Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has added five film noir classics to its June 9 DVD
release calendar. Collectors, film fans
and film noir affectionados will be very pleased with this line-up of film
vault treasures!
Leading the way, chronologically-speaking, is director
Anthony Mann’s wartime mystery, Two O'Clock Courage, teaming Tom
Conway and Ann Rutherford in a film noir
whodunit that has more twists and turns than a bag of pretzels.
He appears to be a man of means and she is just a cab
driver, but their lives become intertwined when he staggers in front of her cab
and is knocked cold … he can’t remember who he is and so she agrees to help
him. But they soon discover that there
is murder afoot and he is at the center of it!!!
Next up is director Edwin L. Martin’s 1945 film release of Johnny
Angel, starring George Raft in the title role. The mystery of a ship adrift, a deadly
stowaway, a fortune in gold, a mysterious woman and the foggy streets of New
Orleans drive this film noir entry. Signe Hasso, Claire Trevor, Hoagy Carmichael,
Marvin Miller and Margaret Wycherly are Raft’s co-stars.
It was during the Thanksgiving period of 1946 that future
Oscar-winning director Robert Wise (1961, West Side Story; 1965, The
Sound of Music) delivered one of his early directorial efforts, Criminal
Court.
This RKO programmer, running a crisp 60-minutes, also
starred Tom Conway, but this time as a top criminal defense attorney on the
fast track to becoming the DA. He soon
finds himself hip-deep in an accidental death that police promply spin into a
murder and have a prime suspect with gun in hand!
There’s blackmail, double-dealing and his girlfriend (Martha
O'Driscoll) is on the hook for the murder!
Just when all seems lost — in a denouement that would make Perry Mason
proud — Conway, cracks the case with a surprise witness and saves the love of
his life!
Whew!!!
The year 1947 brings us director Ted Tetzlaff’s Riff-Raff
(aka: Riffraff), the next entry in this five-film promotion from
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
The film begins with murder as an airplane passenger is
pushed to his death by a fellow passenger (played by veteran character actor Marc
Krah in his film debut) and his briefcase is taken.
Once in Panama, the mysterious killer
contacts Dan Hammer (Pat O’Brien), an American ex-pat with a “cloudy”
reputation and hires him as a bodyguard … and soon thereafter ends up
dead. A mysterious map is at the center
of it and everyone after it suspects that our boy Hammer is holding out on
them. Anne Jeffreys, Walter Slezak,
Percy Kilbride (best known as Pa Kettle) and Jason Robards Sr. co-star.
Lastly, we have — from 1949 — director Richard Fleischer’s The
Clay Pigeon, starring Bill Williams (perhaps best knows as Kit Carson
in the 1950s television series, The Adventures of Kit Carson) as
former POW on trial for treason, who takes it on the lam to prove his
innocence. With the help of the future
Della Street — Barbara Hale — he not only clears his name, but exposes a vast
post-war counterfeiting ring in the process!!!
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