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. 

He Ran All The Way (1951)

He Ran All The Way (1951) is a John Garfield classic home invasion disillusioned post-war young man turns-to-crime parental nightmare indolent rebel film noir, from the high era of the indolent rebellious criminal youth turns to crime movie style. 

In the murky depths of 1950s Tinseltown, where secrets slither in the shadows and peril prowls at every turn, He Ran All the Way emerges as a gritty yarn of deceit and treachery. 

Directed by the mysterious John Berry and starring the dynamic duo of John Garfield and Shelley Winters, this noir gem plunges audiences into the seamy world of youth in trouble with the law in the doom male post-war era of male doom and desire as doomed males turned to home invading robbery and anarchy, only to satisfy that world-ending craving they have for they know what, only in the movies, and only ever in film noir.

Crashout (1955)

Crashout (1955) is a prison break gang-on-the-run rebel romance home invasion film noir from when the prison break gang-on-the-run rebel romance home invasion film noir was at its most popular as a style.

The breakout gang bossed over by the man with the knowledge of the stash in Crashout, the wounded William Bendix starts with six members — no need to guess how many there are at the end.

The gang is a sharp slice of actors of the film noir style, playing thug-jawed mooks and hardened cons, one with psychotic tendencies, and one who is the golden hearted con, in stir for the murder he didn't mean to commit — an Arthur Kennedy of a con — and ready to fall in love.

Blind Alley (1939)

Blind Alley (1939) is a psychoanalytic home invasion psychopath on the run crime film noir directed by Charles Vidor and stars Chester Morris, Ralph Bellamy and Ann Dvorak. The film was adapted from the Broadway play of the same name by James Warwick.

Blind Alley may well be a fairly unique prospect — it appears to be a fully-enough formed film noir production — produced at a time before the film noir style and approach was fully formed.

In terms of solid film noir elements we do have a few firm foundations in place which must classify Blind Alley as a film noir.

Firstly, Blind Alley features psychoanalysis as the tool which solves the crime, and gets to the bottom of the psychopathic criminal's dilemma.

Beware, My Lovely (1952)

Beware, My Lovely (1952) is a home invasion amnesia Christmas-themed paranoid delusional maniac film noir starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan, two of noir's greatest acting talents.

Robert Ryan plays a strange kinda killer in this low-key film noir which takes something of a path of its own off of the main noir highway, and which yet complies with many of film noir's best tropes.

Most clearly of all, Beware, My Lovely (1952) is suburban noir and is the kind of noir that was becoming increasingly popular in the early 1950s — the type of noir which dealt the goods not on the streets and criminal dives of the 1940s, but directly within the super-vulnerable domestic bliss of the 1950s.

Walk Softly, Stranger (1950)

Walk Softly Stranger (1950) is a romantic drama with leanings into the film noir style. Perhaps also it is a film noir tale, with leanings towards the medium of romantic drama.

Either way, these are some quite unbearble tensions to place beside each other. Can love succeed against noir? Can noir defeat love and make a man abandon a loving partner, when offered a hat, cigarette, pistol and a package of money?

The idea in Walk Softly, Stranger may be to combine the two. The film dips into film noir territory in moments then swoops into romantic scenery on balconies, around extravagant Christmas trees and on the verandas of the rich.  The evil of the story is carried entirely by Paul Stewart who finds everything amusing and irritating, has a short temper and can't really follow the plan like the classic film noir weaker-willed heist partner who won't stick to da plan.

Crime Wave (1954)

Crime Wave (1954) is a punchy procedural film noir with classic Los Angeles location photography, and Sterling Hayden creating the tooth-pick trope.

Further, the tooth-pick may have been a stylised way of suggesting a drug habit, although Sterling Hayden's Detective Lieutenant Sims is an early and incongruous promoter of quitting smoking for one's health.

As well as crime on the streets, there is a crime in the home theme as Crime Wave hits the home invasion theme hard, too. Home invasion in film noir signals in its stylised way the demolition of the full-on dream of Americana, that so infected the States in the 1950s.

The Desperate Hours (1955)

The Desperate Hours (1955) is a home invasion film noir, by William Wyler, and starring Humphrey Bogart as a criminal on the run, terrorising suburban America from within.

Suburban noir can only mean one thing as far as classic film noir is concerned: home invasion. 

Not that the idea was new for the 1950s. Humphrey Bogart had played out the home invasion trope before, and most successfully, with The Petrified Forest (1936). Bogart is said to have commented that his character in The Desperate Hours was in a manner of speaking, his character in that production (Duke Mantee) grown up. 

The home is still central to film noir, at any stage in its evolution. On one level classic film noir is always discussing the family unit.  The home may sometimes be suggestive for reasons of contrast, as the home contrasts the streets, and everything that happens there, including crime and loose-behaviour of any sort. 

Storm Fear (1955)

On the run and in the snow ― a lethal combination for those caught in the violence of Storm Fear (1955).

As dramatic set-ups and frequently visited tropes go, the home invasion is as stable a staple as one might wish for, and was perfect for film noir.

There are many examples of home invasion film noirs, from Suddenly (1954), in which Frank Sinatra plays an assassin intent on killing the US President; all the way back to the slightly more conventional The Petrified Forest (1936). 

Probably the most famous example of this style of story from the classic film noir period is Key Largo (1948) ― and many of these movies contain the same set-up ― gangsters on the run take over a family home or similar residence, thus creating perfect conditions to explore the inevitable culture clash that crime inspired in the bourgeois imagination.

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.

The Dark Past (1948)

The Dark Past (1948) is one of several films noir which opens with the aerial shot of the city, and an earnest voice over describing the existential experience of the urban life, the technological alienation which is suggestive of an architectural emptiness, a nihilism even, akin to crime in its freedom.

As Side Street seems to open with the message that any one of us may be the day's murder victim as much as they may be that murder's suspect.

The Dark Past takes the more traditional Mark Hellinger informed attitude that this is the naked city, and that it's like a jungle sometimes, and this is our framing, the real life city.

William Holden plays mean as hell psychopath and killer Al Walker, a film noir apogee and the defining casting action of a style which elevated to central protagonist the idea of villain as narrative prime mover.

The Petrified Forest (1936)

The Petrified Forest is a 1936 gem of a proto-noir, starring Bette Davis, Leslie Howard and a first major star turn from this young cat, Humphrey Bogart.

While we style The Petrified Forest as a proto-noir, its real roots are on the stage, and it is in fact a typical-for-its-day stage-to-screen adaptation. Typical in the performances which seem verbose for the silver screen. and its rather static setting.

Even four or five years later, when the forties were unrolling and film noir was a staple style at the cinema house, much more emphasis was being spent on mis-en-scene and a more visual style. Back in the day - - when the day was the 1930s - - there was a temptation to simply film what appear to us today, to be quite long exchanges of dialogue.

The dialogue between Bette Davis and Leslie Howard which takes up a large chunk of the opening acts is only really saved by the ultra-urbane delivery and the sheer fascination both actors inspire. A variety of carefully curated camera angles keep this moving along, along with a well evoked setting, which is a remote gas station in the Arizona wilds.