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.

Scandal Sheet (1952)

Scandal Sheet (1952) is a Phil Karlson journalism and media noir secret past murder drama categorising a cheap, cruel and disgusting press as noir as the swindling murderers who run it, based on a novel by Samuel Fuller, the film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, actor, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget genre movies with controversial themes, often made outside the conventional studio system. 

Scandal Sheet (1952) does remain an engaging noir film directed by Phil Karlson, featuring Broderick Crawford as managing editor of a sensationalist newspaper, John Derek as an ambitious reporter, and Donna Reed as a principled journalist. Based on Samuel Fuller's novel The Dark Page, the film opens with the murderer's identity revealed—editor Mark Chapman (Crawford) kills his ex-wife, setting off a tense storyline as he encourages his staff to solve the very crime he committed.

Dead Man's Eyes (1944)

Dead Man's Eyes (1944) is a horror thriller artist-goes-blind murder love triangle film noir from the Inner Sanctum series of the 1940s, starring Lon Chaney Jr and Jean Parker.

Fairly silly and not universally enjoyed, Dead Man's Eyes (1944) is a basic production to say the least, and is fairly static in terms of its acting and direction, and so quite easy to see why it is not so widely enjoyed as other films noir might still be.

Indeed, for a love triangle picture it is even hard to imagine any of the characters having any true feeling for each other, but then in a cinematic landscape where nothing makes total sense, then nothing particularly matters either.

Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

At the height of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, four German exiles in Hollywood:

• director Fritz Lang
• playwright Bertolt Brecht
• composer Hanns Eisler 
• and actor Hans Heinrich von Twardowski

... combined their skills to make Hangmen Also Die!, a surprising film noir propaganda piece about the Czech resistance.

Twardowski plays Reinhard Heydrich, an SS Obergruppenführer and the 'Reich-Protector' of Czechoslovakia, an infamous character from history and known alternately as 'The Hangman' and 'The Butcher of Prague'.

When he is assassinated by a surgeon (played by Brian Donlevy), the city is locked down and the doctor must rely on the help of the resistance to evade capture. 

Hangmen Also Die! is a fine mix of war picture, film noir and political thriller, with other surprising elements including mad Nazi darkness to the fore.