Whistle Stop (1946)

Whistle Stop (1946) is a film noir tale of crazed small town jealousy bursting at the seams with a lousy husband and lousy boyfriend competing over the most beautiful woman of all time in a booze-based gamblathon with train image-ery a-plenty and passing trains and honking trains obviously while whistle stop motifery abounds in a darkened noir manner at the end of hope, as George Raft employs his incredibly still face, and Tom Conway twitches his most incredibly smooth and moustachioed face, and both faces are punched in booze-based and non booze-based rage, and Ava Gardner deploys her incredibly beautiful face.

Two O' Clock Courage (1945)

Two O' Clock Courage (1945) is a romantic-comedic amnesia cabbie journalism and media comedy female seeker hero mystery writer-hero film noir from the classic era of the urban female seeker hero and cabbie noir adventure movie.

For 1945 this is powerful stuff, a seminal seminar in crossover and able to tell you more about history, narrative, meta-history, film-making, World War 2 and the USA than Citizen Kane might ever.

Mind you, this is virtually post-the-war and the thing hasn't gone off yet, it's one the last pictures from Innocentlandia.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

I Walked With a Zombie (1943) is a supernatural exotic Vodou thriller, super-fun with the uber-Caribbean heat of the sound stage, creative in tone, vision, effects, acting, sound, use of magic, monstrosity, novel monstrosity, zombification, film noir and the very mother birthing of the zombie movement, the liekyl most critical of all film styles and genres the zombie film

Did film noir birth the zombie film, it is for you to decide. Watch all film noir and all zombie films, and then respond. No, I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is not the first zombie film, but it is often considered one of the most acclaimed pre-Romero zombie movies. The 1932 film White Zombie is generally considered the first zombie movie. 

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.

Cat People (1942)

Cat People (1942) by Jacques Tourneur, was the product of writers and producers putting their heads together at a time when horror was in its infancy, and coming up with what they considered to be a new concept. 

This is because even then, they had seen that horror was already focused on a few supernatural and historic themes ― the ghost ― the vampire ― the Frankenstein monster  ― the Mummy ― there Werewolf ― and they'd already seen that there were not too many more in the blockbuster canon; maybe.

Hence the decision to see if the cat could be developed into a truly lasting horror theme. The vision of Cat People is not one of lycanthropy ― although it is similar. And it is not quite one of demonic possession, although again there is plenty in  common.

The Seventh Victim (1943)

Infused with confused lesbian undertones, The Seventh Victim (1943) is a fascinating horror film, which sits as neatly in the film noir style as it does in the canon of early horror thrillers.

It is true to say that of all the common genres of film we know as standard, horror was not a large field in the 1940s. Much of what we now appreciate as horror did however set its roots in film noir. The psychopath is a character straight out of film noir ― or at least he made his first major appearances there. 

The dark settings however, with fog, basements, gothic buildings and terrorised women ― are similarly found in the 1940s in the film noir style. 

While The Seventh Victim may be a psychological chiller and mystery movie, it does contain horror elements which directly precede many classic tropes, such as the urban coven ― for which of course see Rosemary's Baby (1968).