The Lost Moment - 1947 ****

A very overlooked film barely ever mentioned in annuals nowadays.
Cummings plays a publisher desperate to get his hands on love letters written by a deceased writer. He carefully ingratiates himself into the house of the widow and her great niece, hoping to be able to  steal the letters for himself. Things aren't simple however when it turns up that the great niece Tina has a schizophrenic nature resulting in her frequently believing she is the rightful recipient of the love letters. Its a beautifully haunting movie very like 'Rebecca'.

(NOIR) Lured - 1947 ****

Noirs seem to be getting better the more I see. Excellent. This latest stars Lucille Ball as a gutsy woman out to track down a mysterious man who is murdering young and beautiful girls after meeting them in the personal add columns. One of the girls happens to be her friend and room-mate, so she makes a deal with the police that she will answer and meet every single man advertising in the newspaper. The killer also has a penchant for quoting Baudelaire in the letters that he sends to the police after each disappearance, and usually these notes offer some sort of clue as to the nature of the next murder. George Sanders is his usual caddish and wonderful self. Just seeing him in a film brings a whole new meaning to the word 'class.'

(NOIR) Railroaded! - 1947 *** 1/2

'Railroaded' is a pretty good film noir. Mistaken identity is always a gripping topic for a film. A man is falsely accused of a robbery and his sister and a police detective who, despite believing at first that the man was guilty, decides to work with the sister to get the man off. It's tense and quite predictable, rather like your average noir and I enjoyed it.

The Red House - 1947 **

I really didn't enjoy this film which is a shame because I think Robinson is a darn good actor. I was totally put off by all the actors in this however and the completely manic way the story was handled wasn't in the least bit enjoyable. Robinson plays a crippled farmer named Pete who lives with his sister and ward Meg who he has adopted in a reclusive farm. They live next to some ominous looking woods which are said to be haunted. Meg convinces her friend Nath to come and do some odd jobs around the farm for some extra cash, and that same evening he ignores warnings not to walk through the woods on the way home, resulting in him hearing blood-curdling screams and wails. He also comes across an abandoned Red House. He thinks it is Pete trying to scare him at first, but after hearing terror in Pete's voice when he talks about how much he fears the place Nath and Meg decide to solve the mystery themselves. It's like a scary Famous Five episode. It could be scary, but I feel Robinson for one grossly overacts here, and it shows. The ending is obvious before the end as well.

(NOIR) Shoot to Kill - 1947 **

A really dreadful offering from Robert Lippert, in fact probably one of the worst noirs I have seen. I couldn't really make head nor tail of the story, the acting was hideous (the lead acts like she is tuned up to an electric wire) and the quality was dire (not that that could be helped of course.)

Not even so bad it was good, just very bad full stop. It wasn't even a good B movie, more like a diabolical C movie.

*goes off to fume about the acting in the film and the non-existant storyline *

(NOIR) Born to Kill - 1947 ***

I can't say that this was one of the best noirs I have seen but it did have something going for it, and that was the roaring passion of Laurence Tierney and Claire Trevor.

Tierney plays a psychotic con man called Sam who likes killing people when they get in his way. He also has a weird and slightly homosexual relationship with his roommate Marty (played of course by Elisha Cook Jnr) as well as knocking people out left, right and centre if they annoy him. He becomes jealous after finding out the person he is seeing has another boyfriend and promptly 'does them both in.' Que Helen Trent (Trevor) who finds the bodies and doesn't tell anyone, oh except when she goes off to her sister's and casually lets it drop in a conversation. She also becomes fascinated by Sam despite the fact that she is engaged to be married and Sam is a thug and hooligan. Helen's sister is rich and so Sam goes after her, marrying her on a whim a short time later whilst being attracted to Helen. They don't think anything of having a grope in the kitchen in the middle of the night with the light on and the door open.

Things get sticky after a detective is put onto watching Marty and makes Sam believe that Helen is trying to double-cross him when all she wants is to double-cross her sister. This ends with a shoot-out etc, and I'm not telling you anymore. I'e probably told you too much already.

I love how Cook Jnr pops up in mostly all the 40s noir films that I see and nearly always plays the same character, he's like a staple of the film.

A good movie, worth a watch but not a classic.