Mirage (1965)

Mirage (1965) is an amnesia corporate crime nuclear threat hunted man paranoia thriller film noir, usually called a neo noir by the time we have come to examine the 1960s and its use of the style.

Yes, even though Mirage (1965) was made by Edward Dmytryk in the 1960s it rolls with the full flavour of all iconic and classic film noir, from the paranoiac lost in the city, to the hats and hoods of a mysterious underworld. Great motor cars and docu-noir style street action, a dream-like quality, and mystery intimate quick flashback visions as Gregory Peck pieces the cliches together, with the unique addition of Walther Matthau.

13 West Street (1962)

13 West Street (1962) is a teenage tearaway paranoia trouble in suburbia late noir Alan Laddaholic rocket scientist street-titled film noir filler which veers into a confused admixture of home invasion noir, vigilante noir, teenage rebellion and juvenile threat noir, paranoid noir, car smash noir and an early entry into the American vigilante canon.

is the film that marked Alan Ladd's swan song as a leading man. And honey, let me tell you, this was not the grand finale one might have hoped for. Sure, it’s a decent movie—for its time—but the truth is, it’s hard not to see the wear and tear of Ladd’s years of excessive drinking and hard living, splashed across his face like a tired canvas. 

On The Beach (1959)

On The Beach (1959) is a metaphenomenal post apocalyptic novel adaptation dark and empty gaze at the emptiness of post-nuclear life and the actual point of any kind of human existence, phrased beautifully in a Hollywood void of expression, most appropriate to the winding close of the existential age brought about by the cold Cold War reality of a life that is either radioactively poisonous, or sub marine.

On the Beach, written by Nevil Shute and adapted into a film by Stanley Kramer, stands as one of the most controversial and widely read books of its time. Both the book and the film are credited with significantly influencing the anti-nuclear weapons movement of the 1960s and contributing to the end of the nuclear arms race.

Shack Out On 101 (1955)

Shack Out on 101 (1955) is a  roadside-diner anti-Communist espionage film noir with goofball elements set in a crummy but funny roadside diner and on a low-budget, and made by Allied Artists.

Indeed, you could call the joint a shack.

Down at the shack, Lee Marvin plays Slob a lecherous and bullying short-order cook who ain't good for much, other than sniping with his war veteran boss played by Keenan Wynn, whose life is a mixture of sarcasm and PTSD.

In September 1952, Monogram announced that henceforth it would only produce films bearing the Allied Artists name. The studio ceased making movies under the Monogram brand name in 1953, although it was reactivated by AAI by the millennium. The parent company became Allied Artists, with Monogram Pictures becoming an operating division.

In fact French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard dedicated his 1960 film Breathless to Monogram, citing the studio's films as a major influence.

Split Second (1953)

Split Second (1953) is a nuclear threat hostage film noir — a nuclear noir if you will — that pits some habitual noir lowlife against the atom bomb.

The story follows two convicts, Sam Hurley (Stephen McNally) and Bart (Paul Kelly), who escape from prison with Bart having been shot. They're picked up by their getaway driver Dummy (Frank De Kova) and then hit a gas station, where the foul-tempered Sam kills the attendant (John Cliff). 

The men then hijack a car driven by Kay (Alexis Smith) and her boyfriend (Robert Paige) and set off into a nuclear testing ground where they pick up another two cast members, an attractive drifter called  Dottie (Jan Sterling), who is travelling with a journalist called Larry (Keith Andes).

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) is an FBI espionage undercover Nazi wartime propaganda film noir starring William Eythe as Bill Dietrich (based on FBI double-agent William G. Sebold); Lloyd Nolan as Agent George A. Briggs; and Signe Hasso as Elsa Gebhardt (based on the spy Lilly Stein)

The film was made with the blessing and backing of the FBI — so much blessing in fact that Bureau director, J. Edgar Hoover, appears during the introductory montage. 

The FBI agents shown in Washington, D.C. were played by actual agents and the film's semi-documentary style inspired other films, including The Naked City and Boomerang.

Producer Louis de Rochemont was known for creating some pre-War anti-Nazi material for the March of Time newsreel series in which he mixed documentary footage with staged re-enactments.  

Them! (1954)

Them! (1954) is a science-fiction nuclear monster red scare big bug monster film, which was a huge and surprise hit in its day.

The film is based on an original story treatment by George Worthing Yates, which was then developed into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman and adaptation by Russell Hughes.

Directed by Gordon Douglas, and starring James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, and James Arness, Them! (1954) was one of the first of the 1950s nuclear monster films, and the first big bug feature film to use insects as the monster.

A small girl is found wandering alone in the New Mexican desert, the only survivor of an unknown calamity that befell her family. When roused from her catatonia, she can only scream: "Theeeem!"

Cloak and Dagger (1946)

Cloak and Dagger (1946) is a Nazi nuclear secrets behind enemy lines espionage thriller made partially in the film noir style by Fritz Lang, starring Gary Cooper and Lilli Palmer.

One of a handful of major Hollywood stars of the Golden Age who remained a virtual stranger to film noir, Gary Cooper plays a bachelor nuclear physicist named Alvah Jesper who is working in the United States on the Manhattan Project to build a nuclear bomb. 

Recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) his mission is to make contact with a Hungarian nuclear physicist, Katerin Lodor, who has been working on the German project to make a nuclear bomb and has escaped into neutral Switzerland. 

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is a nuclear era paranoia and social humiliation weakened male lead fantasy science fiction horror shocker film directed by Jack Arnold based on Richard Matheson's 1956 novel The Shrinking Man. The film stars Grant Williams as Scott and Randy Stuart as Scott's wife Louise. 

Not a film noir, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is a noir era view of paranoia, and while classic era noir offers style, theme and technique to both horror and science fiction, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is also a great period exploration of masculinity —  or in fact it's an exploration of masculinity for all time.

Best appreciated for the complex and brilliant effects, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is one of the decade's major artworks. 

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.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Kiss Me Deadly is also known for its weird credits
which back up the screen instead of descend

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is a typically depraved hardboiled film noir story, with an uncaring and sleazy anti-hero.

There are complex plot threads that form an overall labyrinth that has to be ignored if you are to enjoy the story, and Cold War and nuclear paranoia grow like rampant weeds through this, eventually and dramatically engulfing everything.

Kiss Me Deadly has many of the elements of film noir — a stark opening sequence, several destructive femme fatales, a clutch of low-life gangsters, and many expressionistic lit night-time scenes. 

There is also within this mess of noir, a vengeful quest, and a constant dark mood of hopelessness, which shows that the patterns of film noir had by this late stage in the canon been refined into a high art in themselves.

It is also the closing point of the canon, the last ever film noir — so everything after May 18, 1955 — the day that Kiss Me Deadly was released — can officially be known as ‘neo-noir’.

That's what they say, anyhow.