Tiger in the Smoke (1956)

Tiger in the Smoke (1956) is a fog-bound British returning veteran Limey street gang treasure and deception paranoid woman Post-War London underworld adventure thriller film noir, and a movie notable not just for its atmospheric River Thames silent credits, but the copious amounts of fog, mist and vapour within its sets and dramaturgy — for no other movie of the era or indeed of any era, including many a Victorian horror epic, has more wool-thick smog and smoke in it, than this modest mirk of gloaming pea-soupery.

You already like Donald Sinden, you may not know it, but here in this heroic foggy fugue, you've come to love him, before anyone else had met him.

The Shop at Sly Corner (1947)

The Shop at Sly Corner (1949) is a lightweight Limey mystery film noir with a pleasant historical creep factor and an antiques business setting, featuring a psychopathic Pinkie-like young shop boy on a noir rise to power over the mild mannered walrus faced character actor stylings of Oscar Homoloka

The Shop at Sly Corner is based on a play by Edward Percy, a Conservative MP, which debuted in London in May 1945 and received positive reviews, with Variety praising it as "good theatre." 

The play enjoyed a successful two-year run in London, generating a significant profit for its investors after an initial production cost of just $12,000. 

Terror Street (1953)

Terror Street (1953) is not the tale of terror its title may promise. But it stars Dan Duryea, and is a classic slice of limey noir.

It's crummy, and it's wooden, and it moves the pace of a cement snail at times. Terror Street also falls into the film noir 'Lousy Husband' sub-genre.

Men fail as much as they succeed in film noir, and if you are a lousy husband, you'd better be prepared for the bizarre consequences.

And don't be looking for much terror, film noir fans, as you venture down terror street. That would asking a lot.

There may yet be terror lurking there, but Terror Street is going to make you wait.

Instead, over the first nearly twenty minutes of Terror Street, you will find what seem like hours of solid wood largely coming from Dan Duryea, although this is barely his fault. It is as if Duryea has been asked to perform as solidly woodenly as he can by the directors of the piece; as if there is nothing else for him to do.

So Dan steps up with solid wood for the fans.

And the mis en scene, the action, the script and the psychic landscape of terror street, provides if truth be told, all the terror of a plate of cold Limey porridge.

So what is the point of Terror Street (1953)? How could this slice of Brit noir have come to have been made, and had the manufacturers of this misnamed flick understood anything of the dark noir rumblings which had been piling their way across the Atlantic for nearly fifteen years?