Smooth as Silk (1946)

Smooth as Silk (1946) is a femme fatale drunk driver killer playboy in theatreland razor-edged B-noir backstage thriller where Virginia Grey weaponizes glamour, ambition, and male stupidity in a vicious spiral of seduction, betrayal, murder, and theatrical revenge.

The Threat (1949)

The Threat (1949) is a prison break revenge and violence cons on the run hostage procedural Felix E. Feist classic era film noir psychopathic bully drama with Charles McGraw, Virginia Grey, Michael O'Shea, Anthony Caruso, Julie Bishop and Frank Conroy.

Felix E. Feist's The Threat (1949) is a violent, accelerated bullet of a film. Clocking in at barely over an hour, it encapsulates the claustrophobic essence of noir within its limited timeframe. There is no flab to be found; every scene is propelled by urgency, and every character stands in the shadow of mortal danger. The film traffics in archetypes: the brutal criminal, the loyal detective, the compromised woman, and the hapless bystander. 

Accused of Murder (1956)

Accused of Murder (1956) is a gangster gangland-killer witness nightclub singer full color semi-static murder film noir from the bemusing and hard to grasp color film noir cycle of the 1950s.

Accused of Murder emerges from the shadows of 1950s American cinema as a non-quintessential example of the film noir style, directed with precision attention to color and its processes by Joseph Kane and featuring a semi-stellar cast led by David Brian, Vera Ralston, and Sidney Blackmer.

At the heart of this Republic Pictures produced and distributed work of noir art narrative lies the enigmatic figure of nightclub singer Ilona Vance, portrayed with captivating allure and alluring captivity by Ralston. When crooked attorney Frank Hobart meets his untimely demise, all eyes turn to Vance, the last person to have seen him alive. As the accusing finger of suspicion points in her direction, Vance finds herself entangled in a web of deceit and intrigue, fighting to clear her name and unravel the truth behind Hobart's demise.

Crime Of Passion (1957)

Crime Of Passion (1957) is a cops in suburbia story of female subjugation by the American Dream, and the story of how one career woman in love regrets her decision to quit her job in the media and become a housewife.

Many of the favourite flavours of noir are evident in a curiously uncorrupted and happy cop shop whereas the subtle rot of suburban morality that is often unsubtly recorded in film noir is placed on a slow burn beneath the lot of this movie.

The men are the men and the women are the women in this vision of 1950s USA, and most especially of all this is a noir of suburbia, a tale of the middle classes and the stifling inability of the new American Dream to cope with any abnormality in the moral and gender relations of the day.