It doesn’t have to be a dark and stormy night to enjoy a film noir classic (but it sure helps). Maybe its how the air is getting chilly and the days are getting shorter, but there’s something about watching suspense flicks during the autumn that is so utterly satisfying. Realizing this, Movies Unlimited is helping you uncover great deals on milestone mysteries in our Fall Film Noir Sale. With over 2,900 titles featured in this promotion, you’ll be able to build up a noir library that would make Raymond Chandler proud. Take a look at some highlights from the sale:
One of the greatest Hollywood whodunits ever made, Otto Preminger’s noir-flavored thriller stars Dana Andrews as Detective Mark McPherson, the lead investigator on the case of the murder of New York socialite Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), who becomes infatuated with her beautiful image in a portrait in her apartment. Memorable support is provided by Clifton Webb as a sardonic columnist, Vincent Price as Laura’s callous playboy fiancé, and Judith Anderson as her aunt; based on the novel by Vera Caspary.
A string of murders in London is traced back to a dangerous blackmailer known as the Shadow. A novelist and would-be sleuth offers his help to Scotland Yard, but what is his secret link to the killer? Atmospheric whodunit stars Henry Kendall, Elizabeth Allan, Felix Aylmer.
What sort of fatal shooting leaves no bullet hole or gunpowder mark, and makes no blasting sound? That’s the question faced by a college football hero in this tale of murder and conspiracy set on a New England campus. As a group of people gathered in a mansion on the school’s grounds start getting murdered by a hooded killer, the gridiron giant tries to find and stop the madman. Charles Starrett, Marion Shilling, Robert Warwick star.
Robert Cummings is wartime factory worker Barry Kane who sees a Nazi spy bomb his plant, but finds himself wrongly accused of the sabotage. To prove his innocence and bring the guilty man to justice, Kane embarks on a daring cross-country manhunt that leads him from Colorado to New York City, culminating in the classic sequence atop the Statue of Liberty. Priscilla Lane, Norman Lloyd, Otto Kruger also star.
Burt Lancaster stars as Mike Davis, an American who’s tortured and nearly killed in South Africa by a mining company official (Paul Henreid) who wants the location of a stash of diamonds he found in the desert. Davis refuses to talk and returns to the region two years later to claim the ice, but this time he’ll have to contend with a gorgeous nightclub singer (Corinne Calvet) recruited by the local diamond syndicate boss (Claude Rains) to seduce and double-cross him. Peter Lorre also stars in this taut action yarn.
Striking film noir classic stars Ray Milland as George Stroud, a crime magazine editor who has a liaison with Pauline, a beautiful woman who turns out to be the mistress of his boss, tyrannical publisher Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton). When a jealous Janoth murders Pauline, he sets out to frame the “other man” for the crime and assigns the job of finding him to Stroud. Rita Johnson, George Macready, and Elsa Lanchester also star in this suspenser that inspired 1987’s “No Way Out.”
Classic boxing drama stars John Garfield as a young fighter from the New York slums who aligns himself with racketeers and crooked promoters as he slugs his way to the middleweight championship, then faces a crisis of conscience when he’s told to throw a bout. With Lilli Palmer, Anne Revere, Lloyd Gough, Canada Lee; directed by Robert Rossen (“The Hustler”).
The acclaimed original screen version of the thriller about a newly married woman who is slowly being driven insane by her scheming husband. Moody and suspenseful (and nearly destroyed by M-G-M so as not to compete with their 1944 remake), the British film stars Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, Frank Pettingell. AKA: “Angel Street.”
Classic suspense thriller stars Barbara Stanwyck in her Oscar-nominated role as Leona Stevenson, a bedridden woman who accidentally hears a murder being planned over the telephone. And as she slowly begins to realize that she is the intended victim, Leona must try and stop the plot before she’s disconnected…permanently. With Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey.
A masterpiece of film noir cinema from director Billy Wilder (who also co-scripted with Raymond Chandler) follows an insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) as he’s lured into a diabolical murder plot by an ice-cold femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck). Together they plan to kill her husband, then make it look like an accident so the life insurance policy’s double indemnity clause pays out twice what it’s worth. Edward G. Robinson and Tom Powers also star.
For a complete overview of all the titles featured in the Fall Film Noir Sale, click here.