The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is a flashback rags-to-riches-lousy husband woman in the workplace corporate gangland crime kingpin's moll film noir, with Joan Crawford and David Brian, as well as a career highlight from noir superstar Steve Cochran

With Joan Crawford and an incredible four husbands in one movie, there are questions galore in the damned darkness of The Damned Don't Cry (1950).

Joan Crawford's character starts with a husband that she does not rate, even though it is Richard Egan. But he's too controlling and penny-pinching for her, and she is a film noir hero for whom enough is not enough.

Rephrasing that, this is a common enough film noir lesson: you are not satisfied with your mediocre and quotidian suburban working life, or as in this case, a rather blue collar existence on an oilfield.

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.