Invaders From Mars (1953)

Invaders From Mars (1953) is an independently made child point-of-view flying saucer fantasy science fiction alien peril SuperCinecolor, occupying a near maverick status in the mid twentieth century annals of US science fiction cinema.

Directed by super-Scot, or at leaset second generation American Scot William Cameron Menzies and starring Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Morris Ankrum, Leif Erickson, and Hillary Brooke, it was produced by Edward L. Alperson Jr. and released by 20th Century-Fox in terrifying color, not just SuperCinecolor. For more on that Cinecolor effect, go here to Wikipedia.

Murder Is My Beat (1955)

Murder Is My Beat (1955) is a cheapo classic class act Edgar G. Ulmer snow-time sleazy cop uh oh detective and sleazy dame thanks for the company, now it's time to take a little ride, who do you think you are film noir from the back annals of the lost lots of the dark style.

Even as it checked out and evolved into the new riffs of the 1960s and the miracle cop movies of the seventies did elect to emulate its own hey day with pictures like Murder Is My Beat (1955) which seems stuck to 1940s noir tropes in an almost nostalgic manner, as if the picture craved to be made in 1945 and not in 1955.

Patsy Flint as the voiceover tells us, has a hard little package with a cunning brain sharpened by constant grinding against the world. And is that kind of snapping theatrical flat wobbling noir, with its amazing snow-scene surprise, one of the best snow noirs on the block.

It's a frankly exciting story right on the ridge of peril, and with noir merit to spare. It slips in all types and travails, including "I'd seen enough killing in the Pacific," as the noir hero makes weary work in his suit and coat through the worst snow drift in film noir.