Category: Film-Noir

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Great Guy 1936 w/ James Cagney

Great Guy is a 1936 American crime film noir directed by John G. Blystone and starring James Cagney. In the film, an honest inspector for the New York Department of Weights and Measures takes on corrupt merchants and politicians.

After the Chief Deputy of the Department of Weights and Measures is nearly killed in a car accident engineered by corrupt politician Marty Cavanaugh, he enlists ex-boxer Johnny Cave (Cagney) to take over his position. As the new leader, Johnny reiterates to his team the importance of their department and warns them that corruption is an ongoing hazard.

Johnny then goes out into the field with his naive partner, Patrick James “Aloysius” Haley, investigating merchants who are accused of using faulty measures and cheating the public. He ends up fining a market for adding lead weights to stewing chickens and fining a gas station for routinely shortchanging its customers. In each case, the merchants try to bribe Johnny in exchange for ignoring their corrupt practices, but he adamantly refuses. Meanwhile, Johnny’s fiancee, Janet Henry, criticizes him for being constantly hardheaded in his indefatigable pursuit of fighting corruption. Continue on Wiki

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Terror by Night 1946 w/ Sherlock Holmes

Holmes is hired by Roland Carstairs to prevent the theft of the Star of Rhodesia, a 423 carat diamond owned by Carstairs’ mother, Lady Margaret. Suspecting the diamond will be stolen on a train trip from London to Edinburgh in Scotland, Holmes deftly switches diamonds with Lady Margaret while in her compartment admiring the jewel. Soon after, Roland is murdered and the fake diamond is stolen. Red herrings abound as Holmes, aided by Dr. Watson and Inspector Lestrade, discover the murderer’s hiding place and deduce that long-time nemesis Professor Moriarty’s henchman, Colonel Sebastian Moran, is somehow involved in the crime. IMDB

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The Big Bluff 1955

When scheming fortune hunter and erstwhile Latin lover Ricardo De Villa learns that a wealthy but sickly widow has terminal heart disease, he seduces and marries the vulnerable millionairess. Playing the part of a faithful and doting husband, he carries on a torrid affair with sexy exotic dancer Fritzi Darvel while avoiding the suspicious eyes of her jealous bongo-playing husband. When his wife’s condition seems to go into remission, the impatient De Villa decides on action that will hasten her seemingly inevitable death. IMDB

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Cause for Alarm! 1951 w/ Loretta Young

Invalid George Jones is both physically and mentally ill. He mistakenly believes his wife Ellen and his doctor are having an affair and also planning to kill him. He writes a letter to his lawyer detailing their alleged murder plot. After he has Ellen give the letter to their postman, he reveals its contents to her and then threatens her with a gun. The excitement proves to much and George suffers a fatal collapse. Now Ellen must find a way to retrieve the incriminating letter. IMDB

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Borderline 1950 w/ Fred MacMurray

Customs agents are looking for information about Pete Ritchie, who is involved in smuggling drugs into the US. Police officer Madeleine Haley goes undercover in order to gain Ritchie’s confidence, and before long she meets him through one of his associates. As she is talking with Ritchie, Johnny Macklin and one of his men burst in, and they provoke a violent confrontation. From then on, Haley is in constant danger as she attempts to figure out everything that is happening in the smuggling operation. IMDB

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The Inner Circle 1946

Before he can finish placing his help-wanted ad over the phone, the perfect candidate shows up at the office of Johnny Strange and fills the position of secretary without even giving Johnny a chance to say yes. She immediately takes the call from a new client, a mysterious woman with a Spanish accent. When Johnny meets her, the client is dressed all in black and wearing a heavy veil that conceals her face. She takes him to a house with a corpse lying in it, and asks him to take care of it. Before Johnny can call the police she knocks him unconscious with a bookend. He wakes up to see Det. Lt. Webb, who tells him the dead man is a notorious gossip columnist with a popular radio program. A nightclub manager, a singer, a housekeeper, a hard-of-hearing groundskeeper and two beautiful blondes are among the whos who may have done it. IMDB

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Murder By Contract 1958

Claude is a young man with a regular job, no history of trouble with the law and no chance of making any real money. He also has the brains and emotional detachment to make the big bucks as a hit man, and that becomes his new job title. A string of successful hits gets him sent to Los Angeles for his latest job. There he is accompanied by two goons: one who is perpetually nervous and the other who quickly worships the young man as a hero. The cold, ruthless hit man finally becomes unglued when he finds out that his latest target is a woman. She’s a witness, set to testify against his boss, and guarded day and night by the police. It’s her femininity that worries Claude: women are unpredictable, they don’t do what you expect. Claude eventually proves that he is the unpredictable one and his own worst enemy. IMDB

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D.O.A. 1949

Small-town accountant Frank Bigelow goes to San Francisco for a week’s fun prior to settling down with fiancée Paula. After a night on the town, he wakes up with more than just a hangover; doctors tell him he’s been given a “luminous toxin” with no antidote and has, at most, a week to live! Not knowing who did it or why, Bigelow embarks on a frantic odyssey to find his own murderer. IMDB

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They Made Me a Criminal 1939

Johnnie is a boxer. The same evening he won the world championship, he is charged for the murder of a reporter and is taken for dead. Running away from New York, he ends up in a ranch in Arizona, run by an old lady as a work farm for delinquent teenagers. He falls in love with Peggy and became the teenagers’ hero. But there is that New York Detective, Phelan, that does not believe he is dead and is chasing him… IMDB

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Double Indemnity 1944


In 1938, Walter Neff, an experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co., meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the proceeds of an accident insurance policy and Walter devises a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on a train track, the police accept the determination of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter’s best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the story and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man. IMDB

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