We are waist deep into Noirvember and Kino Lorber is once again here to help. Their ongoing series Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema is up to Volume 15 and while I won’t pretend this is the greatest collection of noirs one could buy, it is certainly a welcome addition to any collection. The three films included in this set are all from Universal Pictures International. They are all clearly B-Pictures, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth your time.
Let’s get into it.
Man Afraid (1957)
Late one night, a burglar breaks into the good Rev. David Collins’s (George Nadar) house, frightening his young son Michael (Tim Hovey) nearly to death. After a short struggle, David throws a snow globe at the burglar, smashing him on the head and ultimately killing him. His wife Lisa (Phyllis Thaxter) was nearly blinded in the incident and while David was not physically hurt, his killing a man has left psychic scars.
After a few questions, the police are satisfied the killing was in self-defense, and the local newspaper and townspeople declare him to be a hero, for the burglar was a no-goodnik. But even no-goodniks have fathers and this one loved his son very much. Losing him has driven him mad and he spends the rest of the film chasing after Michael in order to pay David back with a vengeance.
That’s a classic film noir plot, one that was clearly influenced by Night of the Hunter (1955), but Man Afraid simply doesn’t have the stuff to pull it off nearly as well. It isn’t a bad film, I found it mostly entertaining, but it never garners the same kind of menace that Night of the Hunter conveys excellently. The father (Eduard Franz) only says one word in the entire movie, mostly he just skulks in the shadows, only periodically coming out to attack the boy. The film never lets us see his perspective or understand his feelings other than knowing he’s angry over his son being killed. If Franz was a more menacing presence that might work, but as it is he comes off more sad and defeated than terrifying. There are a couple of relatively thrilling moments, but mostly it never garners too much excitement.
The Girl in the Kremlin (1957)
In Moscow 1953, Joseph Stalin is publicly (Maurice Manson) declared dead, but secretly he is given a total facelift. He and his nurse Greta Grisenko (Zsa Zsa Gabor) are escorted to a secret hideout. Greta’s twin sister Lili (also Gabor), desperate to find Greta ever since she was forcibly removed from their home in Lithuania, turns to Steve Anderson (Lee Barker), an American private detective living in Berlin to help. Steve talks to Mischa Rimilkin (Jeffrey Stone), a one-armed spy who tells him about Stalin still being alive and that he’s using Greta as his nurse. The three of them embark on a cross-European adventure trying to locate Stalin and save Greta.
That’s a terrifically bonkers plot for a B-level film noir and The Girl in the Kremlin nearly pulls it off. Lee Barker is just a little too wooden, and Russell Birdwell’s direction is just a little too dull to make it truly work, but it’s still a perfectly enjoyable 81 minutes at the movies.
There are plenty of twists and turns, and thrills to keep things moving at a rapid pace. The opening sequence is worth the watching all by itself. A group of four women are brought before Stalin. He chooses one of them (Natalie Daryll) and his guards proceed to cut and shave her hair completely off. The film allows us to watch this in almost real-time and apparently, the actress really did get her hair shaved off. The character is then whisked away and we never see her again. We do later learn the girl is now stuck inside an insane asylum and she’s how Mischa learns about the Stalin plot, but there is absolutely no explanation as to why they shaved the poor girl’s head. It is as bizarre as it is mesmerizing.
Had the rest of the film lived up to that scene it would be a bonafide classic. As it is, The Girl in the Kremlin is a pretty good little thriller with a terrific concept for a plot, that falls just a bit short.
The Tattered Dress (1957)
The beautiful Charleen Reston (Elaine Stewart) comes home to her luxurious mansion late one night a bit drunk and battered and with her tight-fitting dress ruffled and torn to pieces. Her rich husband Michael (Phillip Reed) angrily questions her about it. The film smartly keeps the camera outside the house looking in through glass doors as he does this so that we never hear what he asks or how she responds. We only see the anger and violence in his demeanor.
She apparently tells him that some man accosted her for he takes her in his car and cruises the streets until he finds him. He then shoots the man dead right there in the street. He hires hotshot New York lawyer James Blane (Jeff Chandler) to defend him at the murder trial. Blane gets him off with his fast-talking and by humiliating Sheriff Hoak (Jeff Carson) on the stand. Hoak, who is up for reelection soon, doesn’t take too kindly to that humiliation and sets Blane up with a jury bribery accusation.
All of this is fine and good as a story, but the trouble is that Blane is kind of an arsehole. And not the good kind of arsehole that’s at least enjoyable to watch. He straight-up admits he defends criminals not for some kind of belief in justice where everyone deserves a fair trial and a good defense, but because his clients are rich and they’ve made him famous. Again, that would be okay if Jeff Chandler had any sort of onscreen charisma, but he’s interminably dull. He does have a half-hearted turnaround by the film’s end but the character isn’t interesting enough to begin with to make that worthwhile.
The courtroom scenes are achingly dull which is not a good thing when your film is essentially a courtroom drama with noir trappings. The desert setting is nice and Jeff Carson does his best to make Hoak a nasty little sheriff, but none of that is enough to make this film recommended.
The other two films are well worth the price of admission and I will continually beat the drum for the Kino Lorber The Dark Side of Cinema sets for as long as they keep making them. The more film noir we have available on lovely-looking Blu-rays the better.
All three films have new 2K transfers and they do all look great. Extras include audio commentaries for each film and loads of trailers.
