In Tay Garnett's noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), illicit lovers (John Garfield and Lana Turner) plot to kill the woman's older husband. She wants to own her own restaurant, the eternal ambition of heroines created by James M. Cain, author of the original novel. The producers managed to stay quite faithful to the book while excising the sado-masochistic nature of the character's sexual relationship. Extras on Warner's newly released Blu-ray include an introduction by film historian Richard Jewell, two TCM documentaries—The John Garfield Story and Lana Turner: A Daughter's Memoir, and the original radio adaptation of the film on the OTR series, Screen Guild Theater Broadcast (1947) with Turner and Garfield reprising their roles. Warner was originally slated to release Bob Rafelson's 1981 re-make co-starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lang on Blu-ray concurrently, but there's no sign of it yet.

In Nicholas Ray's Born to Be Bad, an ambitious girl (Joan Fontaine) steals her cousin's (Joan Leslie) husband (Zachary Scott), but keeps her lover (Robert Ryan) on the side. No need to tell you that this won't end nicely. Bonus features: Contains an alternate ending with never-before-seen footage!

The Warner Archive has also released Ray's A Woman's Secret (1949)—a woman's picture mixed with humor and noir elements. Director Ray's future wife Gloria Grahame plays the ditzy but sly singer Esterllita who is shot at the opening of the film, presumably by her agent and mentor Marian (Maureen O'Hara). The police arrest Marian. But did she do it? A series of flashbacks reveal the complicated nature of the women's relationship with each other and pianist Luke Jordan (Melvyn Douglas). Ray and Grahame would later work together on the seminal film noir, In a Lonely Place (1950).

In addition to the Ray films, Warners has also released three more newly remastered noirs: Boris Ingster's Southside 1-1000 (1950) starring Don DeFore and Andrea King and two helmed by Robert Stevenson, Walk Softly, Stranger (1950) which reteamed The Third Man co-stars Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli as well as The Las Vegas Story (1952) which pairs up two gorgeous brunettes—Jane Russell and Victor Mature. The Archive is also offering two noirs from Sony's Choice Collection, Budd Boetticher's Escape in the Fog (1945) starring Nina Foch and The Crooked Web (1955) with Frank Lovejoy and Mari Blanchard.

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TCM and Universal teamed up to release Dark Crimes Film Noir Thrillers, a 3-disc set comprising Stuart Heisler's adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett hard-boiled classic The Glass Key (1942) with Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Brian Donlevy and William Bendix; Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady (1944) based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich and starring Ella Raines, Alan Curtis and Franchot Tone; and George Marshall's The Blue Dahlia (1946) which reunited Glass Key co-stars Lake, Ladd and Bendix with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Extras include an introduction by Ben Mankiewicz and a Digital Image Gallery with behind-the-scenes photos, TCM Database articles, publicity stills, lobby cards, movie posters and scene stills. You can order it here.

TCM's Women in Danger box set focuses on the distaff side of film noir, presenting four thrillers featuring noir legends Ida Lupino and Joan Crawford and two actresses in uncharacteristically dark roles, Esther Williams and Merle Oberon. Lupino plays a wealthy woman who takes it on the lam when she discovers her new hus band (Stephen McNally) wants to kill her in Woman in Hiding (1950). Recently widowed Lynn Markham (Crawford) moves into a beautiful beach house and starts to dally with a gorgeous beach bum (Jeff Chandler) who may have been involved in the recent "suicide" of the former tenant in Female on the Beach (1955). A socially privileged teen (John Saxon) harasses his teacher (Esther Williams). Could he be the one responsible for the recent murder of a woman, the most recent victim of a serial rapist? In Price of Fear (1956), Oberon portrays a woman trying to frame the already down on his luck co-owner of a race track for the hit and run she committed. Available June 4 exclusively from the TCM Vault.

Turner Classic Movies and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have teamed up to release a new line of DVDs as part of the TCM Vault Collection. The series kicked off with the Humphrey Bogart Columbia Pictures Collection, and, in collaboration with the FNF, Film Noir Classics III. Both sets comprise full restored and re-mastered Columbia noir titles previously unreleased on DVD. The Bogart set consists of Love Affair, Tokyo Joe, Knock on Any Door, Sirocco and NOIR CITY 7 fan favorite, The Harder They Fall.

The Noir Classics set includes the rare and wonderful noir The Burglar (1957) (Dir. Paul Wendkos), featuring Dan Duryea and Jane Mansfield, adapted by David Goodis from his own novel. The other films on the set are My Name is Julia Ross, The Mob, Tight Spot, and Drive a Crooked Road. Both sets are available exclusively at TCM's online store.

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Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956), scripted by the renowned pulp writer Jim Thompson, features both one of the best heists in film and one of the best portrayals of men undone by their own fears and illusions. The film comprises notable performances by Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Marie Windsor and Elisha Cook Jr. The new Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions feature a high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Special features include: new video interviews with producer James B. Harris and film scholar Robert Polito; excerpts of French television interviews with actor Sterling; a restored transfer of Stanley Kubrick's 1955 noir feature Killer's Kiss; and a new video appreciation of Killer's Kiss with film critic Geoffrey O'Brien. The booklet includes a reprinted interview with actress Windsor and essay by film historian Haden Guest.

In 1963 Akira Kurosawa adapted one of Ed McBain's bestselling 87th Precinct novels, Kings Ransom. Re-titled High and Low, the film resets the novel from a fictional American big city to Tokyo, but retained the same story and class conflicts. Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), a wealthy shoe manufacturer, finds himself facing a devastating moral dilemma. A kidnapper (Tsutomu Yamazaki) has taken his chauffer's son, mistaking him for the industrialist's. He demands a cash ransom, the exact amount that Kingo just raised for a hostile takeover of another company. So it's the boy's life or the corporate coup. Available on Blu-ray for the first time on July 26 from Criterion. Extras include: a high-definition digital restoration; audio commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; a making of documentary; video interviews with actor Toshiro Mifune and actor Tsutomu Yamazaki; and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien and more.

Criterion brings newly restored high-definition digital transfers of two Sam Fuller classics to DVD and Blu-ray. First, Constance Towers stars as a prostitute trying to go straight in The Naked Kiss (1964). She must overcome her past, hidden perversity and small town hypocrisy. Extras include: a video interview with Constance Towers; excerpts from the BBC’s The South Bank Show (1983); two interviews with Fuller from French television; the original theatrical trailer; and illustrations by cartoonist Daniel Clowes (Ghost World).

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Olive Films recently released the Film Noir Collection: Volume One on Blu-ray. The set comprises Rudolph Mate's Union Station (1950) with William Holden, Nancy Olson and Barry Fitzgerald; Lewis Allen's Appointment with Danger (1951) with noir regulars Alan Ladd and Jan Sterling; William Dieterle's Dark City (1950) featuring Charlton Heston in his first Hollywood picture and co-starring noir regular Lizabeth Scott; and William Dieterle's Rope of Sand (1949) with Burt Lancaster, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains and Peter Lorre. No extras on the set, but with that line-up, who cares?

Noir goddess Ida Lupino chalks up another sympathetic tough girl performance as nightclub singer Lilli in Don Siegel's tight little noir Private Hell 36 (1954), a film produced by her ex-husband Collier Young who co-wrote the screenplay with her. Their marriage ended shortly after they co-founded their independent film company The Filmmakers, but their professional relationship lasted five years. The film also co-stars Lupino's husband at the time Howard Duff as Jack, a cop whose partner Calhoun (Steven Cochran) draws him into a web of deceit and corruption when Calhoun steals part of a robbery haul that the pair recovers during a criminal investigation. Interestingly, Lupino plays Cochran's love interest and not Duff's. Sadly there no extras on Olive Films' DVD and Blu-ray release.

In Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil (1948), a crooked lawyer (John Garfield) tries to protect his numbers running brother (Thomas Gomex) from a ruthless crime boss (Roy Roberts), only to be destroyed by a citywide system of graft and corruption. Noir siren Marie Windsor spices up the proceeding as the racketeer's flirtatious wife. The Blu-ray and DVD editions from Olive Films feature an on-camera introduction by film director Martin Scorsese who explains the influence of this particular film noir on his own work.

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Then in Arnold Leven's Down Three Dark Streets (1954), a FBI agent (Kenneth Tobey) pursues there separate cases that lead him to the discovery of a murder. The victim of an extortion racket (Ruth Roman), that he takes more than a professional interest in, proves the key to unlocking the mystery. John Payne co-produced and starred in Byron Haskin's The Boss (1956), a gritty crime thriller depicting the rise and fall of racketeer Matt Brady during the Roaring 20s. The screenplay, by the then blacklisted Donald Trumbo, was largely based on Kansas City's Irish organized crime racket, The Prendergast Machine.

MGM is also offering William Ahser's rather bizarre late period noir Johnny Cool (1963). Harry Silva stars as a Sicilian bandit given a new identity by an exiled mobster. The mobster offers to make him his heir in exchange for killing the men back in the states who betrayed him. Things get weird when the newly christened Johnny Cool meets a sexy divorcee (Elizabeth Montgomery) while on his deadly mission. On the neo-noir side of things is Hickey & Boggs (1972), written by Walter Hill and directed by Robert Culp. In this cynical films, a lawyer hires two private dicks (former I Spy compatriots Bill Cosby and Culp) to find his missing girlfriend. The missing person case soon turns into a search for the proceeds from an armored car robbery. Along the way, the film explores the broken-down lives of the deeply flawed protagonists.

MGM has finally released Blue Velvet (1986) on Blu-ray and it's about time. Back when David Lynch was a genius, he created this neo-noir about a small-town boy back from college (Kyle MacLachlan) who gets sucked into the dark world festering in the heart of his home town. Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper play his underworld guides. Laura Dern plays his Beatrice. The extras include: newly discovered lost footage; Mysteries of Love documentary; the original Siskel & Ebert review; vignettes; trailer & TV spots; and outtakes.

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Keep Us Posted!

Keep us posted on noir news and events in your area! Email Anne Hockens, Film Noir Foundation news and events editor.

In Michaël R. Roskam's Oscar nominated Bullhead (2011), steroid fueled cattle farmer Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts) becomes involved with a meat racketeer and, shortly later, embroiled in criminal investigations of the shooting of a police officer and of the local illegal hormone trade. The reemergence of a childhood friend, and Jacky's interest in his friend's sister, complicates Jacky's already unstable life. Special features include a making of featurette, interviews with star Schoenaerts and director Roskam, director's commentary, as well as Roskam's 2005 short film The One Thing to Do (2005)—also starring Schoenaerts. Now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Image Entertainment.

Kino International released Alberto Cavalcanti's tense thriller They Made Me a Fugitive (aka I Became a Criminal) (1947) on Blu-ray. In this Brit noir set in Post-WWII Soho, ex-RAF flyer turned petty criminal Clem (Trevor Howard) escapes from prison and sets out for revenge against Narcy (Griffith Jones), the head of a black market ring who framed him for a policeman's murder. Two women with agendas of their own aid him in his flight—Mrs. Fenshaw (Vida Hope) who wants him to kill her unwanted husband and Narcy's ex-girlfriend Sally (Sally Gray) whose out for her own vengeance after being replaced in Narcy's affections by another woman. Sadly, the Blu-ray features no extras.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment introduced Fox Cinema Archives, a line of manufacture-on-demand (MOD) DVD-Rs available from retailers including Amazon.com and Movies Unlimited. The second wave of films will include André De Toth's Slattery's Hurricane (1949). While trying to atone for his sins by taking on a suicide mission, flying into a hurricane to report its exact location to the Navy, an ex-war hero (Richard Widmark) recalls his recent past. He has pursued his ex-flame (Linda Darnell) despite her marriage to an ex-Navy buddy (John Russell) and his own relationship with a vulnerable drug addict, Veronica Lake in an outstanding performance. Based on the novel by Herman Wouk.

In Gerd Oswald's hallucinogenic noir Screaming Mimi (1958), beautiful stripper Virginia Wilson (Anita Ekberg) is committed to an asylum after her step-brother Charlie shoots a man about to knife her in the shower. Her therapist, Dr. Greenwood (Harry Townes) falls in love/becomes obsessed with her and continues to treat her after she leaves the asylum to work in El Madhouse, owned by Gypsy (played by legendary striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee). A series of ripper like murders ensues linked to a bizarre sculpture of a woman called The Screaming Mimi and Virginia is soon suspected of the crimes. Can handsome reporter Bill Sweeny (Phil Carey) find the real killer? Seasoned noir cinematographer Burnett Guffey (Brothers Ricco, In a Lonely Place) shot this adaptation of the novel by Fredric Brown. Available on DVD-R from SPHE.

Get ready to be severely depressed by two landmark films now available on Blu-ray for the first time: Roman Polanski's critically lauded neo-noir Chinatown (1974) and Fritz Lang's masterpiece Scarlet Street (1945). In the first, a private eye (Jack Nicholson) unwittingly sets up an innocent man for murder and then joins his widow (Faye Dunaway) in unearthing the corruption behind the crime in this physically beautiful but emotionally bleak neo-noir set in a morally bankrupt 1930s Los Angeles. Extras from the Paramount release include: an audio commentary with writer Robert Towne; the documentary "Water and Power" about the historical events that inspired for the film; and four short docs, "Chinatown: An Appreciation", "Chinatown: The Beginning", "Chinatown: The Filming" and "Chinatown: The Legacy".

The only film more cynical and hopeless in its depiction of humanity than Chinatown must be Lang's seminal film noir Scarlet Street. A henpecked cashier and weekend painter, Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson), falls for heartless tramp Kitty (Joan Bennett) whom he meets by chance. She and her pimp/boyfriend Johnny (Dan Duryea) play the sucker for everything he has. Then Chris starts to embezzle to keep his lady love happy and things go from bad to worse, then eventually to nihilistic. Extras on this Kino release comprise an audio commentary by film historian David Kalat and an image gallery of stills and posters.

In Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), an enigmatic Hollywood stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) also moonlights as a wheel man. When he accepts an offer to drive during a million dollar heist, a miasma of greed and betrayal soon engulfs him. Critics compared Gosling existential anti-hero to the likes of those portrayed by Clint Eastwood, Steven McQueen and Alain Delon. It's now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Both formats include five behind the scenes featurettes. The Blu-ray also includes a UV copy and special BD-Live content.

The critically acclaimed Congolese neo-noir Viva Riva is now available on DVD from Music Box Films. This film details, with plenty of twists and turns, the attempts of the anti-hero, Riva (Patash Bay), to both seduce femme fatale Nora (Manie Malone), the mistress of a crime lord, and to get his hands on a stash of petrol that could make him and his partner a fortune on the black market. First time director, Djo Munga also penned the screenplay. Sadly, the DVD has no extras and the film is not available on Blu-ray.

Available from Amazon on demand, Andre de Toth's Pitfall (1948) plays effectively with noir expectations, leaving the audience to savor some unexpected twists. Dick Powell stars as a married insurance executive who strays when he meets a beautiful dame, Mona Stevens (Lizbeth Scott). When her thieving boyfriend and a private dick (Raymond Burr), who's obsessed with her, enter the picture, things get even seamier.

Barbara Stanwyck gives a heartrending performance in Mitchell Leisen's No Man of Her Own (1950), based on Cornel Woolrich's novel I Married a Dead Man, written under the pen name William Irish during his peak period of artistry and productivity. Helen Ferguson (Stanwyck) finds herself unmarried, pregnant and ruthlessly abandoned by her lover, Steve Morley (Lyle Bettger). A bizarre twist of fate involving a train accident gives her a second chance, when she's mistaken for the bride of a now deceased wealthy man. His family takes her in, she and the dead man's brother (John Lund) tentatively fall in love and then—Steve appears—threatening her (and her child's) new found security. Now available from Olive Films.

In Robert Siodmak's The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), Barbara Stanwyck plays Thelma who, as Miss Stanwyck is wont to do, seduces a married Assistant District Attorney (Corey Wendell) and pulls him into her dangerous world of crime. After he manipulates a trial to save her from prison, Thelma's boyfriend, a jewel thief, reenters the scene. Things, of course, go badly. Artiflix is now offering this rare film noir on demand, in the DVD-R format, via Amazon.com.

Joseph Losey's 1951 noir masterpiece, The Prowler, is finally available on DVD from VCI. The source of the digital transfer is the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s restoration, funded by the FNF and the Stanford Theatre Foundation. The lonely wife (Evelyn Keyes) of a nighttime DJ falls for the beat cop (Van Heflin) who responds to her report of a prowler. Unknown to her, he finds a murderous way to get rid of the husband. The extras include a "Making of..." documentary; audio commentary by the FNF’s Alan K. Rode and Eddie Muller; a documentary about the FNF's preservation partnership with UCLA ; Bertrand Tavernier’s video critique of the film; the theatrical trailer; and an interactive version of the film's press book. Order now!