House of Wax (1953)

House of Wax (1953) is a 3D remake historic horror chiller thriller non film noir blockbuster movie from the gold age of 3D cinema.

House of Wax, filmed under the working title The Wax Works, was Warner Bros.' response to the unexpected success of the 3D film Bwana Devil, which premiered in November 1952. 

Recognizing the potential of 3D technology, Warner Bros. adopted Julian and Milton Gunzburg's Natural Vision 3D system, the same system used in Bwana Devil.

 They chose to remake their 1933 Technicolor thriller, Mystery of the Wax Museum, originally based on Charles S. Belden's play The Wax Works. 

While Mystery included a newspaper subplot and was set in its release year, House of Wax, set around 1902, retained much of the original's plot and dialogue.

Shack Out On 101 (1955)

Shack Out on 101 (1955) is a  roadside-diner anti-Communist espionage film noir with goofball elements set in a crummy but funny roadside diner and on a low-budget, and made by Allied Artists.

Indeed, you could call the joint a shack.

Down at the shack, Lee Marvin plays Slob a lecherous and bullying short-order cook who ain't good for much, other than sniping with his war veteran boss played by Keenan Wynn, whose life is a mixture of sarcasm and PTSD.

In September 1952, Monogram announced that henceforth it would only produce films bearing the Allied Artists name. The studio ceased making movies under the Monogram brand name in 1953, although it was reactivated by AAI by the millennium. The parent company became Allied Artists, with Monogram Pictures becoming an operating division.

In fact French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard dedicated his 1960 film Breathless to Monogram, citing the studio's films as a major influence.

The Sound of Fury (1950)

The Sound of Fury (1950) is a hard hittin' tale of narcissism, sensational journalism, criminality and mob violence from the very heart of film noir and a classic of its kind.

It's a film that fires on all cylinders and one of the few from the era that still has the power to shock — the full on shocks coming in the final scenes, when a mob gathers to hit a jailhouse. 

In the long build up to this however, there is a full film noir panoply of crime, saps, weak males, money-minded females, a brutal murder that is just as gratuitous and frightening as the justice it inspires, and classic spiral-into-alcoholism that is every bit the quintessential sign of public failure — wrapped up in a hard hittin' tale of crime, punishment and yellow journalism.

The dramatic set up for The Sound of Fury (also known as Try and Get Me!) is a classic of its kind. Frank Lovejoy is the honest family man who is out of work and getting dissed like a jerk wherever he goes. Back home he's got an honest family life in the form of a wife and kid to support  — but there is still a sense there that he is going to crack.

I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951)

Although the propaganda is blunt, it’s easy to overlook how enormously popular I Was a Communist for the FBI was in its day.

That day was 1951 and I Was a Communist for the FBI spoon fed the anti-Communist prejudice of its era so hard and fast that you'd be forgiven now for thinking that it was a parody — but it’s not. 

The slimy backstabbing Communists in Gordon Douglas’ film may not be real, but the fear of them was real.

As was the hero — Matt Cvetic — although this isn’t a true portrayal of him. 

Cvetic wasn’t of the greates use to the real Feds, but wholly came into his own as a media personality, and one who could be relied upon to play it nice for the crowds.  What a heel.

In a Lonely Place (1950)

In a Lonely Place (1950) by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, always turns up pretty high in those lists of classic film noirs.  

This probably has more to do with its adoption by the French New Wave than it does with true noir credentials, and the fact that it is one of Hollywood’s periodic flashes of its own underbelly.  

But Bogart is slick, wise-ass and selfish and so is the movie, which doesn't offer up a hero but instead presents a bitter and depressed cynic anti-hero incapable of heroism.  

It's a comment on the 1950s, when screenwriters were accused of communism and their friends often turned against them, and Humphrey Bogart plays it dark, often amoral, insisting that a girl find her own cab, refusing to show empathy for a murdered woman, remorseless when shown photos of a crime scene and sexually aroused when given the chance to re-enact a violent murder.