cancer at 57, I can never watch Gregory Hines (1946-03) in a movie or TV rerun without missing him. It's common knowledge that he was one of the top tap dancers of his generation, but how many appreciate what a talented actor he was – how natural and funny and cool? I admired him tremendously for both his dancing and acting, but also simply by the warm, open personality he radiated. Every movie with Hines in the cast benefited from his warm and open personality, including the creepy WOLFEN (1981), the witty and action-packed RUNNING SCARED (1986), the colorfully textured THE COTTON CLUB (1984), and the lovingly crafted homage TAP (1989). In the first two he plays a wisecracking sidekick; in the second two, he dances – gloriously! – alongside other giants of tap including Sammy Davis, Jr., Harold Nicholas and Howard "Sandman" Sims. Hines made his movie debut in Mel Brooks’ goofy HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART ONE (1981) as a last-minute replacement for Richard Pryor. He played the anachronistically hip Roman slave Josephus.

Auctioneer: "Where are you from, slave?"
Josephus: "Ethiopia."
Auctioneer: "What part?"
Josephus: "125th Street."

RANDOLPH SCOTT

As a leading man for all but the first three years of his film career starting in 1931, Randolph Scott (1898-87) appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals (although not in singing or dancing roles), adventure tales, war pictures, and even a few horror and fantasy films. But by the time I discovered him in my pre-teens, he had already settled into his most enduring image: the taciturn, tall-in-the-saddle, Western hero in the Gary Cooper mold. Out of his 100+ films, more than 60 were in Oaters, many of them now cult favorites. Every time I see one of his '50s or early '60s Budd Boetticher-directed Westerns like SEVEN MEN FROM NOW (1956), or RIDE LONESOME (1959), I'm reminded how much of a hero he was to me ... and still is. In his last film, Sam Peckinpah's RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962), he co-starred with Joel McCrea, another actor who had transitioned into Oaters later in his career. As a young boy I saw Randy in person in Fort Worth and thought I had gone to cowboy heaven.

STAGE STRUCK (1958)

STAGE STRUCK is a remake of MORNING GLORY (1933), the film that won Katharine Hepburn an Oscar for only her third screen appearance. This time out, the role of an aspiring actress who'll give up anything (including love) to become a star went to another actress making her third screen appearance, Susan Strasberg, daughter of legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg (the writers even inserted a few lines about Lee’s Actors Studio into their script). Strasberg plays Eva Lovelace, an aspiring Broadway actress whose persistence and personality capture the attention of a boyish playwright (Christopher Plummer, in his debut screen role), an aging actor (Herbert Marshall), and a suave producer (Henry Fonda). Strasberg's performance makes yet at times almost breaks this picture, managing both to be captivating and annoying, often simultaneously. But when she delivers Juliet's lines on the stairway of the producer's swank townhome in front of a party of theater luminaries after drinking many glasses of champagne, she breaks your heart. In other scenes, her delivery is so artificial that you want to strangle her. Nonetheless, if you love movies, theater and lots of sentimentality and are willing to overlook Strasberg's uneven performance, get a front row seat for this one. Marshall, a wonderful actor who had been making films for three decades, is superb in every scene, as are both Fonda and Plummer. Sydney Lumet directed.

LA STRADA (1954) On the road, Fellini style

I hadn’t seen LA STRADA for many years and about all I could recall was how brutishly cruel Anthony Quinn's character was. Now, through adult's eyes, I can see Fellini's vision – basically about three different ways of being human, three different ways of interacting with others, and thus three different ways of finding meaning in human existence. LA STRADA (The Road) is indeed a journey for the two main characters, the insensitive strongman Zampano (Quinn) and his simple-minded, all-too-sensitive assistant Gelsomina (Giuletta Masina), who peddle their silly carnival act town to town. We know from the start these two are doomed - as is a third character known as The Fool (Richard Basehart), a carefree clown-aerialis: Zampano, doomed to guilt; Gelsomina, to lovelessness; and The Fool, to Fate. Yet, even these characters whose lives have been so misshaped by cruelty and sadness find fleeting moments of the best that life has to offer: love, compassion and joy. Among many, many magical moments Felini captures is when Chaplineque Masina (whose rubber face conveys everything) mimes the graceful shape of a small tree as a laughing child looks on. (Trivia notes: Masina, Fellini's wife, gives a performance considered to be one of the finest in all of filmdom. La Strada received an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and a nomination for Best Original Screenplay.)

ARSÈNE LUPIN (1932) Grandfather of the Pink Panther, Barrymore or less

Brothers John and Lionel Barrymore acted together on film for the first time in ARSÈNE LUPIN, a thoroughly delightful if dated and stagy-looking heist romp about a charming and daring thief preying on the wealthy of Paris. John plays Duke of Chamerace, who may or may not be the title character, and Lionel is Guerchard, the detective hellbent on identifying and arresting him. Alike and yet so different, the Barrymores are the perfect counterpoint to each other; John plays his role with suave sophistication, while Lionel is earthy and common, and each is obviously having a high time trying to out-chew the scenery. Listen carefully when John reacts to a squeaking door with a totally off-the-wall “OY!", and notice distinct character and plot similarities between LUPIN and much later heist films like THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR and THE PINK PANTHER

BEDLAM (1946) St. Elsewhere it ain't

After seeing an excellent documentary on cult producer Val Lewton, I watched one of his movies, BEDLAM, directed by Mark Robson and starring Boris Karloff. This low-budget flick is generally described as a horror movie, which the title certainly suggests, but it's really more of a melodrama with scattered thrills – plus some marvelously witty dialog. A woman (Anna Lee) investigating conditions in the notorious St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum – aka Bedlam – is committed on a trumped up charge by its sadistic head (Karloff). Initially, she is repulsed by the horrors of her surroundings. But soon she befriends many of the inmates, which leads to a downright Poe-ish climax. The entire cast is excellent, but Karloff steals the show as the creepy, albeit intelligent and witty Master Sims. Other famous and more successful Lewton-Robson collaborations include CAT PEOPLE and its sequel, CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE.

THE WHISPERERS (1966) Old-age life in very un-merry old England

In the Brit flick THE WHISPERERS, Edith Evans plays a lonely old woman living in a dirty, cluttered flat. Dementia- touched, she imagines voices coming from her faucets and radio, and also suspects her neighbors are spying on her. Also, she believes herself to be an heiress waiting for her inheritance to come through. It's painful to see the old woman begging for a new pair of shoes or a pound for food, and as the story develops, you find yourself worrying about her welfare as though she were your own relative. Known for her flamboyant Restoration comedy stage and occasional screen performances, Dame Edith in this role gives a small, finely detailed performance, completely unsentimental and without vanity. Nominated for an Oscar, she lost to Katherine Hepburn for GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER.

p.s. (2004)

In the quirky and surprising if sometimes sappy p.s. (lower case), a divorced 39-year old art school administrator Louise Harrington (Laura Linney) falls for a 24-year old student-artist (TV's Topher Grace) and appears to be the reincarnation of her long-dead high school lover. The spiky, knowing screenplay, adapted from a novel by Helen Shulman, contains many subtle delights, insights and superb dialog on the nature of truth, perspective, aging, humiliation, betrayal and addiction. Peripheral characters include Louise’s self-involved ex (Gabriel Byrne), her neurotic mother, a quirky brother, and her jealous best friend (Marcia Gay Hardin). All the performance are fine, but it's Linney's that really sticks with you - remarkable for its abundance of skill and lack of vanity. For my money, Linney is one of the very best actresses working in films today.

CHINESE COFFEE (2000)

In the dead of a freezing New York night, down and almost out novelist Harry (Al Pacino) comes pounding on the apartment door of his best friend, photographer Jake (Jerry Orbach). Harry is flat broke and begs his friend to repay $500. But all Jake has is a jar of pennies. Worse, he has not, he declares, read the draft of Harry's latest novel, a work on which Harry's last hope is pitched. A long, sometimes funny, mostly intensely dramatic dialogue ensues. Relentlessly, obsessively, the desperate Harry probes his sardonic, world-weary friend until it’s revealed that not only has Jake read the work and found it to be a thinly disguised account of their lives, loves and failures - which enrages him - but he suspects it to have true commercial promise and perhaps genuine artistic merit. Fiercely jealous, believing himself to have potentially been the writer Harry has indeed become, Jake attempts to destroy Harry’s confidence and his one chance to succeed. In the end, Harry loses a friend but gains the courage to finish his book – for while Jake wants to be a writer, Harry has to be one. Pacino also directed CHINESE COFFEE, and the screenplay is by Ira Lewis, who based it on his own play, which in turn is based on his own life. Talky, but great

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (1965) Or is she?

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, a British thriller directed by Otto Preminger, is about a young American single mom (Carol Lynley) who has moved to London with her daughter Bunny. We never see the girl, even when she is supposedly left at a nursery school – and when she goes missing, we begin to wonder whether Bunny exists at all. On a desperate search around London, the increasingly hysterical mother has to deal with some peculiar types, not least, her own brother (Keir Duella). This black-and-white film has a surreal feel, and Preminger's Hitchcock-like approach leads to a gripping, if not unexpected, climax. No great acting by the American actors Lynley and Duella, who are pretty, but pretty bland compared to Brits Lawrence Oliver (as the suave police inspector) and Noel Coward (as, well, Noel Coward). Watching these two lions ply their considerable skills is a joy. Also wonderfully watchable are British actress Ada Ford, who plays an odd but knowing school owner, and in his final screen appearance, Scottish actor Finlay Currie, as a sweet old doll maker. Praise and positive notices failed to multiply when BUNNY came out, but today it's something of a cult film. (Movie note: Coward’s many bon mots belie his tiny part. For example, trying to seduce Lynley’s character and rebuffed, he utters smarmy-ingly, “Why return the bottle till you’ve had a taste of the wine?” *wink* *wink*.)

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948) Meet Bowie and Keechie, a slightly kinder, gentler Bonnie and Clyde

Cult Director Nicholas Ray's THEY LIVE BY NIGHT is an expressionistic blend of melodrama and film noir. Based on the novel "Thieves Like Us," it’s about violent bank robbers and tragic destiny, about flight and pursuit across the Midwestern roads and farmland, permeated with a sweetness and vulnerability unusual for any crime movie. (Sound like Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE?) At its center are Bowie (Farley Granger) and Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), naive young lovers who are almost childlike in their gravity and grace, and whose entanglement in a web of hardened criminals (Howard Da Silva and J.C. Flippin) pre-ordains them for tragedy. From the startling pre-credit sequence on, it is clear that Ray is speaking in a striking new cinematic voice. Unfortunately the story is derivative and not even all that interesting, but the way it's told must have astonished audiences back then. From unusual aerial shots, to brilliant extreme close-ups, to great shots inside cars, Ray takes us on a new type of film journey. He also lovingly films his two attractive young leads and extracts strong performances from them. The film's greatest scene is their wedding: a two-dollar affair in an unfamiliar city. In this hastily concocted ceremony, a near-travesty, we can see the couple desperately reaching for normality that we viewers have already figured is totally beyond their reach. (Film note: Produced by RKO, the film wasn't released for almost two years because the studio's owner, Howard Hughes, believed it to be a dud. Today, it's a cult classic.)

DEAN STOCKWELL (1936 - ) Moppet to murderer to hologram in six decades

You may only know DEAN STOCKWELL as Al, the cigar chomping, dry-witted hologram in TV’s “Quantum Leap” (1989-93). But his career and range go far beyond that - and 60 years back!

Stockwell's first public appearance was in a play called THE INNOCENT VOYAGE. He was seven. His reading of his big line "I won't be damned!" caught the ear of a talent scout in the audience and soon the curley headed lad was working in movies - first as the son of Jessica Tandy and Gregory Peck in THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945), and then as Kathryn Grayson's nephew in the musical ANCHORS AWAY (1945) with Gene Kelly Frank Sinatra.

Stockwell had rare skill for seeming like the kid next door while delivering scripted lines on camera, so over the next few years he became MGM's go-to lad in almost two dozen movies, including GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT (1947) with Gregory Peck; THE BOY WITH THE GREEN HAIR (1948) with Pat O'Brien and Robert Ryan, and THE SECRET GARDEN (1949) with Margaret O'Brien.

But as Stockwell grew, he grew disenchanted with Hollywood. Upon finishing high school, he enrolled at U-Cal Berkeley. But then he dropped out after two semesters and spent several years as a drifter. Managing to elude the draft, he worked as a spike driver on the railroad, a baker's helper, even a prune inspector.

Stockwell resurfaced in Hollywood five years later as a handsome, brooding 20-year-old and began specializing in playing introverts and sensitive souls in roles ranging from a wild, young cowboy in GUN FOR A COWARD (1957), to a murderous homosexual in COMPULSION (1958), to an aspiring artist trapped by his domineering mother in SONS AND LOVERS (1960). He topped off this phase of his career portraying the tubercular Eugene O'Neill in LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962) with Katherine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson.

And then he split the movie scene again, taking on a bohemian lifestyle in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury.

But by 1968, he was back in Hollywood again, playing the attic-dwelling mystery man in PSYCH-OUT (1968) with Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern. And in in the decades since, with only occasional absences, he has worked steadily in films and TV. He played Harry Dean Stanton's brother in PARIS, TEXAS, the deranged maniac in BLUE VELVET with Kyle MacLachlan and Dennis Hopper, the Mafia boss in MARRIED TO THE MOB with Michelle Pfeiffer, and the pushy producer in Robert Altman's THE PLAYER. TV roles in "JAG," the new "Battlestar Galactia" and the aforementioned "Quantum Leap" were a far cry from the charming ones of his pre-teen career, but watching him in any of his adult roles, you can always see little curly-headed Dean peeking through.

METEOR (1979) Mostly craters

So why would I recommend this near-disaster of a disaster movie? Not for the special effects (cheesy). Not for the Love Boat-type "all star" cast (grim Henry Fonda, sleazily mustachioed Sean Connery, clown-nosed and comb-overed Karl Malden, super-hammy Martin Landau, waxworky Trevor Howard, etc.). Not for the predictable script (a precursor to every "nature vs. earth" movie that followed) or acting (runs the gamut from cardboardy to overwrought). Not even for the plot (five-foot mile wide meteor threatens to obliterate a few continents, preceded by meteor "splinters" that trigger avalanches, tidal waves, running and screaming Japanese people, even a POSEIDON ADVENTURE-style escape). And yet ... there are at least two reasons to go METEOR watching: one, to see what a subtle actress and lovely a woman child star Natalie Wood had become at 40 (two years before her death) ... and two, to enjoy the exquisitely entertaining scenery-chewing of Brian Keith as a charming, effusive Russian astrophysicist. He rattles Russian off like a Cossack, and oddly enough, he's the most credible character in the film. Most of Keith's Russian was probably dubbed, but that of Ms. Wood, who plays his assistant and translator, looks undubbed and sounds spot on. And why not? She was born Natalia Zakharenko, the daughter of Russian immigrants. Oh, and there's one more reason to discover METEOR ... it's kinda fun even if it is full of holes.

THE MAN FROM EARTH (2007) Funny, he doesn't look a day over 12,000!

On a cold night in a remote cabin, college professor John Oldman (David Lee Smith of “CSI Miami”) gathers his colleagues to announce that he is an immortal who has migrated through 14 centuries of evolution, and must now move on (once again) to create a new identity before it's noticed he doesn't age past 35. Is Oldman (Old man! Get it?) really a stone age man or simply a man with rocks in the head? Either way, his revelation makes tempers flare and emotions flow among these scientists and scholars in anthropology, biology, religion and philosophy, forcing them to confront their own notions of history, religion and humanity. The well written screenplay is by the late sci-fi author Jerome Bixby, who years earlier had written for “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek.” This was his final work. If you don’t like talk, talk and almost nothing but talk in your movies, skip MAN FROM EARTH. But I found it engaging and thought-provoking.

TEACHER'S PET (1958)

The movie starring Clark Gable and Doris Day, TEACHER’S PET, is better than you'd think. A “romantic comedy,” it was originally scripted as a drama, which shows in several well written and acted dramatic scenes that offset the silly ones. Gable plays a school-of-hard-knocks newspaperman who belittles journalism schools ... until he meets an idealistic instructor (Day) in whose class he enrolls as a novice. What ensues is a learning experience for student and teacher alike. Gable's bluff masculinity is key to the storyline and appeal of the movie, to such a degree that even in his Evening stage of life (57) he somehow doesn't seem too old for Day (33). They’re good together, and in fact, Day agreed to work in the movie during a rough patch in her life (her brother had just died) because of Gable. The film is often talky and runs too long, but it’s fun to watch and good to see these two old-fashioned movie stars so completely at ease within their established personas. The film co-stars Gig Young, playing his familiar charming, know-it-all Gig Young character (the same as in YOUNG AT HEART, in which he and Day co-starred five years earlier). As an ex-newsman, I got a kick out of the scenes in the city room, which looks and operates pretty much like the city room I worked in years ago.

RAWHIDE (1950) What hostages in the old West get trying to escape

Bad guys holding good guys hostage as they wait for a big cash payoff is a familiar plot (KEY LARGO, THE DESPERATE HOURS), but always an arresting one. In RAWHIDE – a taut and character-driven film that blends the leathery trappings of an oater with the claustrophobic atmosphere and intensity of a noir-suspense film – the action unfolds at a remote swing station for the trans-continental stagecoach. Routine life and work are disrupted by the arrival of a gang of baddies who, while waiting to get their hands on a shipment of gold, find their hands full instead with wily hostages. The suspense is intense, even after repeated viewings, and the acting is fine. Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward handle the heroics with minimal melodramatics. Hugh Marlowe has a field day playing type as the head villain Zimmerman (although one wonders how such an articulate, obviously well-educated man would run with homicidal idiots, let alone have a Jewish name). And a young, one blind-eyed Jack Elam is, as he usually was in Westerns, vicious and deliciously smarmy.

THE NAKED CITY (1948) There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This is one of them

In an era of Hollywood sets and back lots, director Jules Dassin's NAKED CITY was nakedly different and daring – and in fact became the template for the TV cop show genre, starting with its own critically acclaimed TV spinoff in the ‘50s. Shot on Manhattan streets using passersby as extras (sometimes unknowingly), the grittiness and realism are palpable. The story concerns the investigation of the murder of a young woman, and though tame and utterly familiar by today's standards, is absorbing. Barry Fitzgerald and Howard Duff, the leads, are excellent, and are well supported in small, unbilled roles by character actors James Gregory, Molly Picon (a giant of Yiddish theatre), Paul Ford, Arthur O'Connell, and as the beefy villain, Ted de Corsia, a a familiar film noir face. The engaging narration is by writer-producer Mark Hellinger. In 2007, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."