Two decades and going strong, it's the Guild Cinema's annual July Film Noir Festival. Part one is here. Here are the rest of our samples:
BEWARE MY LOVELY (1952) (C) - It's Robert Ryan again, this time teaming up with the formidable Ida Lupino as a woman held captive in her home by a deranged handyman. But the movie is so lethargic that any tension it manages to conjure up dissipates rather quickly under the drab direction of Harry Horner.
Ryan plays Howard Wilton, who in the opening scene, flees a house he was working at after discovering a body in a closet, hopping a train in a panic. He shows up at the doorstop of Helen Gordon (Lupino), who runs a boarding house and puts on events for neighborhood kids. Wilton goes by an alias and exhibits mental lapses and delusions, as if fighting the urge to claim (another?) victim.
Part of the problem here is that it probably would not take much for Helen to escape a house where the handyman has locked the front and back doors. You suspend disbelief hoping for more suspense. Lupino is appealing, but her character is one-dimensional. Ryan is more awkward than creepy. Seventy-seven minutes seem like two hours, and even a wry ending can't cover for the flimsy drama that even Lupino -- or Barbara Whiting as a bored teenager -- cannot rescue from the doldrums.
SPOTTED: Brad Morrow would have a prolific career as a child actor, most notably in 1955's TV series "The Adventures of Spin and Marty." ... Blink and you'll miss William Talman, who would go on to play Hamilton Burger in TV's "Perry Mason."
LADY IN A CAGE (1964) (B) - Here's another imprisoned woman -- Olivia de Havilland gets stuck in her home elevator (!) and is besieged by wild intruders who take advantage of her predicament. James Caan, in his first credited big-screen role, leads the gang of drifters who show little regard for human dignity.
Much of the terror is played for laughs -- the intruders are bumblers, inept at cleaning out a rich lady's house -- and this comes off as the Manson Family meets the Partridge Family. Caan's Randall is joined by ditzy blonde Elaine (a randy Jennifer Billingsley) and horny simpleton Essie (character actor Rafael Campos, memorable as Archie Bunker's Puerto Rican co-worker). The trio horn in on the discovery of the vulnerable house by a homeless drunk (Jeff Corey) and his hooker friend Sade (an unhinged Ann Sothern).
De Havilland's Cornelia Hilyard, whose son has gone off for the weekend, is limping from a broken hip, and she gets stuck in her caged lift when the power goes out on a sweaty Fourth of July weekend in Los Angeles. Her screams go for naught, drowned out my the constant thrum of holiday car traffic streaming past her house in both directions day and night.
Caan, flaunting a thin but expansive carpet of poodle-tufted torso hair, is jarringly maniacal, both toward the trapped dilettante as well as his hapless cohorts. Writer Luther Davis ("Kismet") plants a seed in the opening scene -- Cornelia's son, Malcolm (William Swan), has left her a suicide note before hitting the road -- and the filial relationship has disturbing qualities to it. That "Psycho" twist adds layers to Cornelia's predicament, and De Havilland chews her cloistered scenery like the grand dame of cinema she was.
Director Walter Grauman, a TV journeyman, is partial to close-ups where his actors' faces fill the screen, and he has a sharp eye for exposing the seedy underbelly of the simmering city, portending a societal unraveling that would consume the 1960s. This anxiously shot black-and-white provocation certainly gets under your skin.
SPOTTED: Hey, it's the inimitable Scatman Crothers, as a pawn shop assistant. His voluminous credits would include Louie the garbage man on TV's "Chico and the Man" ("Stick out your can!") and the scene-stealing janitor from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
NOBODY LIVES FOREVER (1946) (B+) - This piece from the classic era stars John Garfield as a con man who targets a recent widow who sits on a sizable inheritance that is there for the taking. Garfield has quite the chemistry with Geraldine Fitzgerald, who has an Anne Hathaway modern look about her.
Garfield plays Nick Blake, fresh from the war and back on the New York mob scene, who first must retrieve his nest egg from girlfriend Toni (Faye Emerson), who has blown the wad on a night-club venture. Nick eventually gets the money back from her slimy business partner and then agrees to a $2 million job out in Los Angeles hatched by mob boss Doc (George Coulouris). Nick has wise counsel from an old friend, the elderly Pop (Walter Brennan), and his loyal, wisecracking pal Al (George Tobias), but he can't help developing feelings for Fitzgerald's Gladys Halvorson.
How will he get out of this mess? Toni shows up in L.A. and tips off Doc, whose boys will eventually kidnap the rich widow, and it will be up to Nick and Pop to try to rescue her. (Emerson and Brennan are particularly good in juicy supporting roles. Pop, who is 65, warns Nick, who is 34, that "it's all downhill from here.") The final 20 minutes -- scripted by prolific novelist W.R. Burnett ("The Asphalt Jungle," "High Sierra," "Little Caesar") -- are taut and riveting, dimly shot in the wee hours along a Santa Monica pier by director Jean Negulesco ("Johnny Belinda"). It is a perfect slow build to a satisfying crescendo.
SPOTTED: Robert Arthur, uncredited here as a bellhop, would have a memorable turn five years later as naive Herbie in the Billy Wilder classic "Ace in the Hole." ... George Tobias' claim to fame would be as Abner, the husband of the nosy neighbor Mrs. Kravitz on "Bewitched."
BONUS TRACK
The art-deco opening credits to "Lady in a Cage," which, visually, are as good as anything in the movie:
The trailer for "Nobody Lives Forever":
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