Cry Vengeance (1954)

Cry Vengeance (1954) is an ex-con framed and disfigured ex-cop on a mission violent rural slick vengeance and violence against women film noir with hardboiled cops and a blond psycho hitman on the loose in backwater Alaska.

The orchestras of the 1950s are bigger, bolder, brassier and this mid 50s noir indicates well the period when the hardboiled become so hard that the pan had dried and the metal of its surface had fused into a mighty grimace, here worked by the unsmiling Mark Stevens.

Down Three Dark Streets (1954)

Down Three Dark Streets (1954) is a later period police procedural docu-style triple narrative case study murder mystery film noir starring Broderick Crawford and Ruth Roman, as a cop on the case and a victim in the suburbs, in fairly standard practise style thrillnoir for its era and budget.

Clearly by 1954 there was little noir left and although this film and many others like it carry the label of film noir and are known to the lazies who populate the fanchats and social pages constructed and dedicated to the deconstruction and dedication of the style, there is little of what could ever be classified as the true film noir in here, with none of the noirish measures of shadow and paranoia, of the individual and their fateful decline, and of the psychosexual madnesses of melodrama so typical of the medium in its 1940s heyday.