By David in TN
Saturday, October 30, 2021, at 1:19 a.m. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week is a Halloween Horror Movie Double Feature, both by Jacques Tourneur at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET. The first is Cat People (1942), followed by The Leopard Man (1943).
Cat People has a bride afraid she is cursed to turn into a panther and tear her groom to pieces, so she avoids intimate contact with her new husband. The deprived husband turns to another woman, igniting the curse.
The Leopard Man is about a series of killings supposedly by an escaped leopard. The first was by the leopard, but the next two victims appear to be due to a psychopathic killer. For a change, Noir Alley will have some good films in November.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 am ET is Henry S. Kesler's 5 Steps to Danger (1957) with Sterling Hayden, Ruth Roman, Werner Klemperer, Richard Gaines, and Jeanne Cooper.
In his outro last week, Eddie Muller previewed 5 Steps to Danger by calling it a "Cold War version of Detour (1945)."
Sterling Hayden is an everyman on a fishing trip whose car breaks down. offering him a ride is a strange woman (Roman) who has secrets. It turns out she is wanted for murder and also being hunted by Communist agents after a message she possesses in a steel mirror.
Klemperer is the head of the Communist spy ring disguised as a psychiatrist who sent a nurse (Simmons) to bring her back.
The film is based on a Donald Hamilton novel, The Steel Mirror. Hamilton's Matt Helm novels were ruined by Phil Karlson in the 60s movies starring Dean Martin. I want to see if Eddie Muller mentions this.
5 Steps to Danger does have the flavor of a Donald Hamilton novel. Eddie finally shows a good one.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 am ET is Don Siegel's The Lineup (1958) with Eli Wallach, Robert Keith, Warner Anderson, Richard Jaeckel, and Emile Meyer.
Film Noir Guide: "Unsuspecting travelers are being used by the mob to smuggle heroin into the country. Even worse, they're being killed by a psychopathic hit man (Wallach), whose job it is to retrieve the drugs. After a cop is killed trying to stop a taxi driver from fleeing with a satchel full of heroin, San Francisco detectives Anderson and Meyer take on the case. They attempt to track down the bad guys--Wallach; his misogynistic associate (Keith), who's writing a book containing the last words of Wallach's victims; and their dipso getaway driver (Jaeckel). It's not the cops, however, that the bad guys need to worry about, but a little girl and her dolly. This effective, ultra-violent film (director Siegel later gave us Dirty Harry) is entertaining thanks to fascinating performances by Wallach and Keith, perhaps the oddest pair of villains in film noir. Warner Anderson, who plays Lt. Guthrie here, also played the same character in the 1954-60 TV series of the same name."
David In TN: The mob wouldn't use "unsuspecting travelers" they would have to kill to bring in the drugs, but so-called Mules. The Man would not do his own pickup. Siegel preferred using the crooks as protagonists rather than cops. He did the same thing in Charley Varrick (1973). The Lineup has the first great car chase, still about the best.
On Saturday night, prior to The Lineup, TCM is showing William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) at 8 pm ET and To Live and Die in LA (1985). Both had car chases. Friedkin was obsessed with outdoing the car chase in Bullitt.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 am ET is Robert Rossen's Johnny O'Clock (1947) with Dick Powell, Evelyn Keyes, Lee j. Cobb, Thomas Gomes, Jim Bannon, Nina Foch, Ellen Drew.
Film Noir Guide: "Powell, a partner in Gomez's casino, is pursued by the older man's sexy young wife (Drew) but rebuffs her advances. When the casino hat check girl (Foch), depressed about her failed romance with a crooked cop (Bannon), is found dead in her apartment, an apparent suicide, a police inspector (Cobb)investigates her death. Because the missing Bannon was connected to the Casino, Cobb centers his investigation around Powell. Meanwhile, Foch's sister (Keyes) arrives in town and falls hard for the suave gambler, who is frantically searching for a lost item that, if found by the jealous Gomez could threaten his job and possibly his life. The convoluted plot is offset by the excellent acting and clever dialogue. Look for a poker-playing Jeff Chandler (sans his trademark white hair) in his screen debut."
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