Cape Fear (1962)

Cape Fear (1962) is a classic film noir revenge and violence against women southern suburban disturbin psychopathic ex con on the loose police, lawyer and detective censorship-barrier-breaking intimidation-genre child exploitation and &ape-heavy terrifying thriller violence against women and girls movie with one of Robert Mitchum's most heavyweight performances of all time, and one of Bernard Hermann's most heavyweight scores of all times — and directed as it is by J. Lee Thompson, Cape Fear is in deed and in the opinion of many noireaux — and this is a biggie — the very last and final ultimate late in the day, last blast of heroic pure and timeless formula-based all in actual full on 100% qualified film noir — the terminal articulation of the studio-era noir idiom — the concluding flourish of Hollywood’s original noir cycle — the last film noir.

Track of the Cat (1954)

Track of the Cat (1954) is a snow-bound William A. Wellman squabblin family revenge against an animal existential and yet pathos laden wild panther ravaging bold moral allegory psychological western with a slight tendency to be classed as part film noir, part adventure, part melodrama, a part western and part ethical fable, starring Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, Tab Hunter, Beulah Bondi, Philip Tonge, William Hopper and Carl Switzer as Joe Sam, a case of a non-Indigenous actor performing an Indigenous role, as such a racial impersonation of Native American, or more specifically speaking, the colonial representational practice commonly referred to as redface.

Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (1947) is a classic film noir returning veteran anti-Semitic military procedural Hollywood Ten produced and directed murder chase thriller with Roberts Ryan, Young and Mitchum, in a night-long low-budget detection and paranoia drama.

Known and loved as a classic of its kind, Crossfire (1947) is best known as being a fore-runner to the justices of HUAC and features many heavily Communised individuals including actors, writer, director and producers, and in fact bearing that in mind it is not surprising that this red-fest of socialist freedom and civic principles in the face of any kind of incipient fascism was always going to be a McCarthy favourite. The film in fact premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on July 22, 1947 and only a few months later producer Adrian Scott and director Edward Dmytryk were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), becoming part of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten.

Man with the Gun (1955)

Man with the Gun (1955) is a lone gunfighter town in distress drifter narrative gunslinger and anarchy western with noirlike tones, and starring Robert Mitchum and Jan Sterling.

In the scorched townscape of Sheridan, 1955’s Man with the Gun offers a monochrome portrait of institutional paralysis and a solitary man’s iron remedy. 

At the heart of this tight-lipped Western, Robert Mitchum stalks the frame with coiled menace as Clint Tollinger, a man whose profession is extermination. 

Thunder Road (1958)

Thunder Road (1958) is a free-wheeling and lurid hillbilly noir drama thriller about the moonshine business and a crazed item of uber-engine-block-rockin fun and double Mitchum-based racing madness and mannish boyhood aggression among the backwood backwaters of the moonshine states of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee in the late 1950s, with added cult-movie drive-in status and plenty machine action and moody maleness, old and young.

It's a noirish crime story with more than just a few late period swiping stabs at the style.

Boy must ya hate 1958 and this movie which opens with the banjo pickin moan of authority that complains millions of dollars are lost to the treasury through taxation each year by means of the power of illicit whiskey, boo hoo. Who cares!

His Kind of Woman (1951)

His Kind of Woman (1951) is a Howard Hughes produced adventure comedy face transplant gambler noir with both light and heavy touches and an array of almost spoofily delivered scenes and lines which might have been suggestive of noir satire were it not for Howard Hughes failing movie policies, which always created slightly aberrant Hollywoodish features.

The story of His Kind of Woman (1951) tells of how a deported gangster's plan to re-enter the USA involves skulduggery at a Mexican resort, and gambler Dan Milner is caught in the middle. The end goal is a rather unspecified face transplant operation a variety of post-Nazi science that blends into the Hollywood fantasies of the day, unspoken and feared.

Where Danger Lives (1950)

Where Danger Lives (1950) is a disturbed wife psycho murder couple on the run film noir with Robert Mitchum as the hell in love with Faith Domergue, one deranged half of a supremely dysfucntional marriage — the other half being Claude Rains.

A severe combinations of noir elements give the story of Where Danger Lives (1950) a bizarre enough edge to classify it as several types of crazy, largely derived from the mad and maddening behaviour of the suicide patient played by Faith Domergue.

The relationship with her husband which is abusive and very much a front for her to get access to money and for him (the husband played by Claude Rains) to have ownership of a young woman , and as such a marriage doomed to fail.

Angel Face (1953)

Angel Face (1953) is a obsessive paranoid murder madness classic film noir from RKO Radio Pictures, the home of film noir, film noir central, as it should be known, and a late late entry from the great forgotten studio, and maybe one of the few from the Howard Hawks era that can be enjoyed for its full scale bizarre noir melodrama.

It's hard for some people to recover from the initial sight of Robert Mitchum in that apron. He is a lousy guy, yet hopefully not a lousy ambulance driver and medic. In the motor car noir aspect of Angel Face (1953) he is a bulk boy to be racing the elite cars so maybe ambulances are his thing.

He wants to race elite though and that is what happens. As a lousy boyfriend he is up there with the lying best of them. He doesn't mind a bit of the cheat and like any good heel does not spot the femme fatale with the offer of not just an apartment but more than that.

The Locket (1946)

The Locket (1946) is a noir of nested narratives — a kleptomaniac paranoid psychoanalytic flashback within a flashback film noir which unravels one woman's secret life and haunted past. 

This psychological thriller  directed by John Brahm stars Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, Robert Mitchum, and Gene Raymond, and was released by RKO Pictures. 

The film is based on a screenplay by Sheridan Gibney and adapted from "What Nancy Wanted" by Norma Barzman, wife of later-blacklisted writer Ben Barzman. 

The set up is an interrupted wedding, the stuff of nightmares. John Willis (Gene Raymond) is about to marry bride to be Nancy (Laraine Day), but a man named Harry Blair (Brian Aherne) crashes the wedding. 

The Racket (1951)

The Racket (1951) is a tough-guy crooked cop corporate crime thriller noir which pits cop against mobster in a classic tale of urban violence, corporate criminality and corruption which may in fact go all the way to the to the top — a great new flavour of wickedness for the 1950s, as the more fantastical and psychological elements of personal corruption are left in the shadowy fun of the 1940s.

As an exercise in casting, The Racket (1951) is a film noir which pulls together so many favourite actors and even directors, that it might appear hard to miss. You'll maybe want to know why The Racket ain't a classic film noir — given that it features Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum and Lizabeth Scott, supported by William Conrad and William Talman, and with direction from not just the credited John Cromwell, but from Nicholas Ray and Tay Garnett also.

Blood on the Moon (1948)

Blood on the Moon (1948) is a wild Western with film noir credentials. Those credentials are sounder than may first appear, and are real.

Robert Wise, the director of Blood on the Moon brought the urban, psychological, shadowy, violent and complex aspects of film noir to this movie, making it very likely the greatest admixture of the Western genre with the film noir style.

It begs the question as to what film noir and Western have in common, and it's likely the fact that both of them ultimately deal with morality.

The lead elements of film noir are first and foremost visible. These are a difficult to follow and relatively layered plot of crosses, triple crosses and identities.

These typically complex stories are also played out in the shadows where possible. Blood on the Moon not only opens with an epic and miserable rain storm, and in that storm is the figure of the drifter, stoically on the wander, the forever hired hand, here played by Robert Mitchum.

Out of the Past (1947)

Out Of The Past (1947) is a classic fate-filled doomed-romance revenge mystery film noir, directed by Jacques Tourneur, and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas.  

From the shadows of the past stumble the memories of your misdeeds. They lug themselves towards you in heavy coats and hats — packing heat and chewing on cocktail sticks.  

Whatever you do, wherever you go, fate can catch you — fate WILL catch you.  

And that’s the message of Out of the Past (1947)

Out of the Past is one of the most heavy duty, hard-wearing, cigarette-smoking film noirs in the whole damn canon — hoods, hats, hold ups and past actions dredging up the most awful barrelfuls of darkness.