Saturday, May 2, 2009

Noir-ish Stragglers of the Late Period

[This was the first in a lengthy series of posts at The Blackboard. I will preserve the highlights of my own contributions here, in part because I'm trying to consolidate all this stuff, and in part because of the non-existent long-term archiving on that board. Naturally some of the material is more dialogue-natured than most of PMD -- in this initial post, for example, I'm soliciting information about the more obscure examples of film noir from the latest portion of its classic period, roughly 1960-1965.]

I'd be interested in anyone's comments on the following films and their directors. These are mainly dated from 1960 on and are thus noir stragglers, to the extent that they are noir. I left out films I've seen, films I've read a good deal about, UK titles, most gangster films such as Gangster Story and Johnny Cool (of which there seems to have been a mini-renaissance around 1960), and most JD films.

1. Is there much on Denis Sanders as a late noir-ish director (Crime and Punishment USA, War Hunt, Shock Treatment)?

2. Ditto Hubert Cornfield (Sudden Danger, Lure of the Swamp, Plunder Road, The Third Voice)?

3. Is there anything of interest in Edward L. Cahn's last flurry of crime programmers (Inside the Mafia, Pier 5 Havana, Vice Raid, Three Came to Kill, Twelve Hours to Kill, Cage of Evil, The Walking Target, When the Clock Strikes, You Have to Run Fast, Secret of Deep Harbor, Boy who Caught a Crook, Incident in an Alley)?

4. What about Maury Dexter's crime programmers (Womanhunt, Police Nurse, Harbor Lights)?

5. And these films:

Angel's Flight (1965)
The Cat Burglar (1961)
Confessions of a Psycho Cat (1968)
The Couch (1962)
Door-to-Door Maniac (1961)
The Girl Hunters (1963)
Hothead (1963)
House of Women (1962)
The Incident (1967)
Jigsaw (1968)
Key Witness (1960)
Lonnie (1963)
Man-Trap (1961)
Mirage (1965)
The Money Trap (1965)
Once a Thief (1965)
Private Property (1960)
The Pusher (1960)
Ring of Fire (1961)
This Is Not a Test (1962)
The Threat (1960)
Three Blondes in His Life (1961)
Twenty Plus Two (1961)
Warning Shot (1967)
Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)

Man-Trap, directed by Edmond O'Brien (his only solo directing credit), and starring Jeffrey Hunter, David Janssen, and Stella Stevens, sounds potentially interesting at least from a talent standpoint.

If any of these have been Noirs of the Week, that would be great to know!

POSTSCRIPT: Don Malcolm of The Blackboard, an erudite fellow, responded at length. He suggested The Savage Eye (1960) as an addition to the list, and noted that Angel's Flight had been a Noir of the Week.