The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952)

The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952) is a claustrophobic snowbound cabin of fear and paranoia home invasion moral siege frontier angry local mob western film noir directed by Joseph M. Newman and starring Anne Baxter and Dale Robertson with a screenplay based on a short story of the same name by Bret Harte, a story indeed which and that in fact has indeed been brought to film at least five times, including in 1919 with Harry Carey and in 1937 with Preston Foster, oh yeah, snow noir, western noir.

The Human Jungle (1954)

The Human Jungle (1954) is a Joseph M. Newman procedural cleanin up the streets striptease dancer murder and shooting of innocent bystander and police falsely accused of beating three young men, causing neighborhood tensions to rise film noir policer starring Gary Merrill, Jan Sterling and Regis Toomey and produced and distributed by the Hollywood studio Allied Artists.

Abandoned (1949)

Abandoned (1949) is a journalism and media baby-adoption-ring female seeker hero film noir from high into the classic years of all out full fat noir, remaining a mean wittaw crime flick that slithers through the back alleys of corruption like a grifter on the lam. 

It’s got all the dirty fingerprints of a real noir—shadows thick as cigarette smoke, dames in trouble, and heels looking to make a fast buck off somebody else's misery.

It kicks off when Paula Considine (Gale Storm) hits Los Angeles looking for her missing sister. The cops? They don’t care. But a wisecracking newshound named Mark Sitko (Dennis O’Keefe) smells a rat, and soon they’re knee-deep in a baby-smuggling racket run by a smooth operator with ice in his veins, played by the ever-slick Raymond Burr. 

He’s got an adoption scam so tight it squeaks, selling newborns like hot merchandise, and anyone who gets in his way winds up floating face-down in the Los Angeles River.

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Dangerous Crossing (1953) is a maritime murder conspiracy mystery paranoid woman heiress in distress missing husband silly-newlywed-woman version of the well tested film noir trope of the vulnerable woman, lost in a world of romance that is fear-bitten, weird and underwritten by criminal conspiracy.

That most classic of mystery setups is no longer employed by the movies, the one in which all the world seems to be a conspiracy. No, madam, the purser has not seen your husband. No, madam, this is not your cabin and your bags were never here, your husband was never on this ship. This story is used again and again by da moviemakers, and here it is in a well-formed and perfect trope, creating rough ripples and mystery.

711 Ocean Drive (1950)

Vintage Columbia Pictures 1950 crime film noir 711 Ocean Drive, starring Edmond O'Brien, Joanne Dru and Otto Kruger, tells the story of how an ambitious and happy go lucky expert in telephony becomes a mean and vicious gang-land leader.

It's a wandering tale of crime, bookmaking and the perils of making a fast and succesful rise in the world of gangsterism.

It leads us from the small bookies of coastal California, through the high lives and low lives of its gangster antagonists, to wind up on and within the Boulder Dam in Arizona, where the gangster meets his inevitable end.

Edmond O'Brien is known from other contemporary film noirs such as The Killers, A Double Life and The Web (all 1947), to D.O.A.and Backfire in 1950.

And he does good guys just he does bad guys, and here we see him doing both.

Sure, he starts off as the wisecracking and fun telephone engineer, who likes nothing more than to bet in the horses.

But when he has the bookmaking system explained to him, and the importance of telephony, he is offered a job that he can't refuse.