With working titles such as Woman Confidential, Pleasure Girl, and The Blonde in 402, each should give you a decent idea about what 1959's Vice Raid is all about. A B-movie with some bite, director Edward L. Cahn brings scandal, racketeering, and corruption to the forefront of this late era film noir crime feature. Meet Sgt. Whitey Brandon (Richard Coogan), an officer that is akin to a dog on a bone. Desperate to get to the root of a massive prostitution ring run by best dressed mobster Vince Malone (Brad Dexter), he and partner Ben Dunton (Joseph Sullivan) seem to constantly get ohsoclose, yet so very far from getting a true lead.
Catch Me If You Can, octogenarian-style, 2018's The Old Man & The Gun, written and directed by David Lowery (A Ghost Story), is a fitting final tribute to the great Robert Redford (who will be retiring from acting after this role), a film that, despite its dramatic crime roots, has a certain sweetness, an old-fashioned, often poignant based-on-true-events tale about finding your inner child as well as your lifelong passion, and then living it. For those of you who have seen A Ghost Story, there is something immediately recognizable about The Old Man & The Gun – though they are completely different. Edited in a similar manner, Lowery’s mesmeric rhythm, unique pacing and efficiently simple style (with some nice cinematography from Joe Anderson) allows the charming characters to tell the story.
A film noir that would fit right into the fabric of twenty-first century television, Mystery Street, directed by John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven), is like an extended episode of CSI (or Criminal Minds), circa 1950 – a novel idea for the time. One of the first movies to be shot on location in Boston, in a way, it is a two pronged tale – demonstrating old-school investigative police work by State Police Lieutenant Peter Morales (Ricardo Montalban) and the avant-garde use of forensics by a Harvard doctor by the name of McAdoo (Bruce Bennett).
Taking noir genre tropes and flipping them on their heads, Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night (1948) challenges the city setting, the cynical detective, the sultry femme fatale, and at every turn, finds a clever way to surprise and intrigue. An intimate look at the lives of outsiders (a Nicholas Ray speciality – think In a Lonely Place; Rebel Without a Cause), three individuals have escaped the confines of prison. . . guys who would easily be picked out of a lineup: one-eyed Chickamaw (Howard Da Silva) – a sinister man, quick to anger when his missing socket is mentioned; monstrous T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen) – though he seems sensible, there is a violent streak hidden just below the face only a mother could love; and baby-faced Bowie (Farley Granger) – the meek getaway driver of the gang.
One of the most divisive films of the year – a love it or hate it type (in which most fall into the latter) is Vaughn Stein’s 2018 flick Terminal. . . a feature steeped in film noir, dystopic future and gothic horror, a glossy B movie that pays tribute to the 1940s, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the films of Brian De Palma, Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie and tales the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll. As if dropped down the proverbial rabbit hole, Stein transports us into a dichotomous world, wet and sleek, decrepit and glossy, dangerously alluring, a Terminal (that seems to lead to nowhere) in which we find Annie (Margot Robbie) spinning her nasty web. Porting numerous garbs (one a striking red coat) and hair resembling Veronica Lake, the forking story has her working in the looming locale’s all-night diner. . . a waitress with a sharp tongue and cantankerously flirtatious attitude. Chatting up a sickly English professor, Bill (Simon Pegg), as he waits for the arrival of the next train to nowhere, his illness piques the fatale in the femme.
Combining two of the most fascinating Italian genres of the 1970s, giallo and poliziotteschi (that is, thriller and crime/action), 1975's The Suspicious Death of a Minor (also known as Too Young to Die) uses more subtle strokes of violence and nudity compared to many other giallo features from the time, instead building suspense and energy by way of highly original set pieces. Directed by Sergio Martino (this is his sixth and final giallo, another example being Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key), he introduces us to the picturesque yet dangerous world of Milan, circa 1975 – a place where we find a young prostitute named Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi) on the run from an unsettling figure in mirrored glasses. Attempting to meet with undercover detective, Paolo Germi (Claudio Cassinelli – the actor sadly died in a helicopter crash while filming another Martino picture – 1986's Hands of Steel), she is eliminated by the stone cold proficient assassin before being able to pass on any actionable information.
With a stellar cast, those behind 1954's Riot in Cell Block 11 did not take the approach of procuring the biggest names available, instead, they brought together a group of character actors that lived their parts – and all surrounded by real prisoners and guards, who played extras during production. Directed by Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Dirty Harry), and produced by Walter Wanger (inspired to make the film after serving a four month prison sentence and being wholly unnerved – he was jailed for shooting his wife’s [Joan Bennett] agent, Jennings Lang, whom she was having an affair with – one bullet penetrated his hip, the other, his groin – clearly we know what he was aiming at), the team cast Neville Brand as a convicted murderer who heads up the riot (the former World War 2 combat soldier was the fourth most decorated American from the period), while his ‘Crazy’ second in command was developed by Leo Gordon (another convict who was shot in the gut during an armed robbery).