Here’s a 1946 black and white movie starring George Raft and Ava Gardner shot in and in the film noir style, but without really being a film noir. At least I don’t think so. You could argue with me.

Welcome to the smokey back rooms for San Francisco’s Haite/Ashbury district in the 1940′s

House on Haunted Hill (1959) is a horror film directed by William Castle, written by Robb White, and starring Vincent Price as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. He and his fourth wife, Annabelle, have invited five people to the house for a “Haunted House” party. Whoever stays in the house for one night will earn ten thousand dollars. As the night progresses, all the guests are trapped inside the house with ghosts, murderers, and other terrors.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is about a writer and adventurer waiting to die from a thorn scratch as he reminisces about his life and it’s trials including lost loves and time spent in the Spanish Revolution. It stars Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner as his first erratic love. It was adapted from Ernest Hemingway short story with the same name.

Victor Buono gives a very convincing portrayal of a character supposedly modeled after the Boston Strangler in this gripping drama. Ellen Corby plays his mother.

or La Morte viene dallo spazio…

I haven’t been in the mood to sit down and watch this movie, but I finally got there. This movie has really good production values for it’s genre and time. Notably, the sets are very convincing and well done. This one would be good for the midnight movie on Saturday Night, with some popcorn.

This movie stars Dennis O’Keefe and Gail Russell. It’s the true story about Dan Patch, who held the record for being the fastest harness horse in the world from 1909 to 1938.

Dan Patch was a sports superstar with extensive endorsements (including washing machines and cigars). Much of his career was spent barnstorming and he retired undefeated in 1909 as the holder of nine world records. Dan Patch Avenue at the Minnesota State Fair grounds is named for him. He was also the subject of the 1949 motion picture, The Great Dan Patch starring Dennis O’Keefe and Gail Russell. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

D.O.A. (1950), a film noir drama film directed by Rudolph Mata, is considered a classic of the genre. The frantically-paced plot revolves around a doomed man’s quest to find out who has poisoned him – and why – before he dies.

Bud Spencer plays Hiram Coburn ; a drifter. Jack Palance plays Sunny ; a gunfighter who wants him to marry his sister. A little boy (Renato Cestie) and Jack Palances gun save him from hanging, but the boys uncle gets killed so Bud Spencer adopts the waif. I don’t want to give away too much on the plot, but the interaction between Palance and Bud Spencer is pretty funny.

Cary Grant plays Earnest Bliss a rich socialite who makes a bet with his doctor that he can make a living for one year using none of his current wealth. This is a real cute movie.

Beneath the 12-Mile Reef is a 1953 adventure film about a family of Greek-American sponge divers and their rival with a family of W.A.S.P divers. The film was made in Tarpon Springs, Florida, a town famous for it’s Greek community. It starred Robert Wagner, Terry Moore and Gilbert Roland.

I really can’t believe how few people watched this movie. It’s one of my favorites.

In 1900, lumberman Jim Fallon (Kirk Douglas) greedily eyes the big trees in the virgin region of northern California. The land is already settled by, among others, a religious group led by Elder Bixby (Charles Meredith). Jim is attracted to Bixby’s daughter, Alicia (Eve Miller), though that does not change his plan to cheat the homesteaders.

Edward G. Robinson pursues a nazi war criminal named Franz Kindler. He thinks it’s the kindly college professor played by Orson Welles. Only a dead man can link him to the crimes… or is it his own obsessions that will finally be his undoing. If you haven’t caught this film, this is a keeper in the realm of public domain films.

Quicksand stars Mickey Rooney and Jeanie Cagney. Jeanie is a bad, bad girl that gets poor Jim in trouble with increasing regularity.

Entering the movie business in 1926, Mickey Rooney made his name as the title character in the Mickey McGuire shorts. These were a series of more than 40 silent, two-reel comedies adapted from the Toonerville Trolley comic strip, in which he starred through 1936. For a time he billed himself as Mickey McGuire, but legally changed his name to Mickey Rooney in 1932. Also during this period he met Walt Disney and later he would claim Disney had named Mickey Mouse after him. It is difficult to verify, and others have made similar claims, but Rooney takes credit for giving rising starlet Norma Jean Baker the stage name Marilyn Monroe (his co-star in the 1950 film The Fireball).

Black Brigade is also known as Carter’s Army, which aired on January 27, 1970. The movie is a war drama. It starred a host of prominent African-American film actors including Richard Pryor, Rosie Grier, Robert Hooks, Billy Dee Williams and Moses Gun.

A redneck officer (Stephen Boyd) is put in charge of a squad of all black troops charged with the mission of blowing up an important hydro dam in Nazi Germany. Their failure would delay the Allies advance into Germany, thus prolonging the war. These African-Americans are relegated to cleaning latrines and have little real military training, but Captain Beau Carter has no choice. He leads the rag tag unit to blow up the dam and they turn out to be heroic.

Blind detective Duncan Maclain (Edward Arnold) is visited by old friend Norma Lawry, looking for help in getting rid of one of her old beaus, who is courting Norma’s 17-year old step-daughter.

The Lady Says No (1952) is a hoot. It’s a romantic comedy starring David Niven and Joan Caulfied. She’s a writer that writes a man hating book, he’s a photographer that wants to prove her all wrong. I thought it was pretty funny.

Helene von Lorbeer is sent undercover to London to live with the family of a high-placed British official where she is to transmit steal war secrets for Germany. Starring Boris Karloff. This is a spy movie that you should like, if you like that genre. Boris Karloff plays a domestic servant involved in espionage during World War I, in a film that is filled with so many double agents that you won’t be able to figure out who is on which side until the film ends.

Hard bitten San Francisco industrialist Walter Williams’s two-timing wife and her lover plot to do her husband in, but instead the boyfriend gets killed and mistaken for . Half-dazed, Williams stumbles into a moving van that takes him to Mayberry RFD, where newspaper stories of his “death” jog his memory. While recuperating and plotting his eventual return and revenge, Williams falls in love with Marsha (Helen Walker) , an auto mechanic. And when Williams finally gets back to San Francisco, he’s tried for the lover’s murder

Charles Bronson plays Joe Martin. Joe has a jaded past, but has settled down and become a fisherman married to Liv Ullman. Some of his old army buddies look him up and want him to smuggle heroin in his fishing boat. Joe isn’t too happy about this. This is a suspense film and has a lot of good car chase scenes.

Martha Ivers tried to get away from her aunt. She and her friend Sam were caught by the police and returns. When Mrs. Ivers attacks Martha’s pet cat with her cane; Martha intervenes and accidentally kills her aunt. After this, the movie is a great film noir full of blackmail and intrigue. Stars Barbara Stanwyck, Lizbeth Scott and Van Heflin.

Zontar, the Thing from Venus also known as Zontar: The Invader from Venus is a 1966, made for television, science fiction film, directed by Larry Buchanan and based on the teleplay by Hillman Taylor and Buchanan. It is a remake of Roger Corman’s It Conquered the World (1956), and also featured an alien from Venus, much like its predecessor.

Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar) meets an alien from Venus, who claims to have come to the earth to solve its problems. But Zontar has different ideas. He begins causing worldwide blackouts and controlling people’s minds. Taylor now knows that Zontar is seeking world domination.

Watching this will take you 12 hours. You will be pretty familiar with WWII history by the time you get done. Victory at Sea was a documentary TV series about naval warfare during World War II that was originally aired by NBC in the USA in 26 half-hour segments on Sunday afternoons, starting October 26, 1952 and ending May 3, 1953. The series, which won an Emmy in 1954 as best public affairs program, played a major role in establishing historic documentaries as a viable television genre. When it first aired, NBC thought it so important that it had no commercial breaks.

Joaquin Shannon confesses to a murder he didn’t commit. He gets a year in prison to start for manslaughter. It gets hard to be on good behavior. I liked this movie. I think I’ll add it to favorites.

Jungle Book is an American color 1942 action/adventure film based on the Rudyard Kipling novel, The Jungle Book. The film was directed by Zoltan Korda based on a screeplay adaptation by Laurence Stallings. The cinematography was by Lee Garmes and W. Howard Greene and music by Mikas Razsa.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color for the director’s brother, Vincent Korda and creative partner Julia Heron.

In 1943 the film’s score was re-recorded with narration by Sabu Dastagir and became the first commercial recording of a U.S. film score to be released.

An American musical comedy based on the satirical play by Nikolai Gogol that deals with local corruption and a case of mistaken identity in … all early 19th century Russia. Its ambiguous sets and costumes places the study somewhere in Eastern Europe during Napoleonic rule. Perhaps because the film was produced during the onset of the Cold War, the vagueness of the setting might indicate that the producers did not want to make a comedy about Russia. This vehicle for Danny Kaye reduced the biting satire and increased the music for American audiences. wikipedia

A violent criminal called The Butcher is brought back to life by a scientist using electricity. The Butcher becomes an invulnerable mute, and seeks vengeance upon those who caused his execution. Insert the Frankenstein into the Maltese Falcon, dumb it down a bit, and you have “Indestructible Man”.

Keep an eye out for Max Showalter as the Lieutenant on the killer’s trail. He would later play MANY bit roles in Dragnet, a show that seems a direct descendant of this one–”normal” LAPD cops trying to deal with dangerous freaks.

Here’s a pretty good little film noir presentation from the 1940′s. It stars Edward G. Robinson and Lon McCallister. You’ll notice the bad girl that is a very young Julie London of later singing fame.

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood’s classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

It’s another film noir directed by Ida Lupino. Two hunting buddies who pick up a mysterious hitchhiker. It was based on a story by screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring, who was blacklisted for being a communist.

John Wayne - Angel and the Badman

Angel and the Badman is a 1947 black and white Western film, starring John Wayne and Gail Russell, which examines the ability of a shootist to renounce violence. This film, which was the first one Wayne produced as well as starred in, was a radical departure for this genre at the time it was released. The film was directed by Wayne’s frequent screenwriter James Edward Grant.

I liked this movie. Hedy Lamar plays fashion editor Madeleine Damien who’s social life has given her a questionable reputation. Finally she succumbs to the pressures of work and a tarnished image and suffers an emotional breakdown. She seeks professional help from a kindly psychiatrist who recommends a complete change in lifestyle.

The Green Glove is an action adventure film starring Glenn Ford, directed by Rudolph Mata and released by United Artists.

Glenn Ford stars as an American paratrooper GI who travels to France after the end of WWII to try and recover a jewel encrusted glove that had been stolen from a country church during the war. His quest leads him to a beautiful young tour guide (Geraldine Brooks), and a Nazi collaborator (George Macready) whom he had fought during the war. The movie was shot mostly on location in France and Monaco. It was based on actions that took place during Operation Dragoon.

Little Lord Fauntleroy is a 1936 film starring Freddie Bartholomew. A young American boy must go to live in England with his grandfather and become Lord Fauntleroy. His grandfather is an Earl who hates Americans, and his American mother. This film also has a very young Mickey Rooney who plays a shoeshine boy friend of Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Threads is a 1984 television docudrama depicting the effects of a nuclear war on the United Kingdom and its aftermath. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, Threads was filmed in late 1983 and early 1984. The premise of Threads was to hypothesize the effects of a nuclear war on the United Kingdom after an exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States escalates to include the UK.

This film was not posted and is not hosted by retrovision

Set in Europe during World War I, the plot focuses on the tragic romance between Frederick Henry (Gary Cooper), an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian Army, and English Red Cross nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes).

Virus (otherwise known as Fukkatsu no hi, lit. Day of Resurrection, Virus) is a 1980 post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie directed by Kinji Fukasaku and starring Masao Kusakari, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn, Chuck Connors, Olivia Hussey, Edward James Olmos, Ken Ogata, Sonny Chiba and Glenn Ford. The film is notable for being the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time.

The movie opens with a British nuclear submarine called the HMS Nereid entering Tokyo Bay in the then-future of December 1983. The ship’s crew and Japanese seismologist Yoshizumi (Masao Kusakari) send a reconnaissance drone to search the city for any survivors, only to find decayed bodies. It also gathers air samples of something called MM88.