Directed by Lewis Allen • 1947 • United States
Starring John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster
Lurid Technicolor, deep-dish melodrama, and gay subtext abound in this pulpy noir firecracker. In the desert town of Chuckawalla, Nevada, tempers flare, passions spark, and violence erupts when Paula (Lizabeth Scott), the defiant daughter of a hard-boiled casino owner (Mary Astor) falls for no-good gangster Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak)—igniting the jealousy of Bendix’s possessive partner (Wendell Corey, in his film debut). In one of his earliest film roles, Burt Lancaster costars as the local cop who finds himself embroiled in the deadly tangle.
Up Next in Noirvember
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Odd Man Out
Directed by Carol Reed • 1947 • United Kingdom
Starring James Mason, Kathleen Ryan, Robert NewtonTaking place largely over the course of one tense night, Carol Reed’s psychological noir, set in an unnamed Belfast, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con leading a robbery that goes horribly ...
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Brute Force
Directed by Jules Dassin • 1947 • United States
Starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles BickfordAs hard-hitting as its title, BRUTE FORCE was the first of Jules Dassin’s forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well. Burt Lancaster ...
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The Big Clock
Directed by John Farrow • 1948 • United States
Starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’SullivanOne of the finest suspense thrillers of the 1940s, THE BIG CLOCK stars Ray Milland as a hapless crime-magazine editor plunged into a web of danger when he begins being systematically framed ...