I Wake Up Screaming

(20th Century Fox, 1941)

Betty Grable
Victor Mature
Carole Landis
Laird Cregar




The film is an early example of the film noir style.[1] It is based on the novel with the same title by Steve Fisher, with a screenplay by Fisher and Dwight Taylor. It was one of the few times Betty Grable had a straight dramatic role in a picture.

I Wake Up Screaming was previewed for the press on October 16, 1941 under the title Hot Spot.

Play Misty For Me

(Universal Pictures, 1971)

Clint Eastwood
Jessica Walter
Donna Mills John Larch
Jack Ging




Eastwood plays David "Dave" Garver, a KRML radio disc jockey who nightly broadcasts from his studio in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California and who becomes the target of Evelyn Draper, an obsessed female fan, played by Jessica Walter. Donna Mills plays his girlfriend, Tobie Williams. The title comes from Draper's habit of phoning in to Garver's radio show and asking him to play the classic Erroll Garner ballad "Misty"

Play Misty for Me was Clint Eastwood's directorial debut.

Nightfall

(Columbia Pictures, 1957)

Aldo Ray
Brian Keith
Anne Bancroft
Jocelyn Brando





A commercial artist is hunted by the police for a murder he didn't commit and by criminals for stolen money he doesn't have. Directed by Jacques Tourneur with camera work by cinematographer Burnett Guffey. The film uses flashbacks as a device to tell the story, which was based on a 1947 novel by David Goodis.

Elements of the movie could be an unconscious inspiration for the Cohen Brothers' FARGO.

Ministry of Fear

(Paramount Pictures, 1944)

Ray Milland
Marjorie Reynolds
Carl Esmond
Hillary Brooke





Directed by Fritz Lang based on the novel The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene. The film tells the story of a man just released from a mental asylum who finds himself caught up in an international spy ring in London during the Blitz. After guessing the weight of a cake at a fair, he is pursued by foreign agents and incriminated for murder.

Murder My Sweet

(RKO Pictures, 1944)

Dick Powell
Claire Trevor
Anne Shirley





The film was first screened on December 18, 1944 in Minneapolis, Minnesota with the title Farewell, My Lovely. It opened in New York City, however, on March 8, 1945, as Murder, My Sweet.

Edgar Award: from the Mystery Writers of America -- Best Motion Picture Screenplay, John Paxton; Actor, Dick Powell; 1946.

Gun Crazy

(United Artists, 1950)

Peggy Cummins
John Dall





Gun Crazy is a 1950 film noir feature film starring Peggy Cummins and John Dall in a story about the crime-spree of a gun-toting husband and wife. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo (credited to Millard Kaufman because of the Hollywood Blacklist), and MacKinlay Kantor was based upon a short story by Kantor published in 1940 in The Saturday Evening Post.

The bank heist sequence was shot entirely in one long take in Montrose, California, with no one besides the principal actors and people inside the bank alerted to the operation. This one-take shot included the sequence of driving into town to the bank, distracting and then knocking out a patrolman, and making the get-away. This was done by simulating the interior of a sedan with a stretch Cadillac with room enough to mount the camera and a jockey's saddle for the cameraman on a greased two-by-twelve board in the back. Lewis kept it fresh by having the actors improvise their dialogue.

Odd Man Out

(Rank Organization, 1947)

James Mason
Robert Newton
Cyril Cusack
Kathleen Ryan





Anglo-Irish film noir directed by Carol Reed (The Third Man) and based on a novel of the same name by F. L. Green.

The film's violent ending also attracted advance criticism from the censors, and had to be toned down in the finished film. It received the BAFTA Award for Best British Film in 1948 and was nominated for a Best Film Editing Oscar in 1948.