Holiday Classics: “Backfire” (1950)

The bulk of the action in Backfire may occur over the early days of January, but the holidays are a recurring backdrop over the course of this 1950 noir directed by Vincent Sherman. Gordon MacRae (in only his third feature film and on the brink of becoming a big musical star) and genre staple Edmond […]

Holiday Classics: “I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes” (1948)

You should never throw your shoes at a cat, no matter how much their midnight meowing keeps you up at night. You especially shouldn’t do it if you’re Tom Quinn (Don Castle), a struggling tap dancer who sits at home anxiously awaiting the return of his taxi dancer wife Ann (Elyse Knox) from work, where […]

Holiday Classics: “Mr. Soft Touch”

Mr. Soft Touch is technically a film noir— it opens with a stunningly tense car chase shot on location in the streets of San Francisco following a robbery committed by the protagonist to even the score after he returns home from fighting in World War II to find his partner missing and his nightclub overtaken […]

Holiday Classics: “Roadblock” (1951)

You’ll rarely see a man fall so hard so fast as the lead in a classic film noir, and insurance investigator Joe Peters (Charles McGraw) in Roadblock is no exception. A taut, 73-minute noir from RKO released in 1951, Roadblock may be helmed by a relatively unknown director (Harold Daniels), but it has a ton […]

Favorite Discoveries of 2022

If you don’t follow me on any other platform outside of this blog, you might not realize how many movies I watch each year outside of new releases—so many, in fact, that I wonder why I bother subscribing to any other streaming service when I increasingly spend the bulk of my time inside of the […]

Holiday Classics: “Christmas Eve” (1947)

“Christmas Eve” isn’t actually as Christmas-y of a movie as its title suggests, the holiday setting more serving as a catalyst to pull a few seemingly disparate stories together and only really becoming apparent in the final scene. The 1947 film, which was also released under the title “Sinner’s Holiday,” from director Edwin L. Marin […]

Holiday Classics: “Blast of Silence” (1961)

“Remember out of the black silence you were born in pain. You were born with hate and anger built in. Took a slap on the backside to blast out the scream. And then you knew you were alive.” Lionel Stander’s bitter opening narration to the 1961 noir “Blast of Silence” is backed by the sound […]

Holiday Classics: “Cover Up” (1949)

Small towns make ideal settings for all manner of stories. They’re the perfect picturesque location for light-hearted holiday affair, with charming homes and storefronts all aglow. They’re also the perfect spot to situate a murder mystery, the friendly facades and the fact that everyone knows everyone giving way to suspicion and doubt. The 1949 noir […]

Holiday Classics: “Lady on a Train” (1945)

From the late 1930s through the early 1940s, Deanna Durbin was one of the silver screen’s most popular young stars. After an appearance in a 1936 short subject titled “Every Sunday” showcased her stunningly mature operatic voice (opposite the more pop-oriented but equally impressive sounds of another young star in the making, Judy Garland), the […]

Holiday Classics: “Repeat Performance” (1947)

Have you ever reached the end of the year and wished you could go back and do it all over again? That wish is granted to Joan Leslie’s Sheila Page in “Repeat Performance,” a 1947 film noir with a unique supernatural bent that might best be described as “It’s a Wonderful Life” meets “The Twilight […]