Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema X - BLU-RAY

This collection features three film noir classics. A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE (1948) - Charles Boyer (When Tomorrow Comes), Ann Blyth (Thunder on the Hill) and Jessica Tandy (The Birds) star in A Woman's Vengeance, a gripping noir mystery from acclaimed director Zoltan Korda (The Four Feathers). When his invalid wife Emily (Rachel Kempson, The Captive Heart) dies of a heart attack, it frees Henry Maurier (Boyer) to marry his young mistress (Blyth). Confiding her suspicions that Henry murdered her patient, Emily's nurse (Mildred Natwick, Against All Flags) is encouraged by a neighbor (Tandy) to tell the police. Suddenly Henry finds himself wrongly convicted and awaiting his fate while the family doctor (Sir Cedric Hardwicke, The Lodger) races against time to find the real killer and save his life. Visionary author Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) adapted the screenplay from his own short story, The Gioconda Smile. I WAS A SHOPLIFTER (1950) - Mona Freeman (Flesh and Fury) stars as the titular kleptomaniac in the sensational crime story, I Was a Shoplifter. Cop Jeff Andrews (Scott Brady, Undertow) agrees to go undercover to shadow the sticky-fingered Faye Burton (Freeman), a judge's daughter who has been coerced into working for a professional shoplifting ring run by ruthless pawnbroker Ina Perdue (Andrea King, The World in His Arms). Jeff finds himself falling in love with Faye while working to crack the gang of thieves. Directed by Charles Lamont (Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man), shot by Irving Glassberg (Larceny) and featuring Tony Curtis (The Square Jungle), Charles Drake (Deported) and Rock Hudson (The Tarnished Angels), I Was a Shoplifter is a fast-paced film noir treat. BEHIND THE HIGH WALL (1956) - Tom Tully (The Turning Point) and Sylvia Sidney (Sabotage) star in the riveting prison-break noir, Behind the High Wall. A group of convicts escape from the big ho

Three-disc set includes Lady On A Train (1945)From her train compartment as she pulls into New York, heiress/whodunit buff Nikki Collins (Deanna Durbin) witnesses a murder through an office building window... and when no body is found, the authorities dismiss her as a kook. Her determined efforts to do her own sleuthing get her mistaken for a nightclub chanteuse-who also happens to be the next on the killer's hit list. Snappy mystery-comedy co-stars Ralph Bellamy, Dan Duryea, Edward Everett Horton; Deanna gets to sing InchSilent Night,Inch InchGive Me a Little Kiss, Will Ya Huh?Inch 94 min. BW/Rtg NR Tangier (1946)Stranded in postwar Morocco, disgraced journalist Paul Kenyon (Robert Paige) wanted the scoop that would recharge his career-and thought he found it when he recognized fugitive Nazi diamond smuggler Adolpho Fernandez (Reginald Denny) across the bar. However, sultry cafe dancer Rita (Maria Montez) had her own reasons for tracking Fernandez... and they'd draw Kenyon into a morass of police corruption and murder. Crisp adventure also stars Sabu, Preston Foster, Louise Albritton, Kent Taylor. 74 min. BW/Rtg NR Take One False Step (1949)In L.A. looking for funding, happily married academic Andrew Gentling (William Powell) knew he should've passed when wartime flame Catherine Sykes (Shelley Winters) suggested a get-together. After the unfortunate but uneventful rendezvous, Catherine went missing-and he had to turn to mutual friend Martha Wier (Marsha Hunt) for help finding out why and in keeping the cops at arm's length. Long-sought noir co-stars Dorothy Hart, James Gleason; keep an eye out for Tony Curtis. 94 min. BW/Rtg NR Standard; Soundtrack English; Subtitles English; audio commentary; theatrical trailers.

This collection features three film noir classics. SPY HUNT (1950) - The manhunt that rocked the world! Noir great Howard Duff (Johnny Stool Pigeon, Woman in Hiding, Shakedown) stars with the beautiful Marta Toren (One Way Street, Deported, Sirocco) in this compelling Cold War thriller. Steve Quain (Duff), escorting two zoo-bound black panthers on a train from Milan to Paris, is unaware that a secret agent, Catherine Ullven (Toren), has concealed an incriminating microfilm in the collar of one of the animals. But when the train is derailed in the Swiss Alps and the panthers escape, she is forced to involve him in her mission, which now includes enemy spies hunting the microfilm, the animals, Catherine and Steve. Directed by George Sherman (Larceny, The Sleeping City, The Raging Tide) from the novel Panther's Moon by Victor Canning (Golden Salamander, Family Plot, Masquerade). THE NIGHT RUNNER (1957) - Are mental patients turned loose too soon? Ray Danton (Outside the Law, The Big Operator, The Longest Day) stars as Roy Turner, a man with a violent past who is prematurely released from an overcrowded institution. Realizing that he cannot handle the pressures of big-city life, he moves into a small-town beachside motel and falls in love with Susan Mayes, warmly played by Colleen Miller (Four Guns to the Border, Man in the Shadow, Step Down to Terror), the daughter of the motel's owner. When her father finds out about Roy, he threatens to have him recommitted unless he leaves his daughter alone. Roy snaps, and commits a crime from which there is no turning back. Abner Biberman (The Price of Fear, Behind the High Wall, Gun for a Coward) directs this black-as-night yet sympathetic look at mental illness. STEP DOWN TO TERROR (1958) - Step by step he made a career out of love, and murder! Based on the same source material as Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, this suspens