Western Film Noir, Vol. 1 (Little Big Horn / Rimfire) (1949) Review

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(More customer reviews)VCI Video and Kit Parker Films have released LITTLE BIG HORN (1951) and RIMFIRE (1949) under the Western Film Noir banner.
These two almost forgotten Lippert westerns deserve the new life they have been granted on DVD in an impressive double feature format; and, above all, they should carry their noir stamp proudly.
LITTLE BIG HORN and RIMFIRE as well achieve their undeniably striking visual effectiveness through Ernest Miller's masterful camera work. Cinematographer Miller (who, by the way, was behind the camera for most of the moody Lippert westerns) imparts to both films a foreboding, fatalistic ambiance, which he renders in low-keyed black-and-white cinematography. And in addition, by frequently utilizing stark camera angles, Miller creates an undercurrent of uneasiness, which is a major noir ingredient in these somber westerns.
LITTLE BIG HORN tells the story of a small U.S. Cavalry unit that challenges destiny when it is ordered to deliver an urgent message to Custer warning him of impending mortal danger at Little Big Horn. The suspense mounts as members of the patrol commence to be eliminated by hostile Indians in a and-then-there-were-none manner.
John Ireland, Lloyd Bridges, and Marie Windsor in standout performances elevate the human drama to a nearly Shakespearean level, as patrol commander Bridges is confronted by his inner demons of jealousy and suspicion involving his wife Windsor and lower-ranked officer Ireland.
The supporting cast also shines; with Reed Hadley, Hugh O'Brian, King Donovan, and Wally Cassell tensely reacting to the dangers surrounding them.
Charles Marquis Warren guides LITTLE BIG HORN with strong, sure-handed direction. Warren exhibits a special liking for visual narrative rather than extended verbal communication. Consequently, close-ups of facial features expressing apprehensiveness, and concentration on natural objects that are present in the often shadowy western landscape abound while nature itself remains a calmly objective and impartial observer of human behavior. What a magnificent film noir this is- without an asphalt jungle but with a rocky western terrain!
Here it might be of interest to note that Charles Marquis Warren also made HELLGATE (1952), perhaps the darkest film this side of Murnau's NOSFERATU to appear in the lineup of Lippert westerns. HELLGATE (again phtographed by Ernest Miller) is not yet available on DVD; but let's hope it will show up soon, and give us a noir fix lasting at least a month.
RIMFIRE relates the story of an undercover agent in post-Civil War Texas who has problems staying alive while snooping around, looking for a stolen gold shipment in a town run by corrupt gamblers.
Well directed by B. Reeves Eason, this very obscure film benefits immensely from Ernest Miller's eerily atmospheric cinematography. But it is also the unusual script written by Frank Wisbar (together with Arthur St. Claire and producer Ron Ormond) that gives RIMFIRE much added strength and substance.
Wisbar had earlier directed STRANGLER OF THE SWAMP (1945), for which he wrote the screenplay based on his own original story. This intentionally out-of-focus, mist-drenched, and otherworldly B-horror film with a pronounced German Expressionist flavor, did actually enjoy a minor cult following and is still quite interesting today (available from Amazon). The reappearance of a man wrongly executed was the center of attention in Wisbar's STRANGLER. Interestingly, a variation on that theme found its way into RIMFIRE, helping to make it such a beautifully realized little western noir with a nice ghostly touch.
Also, James Millican; Mary Beth Hughes; Reed Hadley; and Henry Hull lend good acting talent to this film.
After almost 6 decades, both LITTLE BIG HORN and RIMFIRE hold up amazingly well today. VCI Video and Kit Parker Films deserve a standing ovation for letting us now own and enjoy these darkly stylized and engrossingly suspenseful horse opera noirs.
5 stars, unhesitatingly (10 even, had Amazon granted additional star space for this great double feature)!

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Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension) (1950) Review

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(More customer reviews)This collection is the DVD debut for all ten of these films, and I don't even know if any of them are available on VHS. I've only seen them thanks to Turner Classic Movies playing them at odd hours, along with other cable channels presenting them over the years. They are excellent but not well remembered film noirs. I would rate them all between 4 and 5 stars. I thought I would list their descriptions, stars, and special features below, not in any particular order:
Crime Wave: (1954) Starring Sterling Hayden and Gene Nelson. An ex-con is trying to go straight, but circumstances force him into crime one more time. Gene Nelson plays a hard-nosed cop. Note a young Charles Bronson playing a minor role.
Commentary by James Ellroy and Eddie Muller
Crime Wave: The City is Dark
Theatrical trailer
Decoy: (1946) Starring Gene Gillie and Edward Norris. Sci-Fi meets Film Noir in this story of a woman who will stop at nothing to retrieve 400K stolen in a robbery. Gillie would make Barbara Stanwyck proud as she chews up man after man in her quest.
Commentary by Stanley Rubin and Glenn Erickson
Decoy: A Map to Nowhere
Theatrical trailer
Illegal: (1955) Starring Edward G. Robinson and Nina Foch. Robinson plays a D.A. whose upwardly mobile career faces a train wreck when a man he convicted is executed and then found to be innocent. After he hits bottom he resurrects his legal career, this time as a criminal attorney. The plot can be hard to follow, but Robinson's performance is great.
Commentary by Nina Foch and Patricia King Hanson
Illegal: Marked for Life
Behind the Cameras: Edward G. Robinson
Theatrical trailer
The Big Steal: (1949) Starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. The lead duo from "Out of the Past" trade wisecracks and insults in a cross-country chase over a suitcase full of stolen money. For once, Mitchum is actually not the bad guy. Almost too much fun to be considered Film Noir.
Commentary by Richard B. Jewell
The Big Steal: Look Behind You
They Live By Night: (1948) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. The story of an escaped convict trying to live a normal life with the help of his girlfriend. Granger plays the convict who isn't entirely bad, but not entirely reformed either.
Commentary by Farley Granger and Eddie Muller
They Live By Night: The Twisted Road
Theatrical trailer
Side Street: (1950) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. Granger plays a struggling husband trying to make ends meet when he spots some cash lying around in an office one day. He takes the money, but finds out it is much more than he thought. When he tries to return the money, he gets caught up in a murder mystery. Hitchcock-like in its twists and turns.
Commentary by Richard Schickel
Side Street: Where Temptation Lurks
Theatrical trailer
Where Danger Lives: (1950) Starring Robert Mitchum and Faith Domergue. The plot is somewhat unbelievable, even for Film Noir, but Mitchum gives a strong performance that makes it worthwhile. Mitchum plays a doctor who becomes taken with a patient. Due to a concussion, his judgement becomes clouded and he believes he has murdered the patient's husband. He and the woman go on the run, have some strange adventures, and then Mitchum realizes what kind of illness his new girlfriend was being treated for in the first place.
Commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini
Where Danger Lives: White Rose for Julie
Theatrical Trailer
Tension: (1950) Starring Richard Basehart and Audrey Trotter. Basehart plays a mild-mannered man whose salary and disposition are not enough for his wife. She leaves him for a tough and wealthy man. Why Basehart would want her back is anyone's guess, but he does and plans to murder his wife's new boyfriend. The tough guy is murdered, but not by Basehart's character.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward with Audrey Trotter
Tension: Who's Guilty Now?
Theatrical Trailer
Act of Violence: (1948) Starring Van Heflin and Robert Ryan. Van Heflin plays a family man trying to adapt to life after the war and internment in a prison camp. Enter Robert Ryan, who plays a man with Terminator-like determination in his quest to murder Heflin's character for something that happened during their joint stay in the German prison camp.
Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper
Act of Violence: Dealing With the Devil
Theatrical Trailer
Mystery Street: (1950) Starring Ricardo Montalban and Sally Forrest. Montalban plays a detective who, working with a forensics expert, tries to solve a murder case and exonerate the lone circumstantial suspect. One of the first films I know of to use science to help solve a murder decades before DNA made this aspect of crime solving so interesting and important.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward
Mystery Street: Murder at Harvard
Theatrical Trailer

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Ex-World War II pilot Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a respected contractor and family man. Then his troubled, gimp-legged bombardier (Robert Ryan) shows up with a gun and a score to settle. Perhaps neither man is what he seems to be as director Fred Zinnemann (The Day of the Jackal) guides a searing Act of Violence, "the first postwar noir to take a challenging look at the ethics of men in combat" (Eddie Muller, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir). Murder lives on Mystery Street. John Sturges (The Great Escape) directs a revealing-for-the-era procedural about a Boston cop (Ricardo Montalban) solving a whodunit with the help of a Harvard forsensic expert (Bruce Bennett). Welcome to CSI Noir.

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The Prowler (1951) Review

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(More customer reviews)THE PROWLER is one of the best film noir you've probably never seen.
I first discovered it more than 25 years ago on late night tv in the UK (those were the days when the BBC still screened old movies) and it hooked me right away. The story of illicit passion and murder exuded an incredibly compelling sense of suffocating claustrophobia and barely suppressed tension, and that memory's stuck with me for the ensuing quarter century.
So when I was finally able to get my hands on a VHS copy my concern was that the reality wouldn't live up to the memory, and I'd be left wondering what on earth is was I ever saw in the film.
I watched THE PROWLER again last night all my worries were put to rest. This 1951 film is a five star classic.
Van Heflin stars as Webb Garwood, a police patrolman in an upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles. One night he and his dull as ditchwater partner, Bud Crocker, are called to investigate a prowler at one of the big houses on their beat. They find an attractive young woman, Susan Gilvray, home alone and Webb takes an instant liking to her. Even though she's married and initially resists his advances, Webb determines to seduce her and use her to get what he wants out of life.
Heflin's masterful performance is a major factor in this film's effectiveness. As an actor he often played characters who exuded a certain vulnerability borne of physical or moral weakness, but here he turns it into a strength. Garwood's moral compass has been so eroded by the acidic bitterness of failed dreams that he's no longer restrained by any sense of right and wrong. He targets Susan like a tiger stalking its prey. His cynical and unscrupulous manipulation of her undermines everything that his police uniform represents.
In the hands of Evelyn Keyes, Susan is a not entirely unwilling victim. Looking and acting like a bargain basement Lana Turner, she comes across as only slightly less untrustworthy than her seducer. Trapped in a loveless and controlling marriage to a much older man, she wants to believe that Webb is the solution to her unhappy existence, and at times it's difficult to determine just who is manipulating who.
On a larger scale THE PROWLER is an unsettling indictment of the corrupting influence of materialism on the American Dream. Webb bitterly resents his inability to get ahead yet he's unwilling to put in the honest toil required to bring even his modest ambition of running a motel within his grasp. Susan has more than Webb can ever aspire to yet she lives the life of a bird trapped in a gilded cage, paid for by her husband's syrupy, insincere shilling for the sponsors of his late-night radio show.
What is perhaps most depressing is the lack of viable alternatives offered up by the story. A man in Webb's situation, it says, has no choice but to act boldly and disregard accepted norms of behaviour if he's to avoid being crushed by conformity. The best that the American Dream can offer is the life of mind-numbing soul destroying tedium embodied by Webb's middle-aged partner Bud. The biggest kick in Bud's life is showing off his collection of rocks amassed during his annual vacation to the California desert.
Reportedly shot in just 17 days on a budget of $700,000 THE PROWLER offers up more food for thought than any of the bloated, special effects engorged thrillers which pass for cinematic entertainment these days.
I can't wait for 11 February 2011 and the release of THE PROWLER on DVD. To see the film in its restored version will only enhance its brilliance. Beg, borrow, buy or steal a copy of this film. It will stay with you for life.

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AVAILABLE AT LAST ON DVD! Famed director Joseph Losey's long neglected masterpiece, scripted by legendary blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, has been restored to its original bleak splendor by the Film Noir Foundation and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. A nefarious cop stalks a lonely, repressed Los Angeles housewife and decides to win her in the traditional film noir fashion - by knocking off her husband! Bonus Features: Documentary featurette "The Cost of Living: Creating The Prowler," with James Ellroy, Christopher Trumbo, Denise Hamilton and Alan K. Rode, "Masterpiece in the Margins": Bertrand Tavernier on The Prowler, On the Prowl: Restoring The Prowler. The Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive Partnership, Photo Gallery, Audio Commentary by Film Noir Expert Eddie Muller, Original Theatrical Trailer Product Specs: DVD9; Dolby Digital 2.0; RT - 92 minutes; B&W; Aspect Ratio - 1.37:1 - 4x3; Year - 1951; SRP - $19.99

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