Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25378 in DVD
• Format: NTSC

Customer Reviews

The second of two sets so far of Sony film noir
This set contains 5 films and no extra features have been announced. The set is due to go on sale November 3 along with a volume 1 of film noir from Sony on the same day. Sony continues to hit it out of the park with classic sets being announced rather regularly. The films in volume two are as follows:

The Film Noir Collection, Vol. 2
Pushover (1954) - directed by Richard Quine and stars Fred MacMurray as a detective who gets mixed up with the girlfriend (Kim Novak) of a suspected bank robber. The girlfriend wants the detective to kill her bank robbing boyfriend and then the two can take the money. This is difficult since MacMurray's detective has both the girlfriend and the robber under surveillance along with a bunch of other detectives.

Nightfall (1957) - directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, and Anne Bancroft. A man falsely accused of robbery and murder goes on the run, persuading the woman he loves and an insurance investigator to help find the real culprits and clear his name. Great cinematography in this low budget thriller.

The Brothers Rico (1957) - directed by Phil Karlson and starring Richard Conte and Dianne Foster. A former Mafia accountant is going straight and starting a business with his new wife. He is pulled back into the dangerous world of organized crime when he learns that the Mob and the cops are looking for his younger brother who is still in the dark world he left.

City of Fear (1959) - directed by Irving Lerner and starring Vince Edwards, Lyle Talbot, and John Archer. An escaped convict comes into possession of a cannister of deadly radioactive material. The cops know this and are trying to track down the convict and the cannister. The film gets many facts about radiation poisoning just plain wrong, but it is still an enjoyable little film joining the elements of noir and the nuclear age.

In a Lonely Place (1950) - directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. A novelist is out of ideas when a hat check girl gives him a story for his next book. Later that night she is murdered and Bogart's Dixon Steele is a prime suspect. His strange ways aren't helping any with the police when his neighbor gives him an alibi. A romance starts up between the two, but the neighbor is still having doubts about the true nature of the man she saved. The best film in the bunch, in my opinion.

The preceding descriptions come from a combination of the press release for this set and my own memories of these films, some distant and some very recent.

Go For It!
I agree that In a Lonely Place is the best, but it's one of the great movies. All five are worth seeing and I thoroughly recommend this set as well as Vol. 1. Since Warners quit trying, Sony now leads the pack in reissues. Good thing too: there are plenty more fun Columbias, including some swell serials, including The Spider Strikes, Deadwood Dick, The Secret of Treasure Island, The Spider Returns, The Shadow, Cody of the Pony Express and The Mysterious Island. I seriously need a decent copy of any Columbia serial, to tell the truth. The bootleg copies are mostly awful. The only legit releases we've ever seen are superhero tie-ins, and they're not the really good Columbia serials.