Film Noir on the border

Friday A & E handed in late:

Criminals escaping and the people tracking them down, a simple concept makes for a trove of fascinating film noir plots.  Our favorites, including one that is actually set in New Mexico, but has all the elements of a great film noir set in Mexico, and Jesika loves Robert Montgomery.

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

We like this review from The Criterion Collection.  It starts out:

Director and star Robert Montgomery suffuses his moody 1947 New Mexico–set noir with palpable postwar anxiety and expressive fatalism . . .

Expressive fatalism, that's what you want in a great film noir.

Next, we have sort of a sleeper film noir, but definitely, we love it.  The plot is reminiscent of the great Double Indemnity, where an insurance investigator is actually investigating his own crime, but that's all the spoiler we have to offer.  We particularly love Felicia Farr as the devoted, unsuspecting wife and Jack Klugman as small-time hood Frankie Page.

Time Table (1956)

Third, we have:

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

We feel the quality of this film can be attributed to the fact that it is directed by Ida Lupino.  The very bad guy is William Talman, who later played Hamilton Burger on the Perry Mason TV show, which we feel is a waste of some really scary looking psycho eyes.

Last for now (we know we missed lots of great ones in this post), it's the wonderful, notorious:

Borderline (1950)

Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor get top billing in this classic film noir, but we really love Raymond Burr in his white suit, being oh so cold and evil. Raymond Burr played numerous film noir antagonists that sometimes it's hard to believe he later became our beloved good guys Perry Mason and Chief Robert Ironside.

'Til next time!