NOIR ARCHIVE VOLUME 2: 1954-1956 / CERT: UNRATED / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: STEWART GRANGER, WILLIAM CAMPBELL, JACK KELLY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Kit Parker Films have assembled another collection of film noir classics and, much like Volume 1 in the series, it’s a mixed bag of better-known and forgotten pieces. Film noir, a genre term coined after the fact (none of these directors were consciously making film noir movies), concerns itself with crime drama, particularly that featuring gumshoes, grifters, journeyman boxers, and femmes fatale; people dragged into a life of crime, victims of circumstance and desperation, and it almost never ends well.
Trawling the late noir period, this set collects films from 1954 to 1956, and B-movie kings such as William Castle (The Tingler), Nathan Juran (Attack of the 50ft Woman) and Fred F Sears (Earth vs the Flying Saucers) turn up with pre-genre crime work. Sears is responsible for one of the collection’s highlights, Cell 2455, Death Row, a 1955 piece based on a true story, with William Campbell starring as Whit Whittier, a death row inmate who studies the law to try to stay his execution. The meat of the film is told in flashback; just how did a young boy with dreams end up in this desperate place? Another Sears piece, Rumble on the Docks, is less compelling, but still a good yarn about a young man caught up in a gang war.
Making a rare appearance is a British film noir, Footsteps in the Fog, which was shot at Shepperton Studios but directed by US veteran Arthur Lubin. Stewart Granger plays a well-to-do man who murders his wife but is blackmailed by his Cockney maid, Lily. The story takes twists and turns and has much to say – if unwittingly – about the class divide in the Britain of the 1950s, and Jean Simmons’ Lily becomes embroiled in a situation that quickly spins out of control. Spin a Dark Web, known as The Soho Incident in the UK, is also present to represent the British take on noir.
John Cassavetes makes a welcome appearance in The Night Holds Terror, a 1955 picture directed by Andrew L Stone, perhaps best known for the Doris Day thriller Julie. Cassavetes lines up with Jack Kelly, alongside Stone regulars Jack Kruschen and Barney Phillips, in a tale of a family man who makes the mistake of picking up a hitchhiker. Kelly makes for a fine leading man, but is matched by Vince Edwards as the sinister and ruthless wanted criminal in the passenger seat.
The rest of the set is a mixed bag, with tales of adultery and betrayal (Bait), a casino robbery (5 Against the House) and undercover cops (The Crooked Web), as well as Castle’s offering, New Orleans Uncensored, which runs the noir gamut from innocent man caught up in gangland activity, through a former prizefighter down on his luck, and ending up with risky undercover action in a thrill-packed 76 minutes.
With nine movies on three discs, there is no room for extras, but for any fan of the film noir genre these movies appearing on Blu-ray might be enough of an extra in itself. It’s not a definitive collection by any means, even paired with Volume 1 and the upcoming third set, but it is a worthwhile sampling of the furtive film noir world and a solid base for further exploration.
