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Adapted by James Agee from a novel by Davis Grubb, The Night of the Hunter represented legendary actor Charles Laughton’s only film directing effort. Combining stark realism with Germanic expressionism, the movie is a brilliant good-and-evil parable, with good represented by a couple of farm kids and a pious old lady, and evil literally in the hands of a posturing psychopath. Imprisoned with thief Ben Harper (Peter Graves), phony preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) learns that Ben has hidden a huge sum of money somewhere near his home. Upon his release, the murderously misogynistic Powell insinuates himself into Ben’s home, eventually marrying his widow Willa (Shelley Winters). Eventually all that stands between Powell and the money are Ben’s son (Billy Chapin) and daughter (Sally Jane Bruce), who take refuge in a home for abandoned children presided over by the indomitable, scripture-quoting Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish). The war of wills between Mitchum and Gish is the heart of the film’s final third, a masterful blend of horror and lyricism. Laughton’s tight, disciplined direction is superb — and all the more impressive when one realizes that he intensely disliked all child actors. The music by Walter Schumann and the cinematography of Stanley Cortez are every bit as brilliant as the contributions by Laughton and Agee. Overlooked on its first release, The Night of the Hunter is now regarded as a classic.~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideIn the entire history of American movies, The Night of the Hunter stands out as the rarest and most exotic of specimens. It is, to say the least, a masterpiece–and not just because it was the only movie directed by flamboyant actor Charles Laughton or the only produced solo screenplay by the legendary critic James Agee (who also co-wrote The African Queen). The truth is, nobody has ever made anything approaching its phantasmagoric, overheated style in which German expressionism, religious hysteria, fairy-tale fantasy (of the Grimm-est variety), and stalker movie are brought together in a furious boil. Like a nightmarish premonition of stalker movies to come, Night of the Hunter tells the suspenseful tale of a demented preacher (Robert Mitchum, in a performance that prefigures his memorable villain in Cape Fear), who torments a boy and his little sister–even marries their mixed-up mother (Shelley Winters)–because he’s certain the kids know where their late bank-robber father hid a stash of stolen money. So dramatic, primal, and unforgettable are its images–the preacher’s shadow looming over the children in their bedroom, the magical boat ride down a river whose banks teem with fantastic wildlife, those tattoos of LOVE and HATE on the unholy man’s knuckles, the golden locks of a drowned woman waving in the current along with the indigenous plant life in her watery grave–that they’re still haunting audiences (and filmmakers) today. –Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

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Curious tale of a private eye who is hired by a villain to find his homicidal girlfriend. But the story takes a twist when he tracks her down and promptly falls in love with her.”Build my gallows high, baby”–just one of the quintessentially noir sentiments expressed by Robert Mitchum in this classic of the genre. Mitchum, in absolute prime, sleepy-eyed form, relates a complicated flashback about getting hired by gangster Kirk Douglas to find femme fatale Jane Greer. The chain of film noir elements–love, money, lies–drags Mitchum into the lower depths. Director Jacques Tourneur gets the edgy negotiations between men and women as exactly right as he gets the inky shadows of the noir landscape (even the sunlit exteriors are fraught with doubt). This is Mitchum in excelsis, with his usual laid-back cool laced with great dialogue and tragic foreshadowing. As for his co-star, James Agee immortally opined that Jane Greer “can best be described, in an ancient idiom, as a hot number.” Remade in 1984, unhappily, as Against All Odds (with Greer in a supporting role). –Robert Horton

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, Fritz Lang’s most celebrated American film, is a chilling and violent tale of corruption, vengeance, and loss. Dave Bannion, played by distinguished film noir actor Glenn Ford, is an upright but unscrupulous cop on the trail of a vicious gang he suspects holds power over the police force. Bannion is tipped off after a colleague’s suicide and his fellow officers’ suspicious silence lead him to believe that they are on the gangsters’ payroll. When a bomb meant for him kills his wife instead, Bannion becomes a furious force of vengeance and justice, aided along the way by the gangster’s spurned girlfriend Debbie (Gloria Grahame). As Bannion and Debbie fall further and further into the Gangland’s insidious and brutal trap, they must use any means necessary (including murder) to get to the truth. The violence comes suddenly and unrelentingly, as Lang explodes the stripped down story with economic yet forceful cinematography and editing, and gritty yet emotionally gripping performances from Ford and Grahame.

There’s a satisfying sense of closure to the definitive noir kick achieved in The Big Heat: its director, Fritz Lang, had forged early links from German expressionism to the emergence of film noir, so it’s entirely logical that the expatriate director would help codify the genre with this brutal 1953 film. Visually, his scenes exemplify the bold contrasts, deep shadows, and heightened compositions that define the look of noir, and he matches that success with the darkly pessimistic themes of this revenge melodrama.

The story coheres around the suicide of a crooked cop, and the subsequent struggle of an honest detective, Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford), to navigate between a corrupt city government and a ruthless mobster to uncover the truth. Initially, the violence here seems almost timid by comparison to the more explicit carnage now commonplace in films, yet the story accelerates as its plot arcs toward Bannion’s showdown with kingpin Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and his psychotic henchman, the sadistic Vince Stone, given an indelible nastiness by Lee Marvin. When Bannion’s wife is killed by a car bomb intended for the detective, both the hero and the story go ballistic: suspended from the force, he embarks on a crusade of revenge that suggests a template for Charles Bronson’s Death Wish films, each step pushing Lagana and Stone toward a showdown. Bodies drop, dominoes tumbled by the escalating war between the obsessed Bannion and his increasingly vicious adversaries.

Lang’s disciplined visual design and the performances (especially those of Ford, Marvin, Jeanette Nolan as the dead cop’s scheming widow, and Gloria Grahame as Marvin’s girlfriend) enable the film to transcend formula, as do several memorable action scenes–when an enraged Marvin hurls scalding coffee at the feisty Debby (Grahame), we’re both shattered by the violence of his attack, and aware that he’s shifted the balance of power. –Sam Sutherland

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In 1945, the semi-nude body of a woman is found in a two-bit Hollywood motel, a telephone cord wrapped around her throat; face frozen in a grimace of horror. The stolen car of a murdered motorist is parked in the motel parking lot, the owner lying broken and dead on the side of an Arizona highway. Al Roberts confesses and has spent the last 29 years in prison. Now, nearly three decades after meekly confessing, the aged Roberts swears his innocence. Jimmy O’Brien, defense attorney to the dregs of the criminal world, must find out why. Why did Roberts give a false confession? And why has he waited 29 years to tell the truth? O’Brien digs into the past, igniting a powder-keg that threatens to expose the long-held secrets behind Detour, the iconic Hollywood film documenting Roberts’ story. Secrets that could destroy the underground aristocracy that has held power in Los Angeles, city of broken dreams, for years. Jimmy’s ordeal takes him from the bleakness of Roberts’ prison cell to the seedy streets of Hollywood, frantically searching to find out who took this DETOUR TO MURDER.

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Humphrey Bogart stars as Rip Murdock, a World War II veteran ensnared in a web of crime and conspiracy when his best friend, Johnny Drake (William Prince), disappears en route to Washington, D.C., to receive a war medal. Murdock follows the trail to Drake’s hometown in the Deep South, where he finds his friend’s body burned beyond recognition at the local morgue. Murdock, determined to find the murderer, begins his own investigation but soon falls for Drake’s ex-girlfriend, femme fatale Cory Chandler (Lizabeth Scott). When Murdock finds his first lead dead in his own hotel room, he begins to suspect that Chandler may be a lot more than just a local singer. Directed by acclaimed veteran John Cromwell (SO ENDS OUR NIGHT, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS), DEAD RECKONING provides sharp and merciless suspense. The dark, winding plot twists in this classic film noir are held together and energized throughout by Bogart’s commanding, inimitable screen presence and his paradoxically expressive, world-weary deadpan.

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