Stealers Wheel

A film noir with some eccentricities, The Big Steal (1949), directed by then third time film maker Don Siegel (who would go on to make such greats as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry, and Escape from Alcatraz), plays like a long chase within a longer chase, while the meeting between gent and femme is something akin to a will they/won’t they screwball comedy. The usually laconic Lt. Duke Halliday (Robert Mitchum) is in quite the conundrum, as he has been robbed of a U.S. Army payroll totaling a whopping three hundred grand by swindler Jim Fiske (Patric Knowles). On the lam in Mexico (a rather rare noir location, also think Ride the Pink Horse and Touch of Evil), Halliday is on his trail... but the problem is, so is his superior – Captain Vincent Blake (William Bendix), who, of course, thinks it was actually the Lieutenant who ran off with the money.

Looking for the easy way out... it’s often a motif of the film noir. Taking the idea to its seemingly inevitable conclusion, director Anthony Mann (Desperate) definitely drives the concept down what seems to be every Side Street (1949) in The Big Apple in this tale of go on, take the money and run. Joe Norson (Farley Granger) is anticipating the birth of his first child with wife Ellen Norson (Cathy O’Donnell). The acting pair grace the screen together for the second and final time following They Live by Night from the previous year... funnily enough, it almost plays as a ‘what could have been’ second chance for that couple.

If jailed for false pretenses, when you finally get out of prison, what would you do? The premise of the engaging film noir thriller Cry Danger (1951), made by former child star and first time director Robert Parrish (it is also said Dick Powell was quite involved in the film’s directing), one thing’s for sure, it’s about as hard boiled as you can get. Dick Powell (Murder, My Sweet) plays understandably rough around the edges Rocky Mulloy – a man who was falsely fingered in an armed robbery case that led to a murder.

Beating the famed comedy duo of Abbott and Costello to the horror comedy circuit both one and two years prior to their 1941 classic Hold That Ghost, Bob Hope released The Cat and the Canary in 1939, following it up in quick succession (just eight months later) with The Ghost Breakers in 1940 – it was originally a play written by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard (there are also two silent films from 1914 and 1922 based on it that are thought to be lost – the former being directed by Cecil B. DeMille). Directed by George Marshall, the mystery infused horror comedy follows a socialite, Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard), who has learned on a stormy New York night that she has inherited a supposedly haunted castle on a secluded Cuban isle ominously named Black.

It’s just never a good sign when you’re honeymooning in the early 20th century Bavarian countryside and your brand new automobile runs out of petrol. The opening of a rather lesser known Hammer horror film (following a little bit of early staking action), The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), directed by Don Sharp, is shockingly without stalwarts Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing. The couple: Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne (Jennifer Daniel), are left with little option. With the former walking ahead hoping for some aid, the latter is soon scared by a storm, bumping into the rather inimical Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans)... coming across more like a morose vagabond than a learned man. All the while, a man from a hilltop manor, Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman), looks on with intrigue with the use of his telescope.