Lured (1947)

Lured (1947) is a moody mystery female seeker hero investigatory London-set serial killer thriller outré film noir, made by Douglas Sirk and perhaps as far as the Sirk toes get into the fascinating dark and complicated world of noir drama.

In its way, Douglas Sirk’s lurid Lured (1947), an example of the lurid noir, reimagines hard enough upon Robert Siodmak’s 1939 film Pièges, that it must surely be classed as a remake, capturing the essence of a film noir thriller with an impressive cast and smoke machine moddiness and soundstage London-effect cinematography. 

The plot follows and does trail the female seeker hero type Sandra Carpenter (Lucille Ball), a sassy American dancer in London who is roped into a police investigation as a decoy for a serial killer targeting women through newspaper ads. 

Shockproof (1949)

Shockproof (1949) is a parole-officer and female murderer melodrama romance and politics film noir from Douglas Sirk, starring the at-that-time hot and noiresque married couple of Cornel Wilde and Patricia Knight.

Cornel Wilde is the mental-headed and ambitious parole officer who falls crazily in love with his super attractive sexy as the day is long charge Patricia Knight, a one-time murderer who bucks the system early on be being female. 

And not being content to be a parole-officer romance and murder thriller, with suburban melodramatic tones with the excellent feature of having a super-attractive female criminal who is distinct it must be said from any traditional femme fatale film role, and a distant but crucial arc backstory line of political ambition, and the ditto the noir-like corruption of the civil and moral mind into lawbreaking middle class tearaway, Shockproof (1949) also veers hard into a couple on the run story at around its hour mark.

Sleep, My Love (1948)

Sleep, My Love (1948) is a mid-period amnesia husband wife-murder noir based on a story by the great Leo Rosten.

As the story of a paranoid woman being drugged, hypnotised and gaslit into madness, Sleep, My Love features a host of film noir tropes that were hot in the 1940s.

The star of the show and the subject of the drama is Alison Courtland, a wealthy New Yorker, who hasn't a clue how she ended up waking up screaming on a train bound for Boston. When she phones her husband, Richard, the police listen in and overhear that she had threatened him with a gun.