By David in TN
saturday, may 3, 2025 at 12:02:00 p.m. edt
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET is Ted Tetzlaff’s Riff-Raff (1947), with Pat O’Brien, Anne Jeffreys, Walter Slezak, Jerome Cowan and Mark Krah.
Film Noir Guide: “O’Brien plays a tough American P.I. in Panama named Hammer (no, not THAT Hammer). He’s hired by bad guy Krah (who recently pushed someone out of an airplane to steal an oil field map) as his bodyguard. Not one to worry about conflict of interest, O’Brien takes on another client, oil executive Cowan, who hires him to find Krah and the stolen map.
“Unfortunately, Krah doesn’t last an hour under O’Brien’s protection before he’s murdered in his bathtub. Slezak and his goons then show up, also seeking the map, which Krah has hidden in plain sight on a bulletin board in O’Brien's office. Distrustful of O’Brien, Cowan sends his girlfriend (nightclub singer Jeffreys) to spy on him, and, of course, she quickly falls in love with the portly, middle-aged private dick.
“This fast-paced, beautifully photographed noir is witty and entertaining, with O’Brien giving an interesting twist to the hard-boiled private investigator role. Jeffreys later went on to star in the popular TV comedy Topper with her husband, Robert Sterling.”
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. is Robert Siodmak's The Killer's with Edmund O'Brien, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw, Jack Lambert, Jeff Corey, Charles D. Brown.
Film Noir Guide: "Two brazen hit men (McGraw and Conrad, in his film debut) show up one evening in an unlikely film noir locale (Brentwood, New Jersey) and put eight slugs into a filling station attendant (Lancaster), who had waited passively for them in his cheap hotel room. (When asked by a friend why the killers were after him, Lancaster replied simply, 'I did something wrong once.')"
"An insurance investigator (O'Brien), obsessed with discovering the reason for the killing, seeks out Lancaster's friends and enemies--his beautiful but scheming girlfriend (Gardner), his prison cellmate (Brown), his partner in a big heist (crime boss Dekker and goons Lambert and Corey) and a police detective (Levine)." What the investigator uncovers turns out to be the 'double-cross to end all double crosses.'
"Lancaster, in his film debut, gives a sensational performance as the depressed loser. Gardner distinguishes herself in the femme fatale role, proving she was not just a gorgeous sex symbol but a genuinely talented actress.
"This classic noir, based loosely on an Ernest Hemingway short story of the same title, was remade in 1964 with John Cassavetes in the Lancaster role, Angie Dickinson as the femme fatale, Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the killers and Ronald Reagan (in his final film before turning to politics) as the crime boss. The classic TV show Dragnet borrowed Miklos Rozsa's compelling score (dum da dum dum) and made it famous."
David in TN: This is said to be the only film made from an Ernest Hemingway story he liked.
After showing a long line of mediocre entries, Red Eddie Muller for the first time features one of the best noir films.
Best known as Mrs. Olson in Folger's TV commercials and a long film and TV career in character roles, a young Virginia Christine plays a nice girl who Lancaster throws over for bad girl Ava Gardner.
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