Island of Doomed Men (1940)

Island of Doomed Men (1940) is an undercover cop prison exploitation lousy husband film noir adventure shocker about sadistic capitalistic island owner in conspiratorial league with the US prison system, who runs a mean slave labour based penal island where he keeps his wife a captive, and where he is bothered to his downfall by a domestic monkey.

Peter Lorre is that island owner in Island of Doomed Men (1940), the prosaically named Stephen Darnel who runs a mean slave colony, with a sophisticated home enclave of dreams, flowers, a kitchen, grand piano, electric fence and a domestic monkey.

The Night Has Eyes (1942)

The Night Has Eyes (1942) is a Limey lunar mystery old-dark-house horror quicksand post-Spanish Civil War thriller starring the man of that moment James Mason, and which has variously been known as Moonlight Madness and Terror House.

Directed by Leslie Arliss and also starring Joyce Howard, Wilfrid Lawson, Mary Clare and Tucker McGuire, it is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Alan Kennington.

It's a tale of hidden and permanent recurrent madness, and viewers are exposed to James Mason . . . "I've made my kill for the night" he says with the placidity typical of his style  . . . murdering a monkey and then resolving himself to the firm Englishness for which he is renowned.

Donovan's Brain (1953)

Donovan's Brain (1953) is a body-horror exploitation mad scientist conscious disembodied brain thriller horror science fiction fantasy crime drama both embedded in and invested in and owing a debt to the film noir style.

As much an outré noir as it is a horror and as much a mad scientist romance drama as it is an exploitation shocker, Donovan's Brain retains charms far beyond its modest origins and becomes semantically more interesting with every year that passes since 1953.

Spoilers Alert the forgiving concluding moral dramatic termination and completing moral moments of this crime and weakness madness drama, does ask questions about body stealing, corpse desecration and other post-mortem brutalities which we must strangely brush aside.

The Monster and the Girl (1941)

The Monster and the Girl (1941) is an outré monster death row revenge movie from the golden age of monster death row revenge movies. 

Unorthodox and strange, this crime science fiction courtroom horror thriller revenge monkey noir is a message to film lovers for all time, and stands as an immortal portal to more than just entertainment.

Film noir is one the least issues with The Monster and the Girl (1941) as there is such a delightful heap of unpacking to be made of this short epic, which tells of a mad experiment with monkeydom, and a mad experiment in film making too, as Hollywood feels its way towards the horror genre out of the monster department, while still indulging in its deep passion for monkeys.

more mystery than monster for the main of its short running time, The Monster and the Girl is a courtroom framed thriller mystery told in flashback as the shocked participants of a murder trial piece together the most awful facts that had ever been imagined on screen.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

The best Golden Age film noir movies such as Sunset Boulevard (1950) rank among the favourites of all movies lovers.

The best examples of the film noir style remain as the greatest examples of cinema as a whole, and the most popular. 

Given that as the Golden Age of Hollywood closed, nobody was specifically aware as such of there being a style or a genre called 'noir', it is surprising how cohesive the style was. Film noir really was a thing, and Sunset Boulevard is a classic example, of classic film noir.

That 'Golden Age' is usually said to be from 1930 until 1945, but it's hard to pin these things down.

Consistent to movie storytelling is time. Time in classical Hollywood is continuous, linear, and uniform, since non-linearity calls attention to the illusory workings of the medium. The only permissible manipulation of time in this format is the flashback, which is a staple of film noir, and comprises the entirety of Sunset Boulevard.

What's fascinating is that we can perhaps ask what it was that the makers of classic film noir era thought they were making? What were the workmanlike film noir cycle movies of the era aimed at; and what were the common reference points that allowed the style to develop?

A Bullet for Joey (1955)

The curious late-cycle film noir gangster-spy picture A Bullet for Joey (1955) unites the two stars Edward G. Robinson and George Raft,  who had previously been paired in Raoul Walsh's Manpower (1941).

Edward G. Robinson was at ease in film noir, and able to play good guy roles, which he often did with pipe-wielding authority, and out and out villains. 

George Raft in A Bullet For Joey plays the hoodlum figure, working here to kidnap a nuclear scientist, with Peter van Eyck as the true ring-leader.

Comparing it to Illegal (1955), also with Robinson and by director Lewis Allen, there is slightly less in terms of dark city noir qualities, paranoia, and psychological damage.

In Montreal, a police inspector (Edward G. Robinson) uncovers piece by piece a plan to kidnap a nuclear physicist. American mobsters, foreign spies and a blonde seductress are all involved in this rather staid caper.

Shout out, however, to monkeys in film noir.