He Walked By Night (1948)

He Walked By Night (1948) is a procedural lone psychopath hunter killer thriller semi-documentary police technical adviser film noir starring Richard Basehart and directed by Alfred Werker.

Drain dwelling hi-technology oscillograph and television projector building full fat classic film noir, He Walked By Night may also be appreciated for the stunning array of tech gadgets and insight into the technical electronic industry as it might have stood in 1948, as well as its stunning lack of female actors and characters and for what it says about the battles for social control that went on as fascism was unspooled across social institutions after World War II

Gun totin and fast moving, He Walked By Night rides through the night of course, that being its charm, and of course it's night in the storm drains too, where master lone wolf Richard Basehart - the character's name is Roy Martin or Roy Morgan - has a stash of guns too. 

When it comes to doggy nemesis none are harder and cleverer and more determined and sharp as Scott Brady, who also plays a mean police milkman when need be.

Outside The Wall (1950)

Outside The Wall (1950) is an ex-con sap in the city thriller from the height of the classic film noir era, starring Richard Basehart as an innocent abroad, released from prison never having seen a woman, and at large and trying to remain crime-free in Philly.

However this is film noir and fate comes a-calling as do three women at once for hapless sap in a cap Richard Basehart as he negotiates his way into peril and romance.

Outside The Wall (1950) performs as a fairly standard film noir with its story of a man going straight being dragged by the heels back into the world of crime.

However there is something fantastical about the story as well, which offers a darkened fairy tale aspect contained within the innocent-abroad-style adventures of Richard Basehart's character, Larry Nelson.

Repeat Performance (1947)

Repeat Performance (1947) is a lousy husband murder fantasy amnesia film noir with Joan Leslie, Louis Hayward, Richard Basehart, Tom Conway and Virginia Field.

One of the strengths of 1940s film noir was the element of the fantastic, which was often created by closed studio sets and incredible coincidences in the storytelling, in which characters acted out dark fantasies for real, with as little realism as possible — another world often being created by the mis en scene and the strange happenings.

Repeat Performance (1947) is something of an outlier in that the fantasy within it is manifest. Like other film noir which quickly taps into a national unconscious and plays out a murderous what-if, Repeat Performance tells a wild story in which the wild elements are simply givens that are accepted from the off.

Tension (1949)

Tension (1949) is a superlative hen-cucked husband murder mystery double identity hard-boiled cop on the case film noir starring Audrey Totter, Richard Basehart, Barry Sullivan, Cyd Charisse and William Conrad.

Tension (1949) sits at the apex of 1940s fantasy film noir in which the darkest thoughts become rampant reality — it is one of the style's best examples of obsessive, uninhibited dark tales of suburban and urban America, involving a doomed marriage, feral morals and weakness. 

The term fantasy refers here to a certain lack of inhibition in the story telling. 

The Intimate Stranger (1956)

In the difficult old tradition of American film noir directors, stars, writers and technicians fleeing the blacklists of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Joseph Losey made several decent British film noir movies, including The Intimate Stranger (1956), a mystery tale of deceit from the heart of the British film industry.

And likely when you see it, it will be called FINGER OF GUILT.

But have no fear, this was and remains the American title of this Losey lost noir, Losey who was working under the alias Alec C. Snowden, having as we have seen, fled The States in the midst of Red Terror.

Finger of Guilt or The Intimate Stranger, then, you may take your pick.

Losey was blacklisted in the United States at the time when he made this film, and with a number of other American directors and screenwriters, he had moved to Britain and began making films, disguising his real identity behind an alias. 1956 was that kind of year.

The screenplay was written by Howard Koch who had also been blacklisted, and wrote under the name Peter Howard. The film was made at Shepperton Studios, with Losey using as we have seen already, the non-noir handle and nom de guerre, Mr Incognito himself ... Alec C. Snowden. 

Losey also has a small cameo part in the film, playing a film director.

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) is an assumed identity, post-Bergen Belsen concentration camp paranoid woman San Francisco featuring lousy husband consummate film noir performance, with every trope of the paranoid woman genre well represented, from the gothic and creepy matrimonial home, to the gothic and creepy housekeeper, to the poisoned bedtime drink, 

She's a paranoid woman but she's not alone.  They are all over film noir, and not just in The House on Telegraph Hill (1951).