Jul 28, 2023

Universal 1943 is a strange one, starting with The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler, starring Ludwig Donath as a reluctant Nazi collaborator who's forced to impersonate Hitler, and continuing with Robert Siodmak's Son of Dracula, with Lon Chaney Jr. as a hapless Dracula who falls victim to femme fatale Louise Allbritton....

Jul 21, 2023

July's special subject is a sampler of noirs by 1950s noir auteur Phil Karlson: Kansas City Confidential (1952), 99 River Street (1953), 5 Against the House (1955), and The Phenix City Story (1955). We discuss one-time Fox musicals leading man John Payne's transformation into the ideal shlubby, haunted noir...

Jul 14, 2023

This week's Dorothy McGuire episode continues the trend of unusual wife and mother roles with two family melodramas from 1959, Henry King's tale of an economically and psychologically troubled viticulture dynasty, This Earth Is Mine, and Delmer Daves' frank, sex-positive look at sexual mores among the respectable...

Jul 7, 2023

For our RKO 1943 episode, we look at two films that exemplify the nascent RKO noir style: Richard Wallace's The Fallen Sparrow, starring John Garfield as a traumatized Spanish Civil War veteran hunted by Nazis and the Val Lewton production The Seventh Victim, starring Kim Hunter as a sheltered young woman who wants to...