A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

The Joseph Cotten season is a gentle joy, and it drifts on with another film touched by his grace.

A Blueprint for Murder (1953) is an amateur sleuth suburbin disturbin courtroom and hospital with occasional voiceover ocean-going whodunnit poisoning family plot styled did she or didn't she suspenser film noir directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring the sterling super noir suspenser superstar Jospeh Cotten, with Jean Peters, Gary Merrill and Catherine McLeod.

The Steel Trap (1952)

The Steel Trap (1952) is a classic-style fifties loner opportunist trash nailbiter heist and paranoia robbery and flight from suburbia film noir starring Joseph Cotten as an weakened male noir lead bank employee who comes up with something of a scheme which once executed, unravels in a fateful manner as he tries to make various flights and escapes and handle the pressure of his actions as they crescendo to a noirish finale.

That finale is a film noir fiction, and this film noir has one of the less noir-like summations as we return to the scene of the real crime, which is suburban America bub.

The Night Holds Terror (1955)

The Night Holds Terror (1955) is a true-incident-based American crime home invasion exploitation procedural youth violence epidemic extortion hostage drama thriller with John Cassavetes and Vince Edwards noiring up the mid 1950s with a crazed taste for disturbin the suburban peace of the era. 

The Night Holds Terror (1955), directed by Andrew Stone, dramatizes the terrifying ordeal of Eugene M. Courtier, whose real-life kidnapping in 1953 inspired the film. On February 13, Courtier, an Air Force technician, was abducted along a highway in Lancaster, California, by three criminals: Leonard Daniel Mahan, James Bartley Carrigan, and Don Eugene Hall. 

Highway 301 (1950)

Highway 301 (1950) is gang-on-the-run moralising action film noir with police procedural action on top, and starring Steve Cochran as a bold-knuckled psychopathic gang leader, who leads a mini-mob of five violent thieves and three women, who terrorise the banks and payrolls in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.

Supposedly modelled on the real life 'Tri-State Gang', this film noir, very much in the style of White Heat (1949) takes the criminal viewpoint for the most part, showing the exciting and sadistic execution of the robberies, the escapes and the life on the run that the criminals face. 

This is cut with elements of police procedural although the real glue of the movie is the voiceover, which in this instance is delivered by the chief investigating police officer.

Cry Terror! (1958)

Cry Terror! (1958) is an end-of-film-noir cycle home-invasion paranoia thriller, starring James Mason, Rod Steiger, Inger Stevens and Angie Dickinson.

There is terror to be cried about in the air too, as well as the home, as Cry Terror! is one of the first films to have a good look at airline security. As the American world and all its dreams came together in the 1950s, so the seams of those dreams split, and out oozed film noir.

Everything that remains unspeakable as an aspect of the all-American dream, can be found in film noir.

So as the film noir cycle ends, there are a couple of new appearances on the psychological landscape of the USA. One is the threat of nuclear war, as began its life in the film noir favourites at the end of that decade, for which see Kiss Me Deadly (1955) for more.

Another may be the threat of teenage rebellion, which picked up speed in this decade; as did the threat of terrorism.