Pete Kelly's Blues (1955)

Pete Kelly's Blues (1955) is a music drama film starring and directed by Jack Webb which has film noir overtones.

It's the movie of the radio series of the same name - - the motion picture event no less! Taken to the screen by its creator Jack Webb.

Instead of firing up the tropes and tiring displays of middle of the road standard-as-you-go methods of storytelling, Pete Kelly's Blues delivers the tropes cold and plays them by the book, making for a strange and slight story that is easy in the telling, but doesn't deliver big on surprise, despite there being a bundle of muscle gunplay and murder throughout.

Jack Webb as Pete Kelly barely smiles as this colourful crime drama unfolds, although there is not much to smile about, aside from when he is rejecting Janet Leigh's frolicking advances.

Illegal (1955)

Illegal (1955) is a court-room thriller exposing the tentacles of corporate evil, and the massive protections afforded to the new class of criminal emerging in the boardrooms of America.

Edward G. Robinson plays superstar District Attorney Victor Scott, on fire in the courtroom, a wit and a showman, able it appears to convince any jury of his case.

Illegal opens with a salacious murder which is quickly executed, codified, examined and tried; much to the amusement of anyone who has ever enjoyed the television series, Star Trek; for the hapless hero in this vignette of justice and its flaws, is DeForest Kelley.

That's one reason alone to check in with this rather interesting variation on an increasingly important theme. 

The Burglar (1957)

Both Atlantic City and Philadelphia feature beautifully in one of the best-loved late B-film noirs, The Burglar (1957), starring Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield.

The Burglar is more than just a cut above average film noir, as well as being that rare cinematic item ― a Dan Duryea leading role.

To begin with there is mood and atmosphere. Everyone working on this picture knew what they were doing by this point, the very end of the film noir show.

Insofar as plot chops, The Burglar is not dissimilar to The Asphalt Jungle, in the way in which the leading guys seem to be led on down and down, into fates more awful, peculiar and hopeless. The direction from Paul Wendko has style aplenty, oblique angles, super-sweaty close-ups and even some shock cutting, which adds huge amounts of class.

And then there is the beginning newsreel passage ― and the amusement arcade ending. I would wonder here if director Paul Wendko is trying to tell us something about his admiration for Orson Welles? These would appear to be samples from Citizen Kane and Lady from Shanghai, respectively.