André de Toth’s sordid crime tale is tops in all departments. Tough cop Sterling Hayden suspects parolee Gene Nelson of being in cahoots with the murderous bank robbers Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson and Ned Young; Gene’s wife Nelson finds herself menaced both by Bronson and the ultimate psycho Timothy Carey. The direction emphasizes tense realism in the streets of Glendale, Burbank and Chinatown. The topper is an edgy audio commentary by Eddie Muller, as he tries to rein in loose cannon author James Ellroy.

Crime Wave
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1954 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 74 min. / The City is Dark; Don’t Cry, Baby / Street Date July 28, 2026 / Available at MovieZyng / 24.98
Starring: Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, Phyllis Kirk, Ted de Corsia, Charles Buchinsky, Jay Novello, Nedrick Young, James Bell, Dub Taylor, Gayle Kellogg, Mack Chandler, Iris Adrian, Timothy Carey, Fritz Feld, Mary Alan Hokanson, Harry Lauter, John Veitch, Hank Worden.
Cinematography: Bert Glennon
Art Director: Stanley Fleischer
Wardrobe: Moss Mabry
Film Editor: Thomas Reilly
Music Composer: David Buttolph
Screenplay by Crane Wilbur adaptation by Bernard Gordon, Richard Wormser from the Saturday Evening Post story Criminal’s Mark by John Hawkins, Ward Hawkins
Produced by Bryan Foy
Directed by André de Toth

Noir crime pix can be a terrific nostalgia machine for Los Angeles. Our City Hall is an unchanging monument in hundreds of shows, but the legendary Angel’s Flight can only be appreciated in pictures like  Kiss Me Deadly or  Criss Cross. André de Toth’s noir thriller  Crime Wave grabs us from a half-dozen different angles. But, location-wise, the scene that always gets a loud response at noir festivals was taken at midnight in Burbank, just a few blocks from the Warner studio: a shot of a lonely prowl car, with the original Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in the background. The iconic building was then just a couple of years old. 72 years later, we see that shot and want to stop in for a double-decker.

The relatively obscure Crime Wave is now a favorite crowd pleaser, with everything desirable in a 1953 film noir. Director De Toth gives us a full dose of action, intense characters and genuine noir angst. There is not one slack moment to be found in its tight 74 minutes; every character, setting and plot point is nailed with admirable efficiency. Sterling Hayden is almost scary as the relentless cop putting pressure on Gene Nelson’s tough hero. The issue at hand is whether or not an ex-con always slides back into criminal activity. All indications are that staying clear of trouble is a difficult proposition for anyone fresh from prison. You don’t meet the nicest people there.

Escapees Doc Penny, Ben Hastings and Gat Morgan (Ted De Corsia, Charles Bronson & Nedrick Young) bust out of San Quentin and commit a string of petty robberies on their way south. In L.A. they knock over a filling station. They put the gas attendant Gus Snyder (lovable Dub Taylor) in the hospital, and gun down a motorcycle cop in cold blood. The wounded Gat stumbles to the doorstep of ex-con Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson of  Oklahoma!) and his wife Ellen (Phyllis Kirk of  House of Wax), with the demand that they help him reach Dr. Hessler (Jay Novello), a criminals’ sawbones now working as a veterinarian. The all-business Det. Lt. Sims (Sterling Hayden) tracks Gat to Steve’s door. He comes down hard on the parolee, accusing Steve of being part of the gang. Steve and Ellen think that Sims might believe their story, when Doc and Ben show up to continue the terror. Using Ellen as a hostage, the crooks force Steve to serve as wheel man for a big bank holdup in Glendale.

Now Lt. Sims will never believe Steve and Ellen. What can they possibly do?

It didn’t take long for Crime Wave’s storyline to become a weekly fixture in TV episodes of Dragnet and Highway Patrol. Yet André De Toth and his expert cast turn out a gem of a show. Sterling Hayden chews on toothpicks, and looks like he’d rather be stomping every crook he sees. We’re genuinely surprised to see his Lt. Sims offer a fair shake to one of his stoolies. Gene Nelson’s, Steve Lacey is a good hardboiled hero, neither an idealistic chump nor an embittered cynic. Like the best of noir protagonists, Steve must go it alone, trusting neither the cops nor the murderous ‘friends’ he met in prison.

Life in California ought to be heaven for Steve and Ellen. He’s a parolee with a tainted record, yet can hold down an aircraft job. He earns enough to buy groceries, and he has the loyal Ellen by his side. Steve may not be able to afford a new car, but he and Ellen look great in his genuine Hot Rod. California road culture is booming, and the many street exteriors stress that that Los Angeles is the fun car capital of the world. If only Steve didn’t have this little problem with thieving murderers.

De Toth’s direction is remarkable. Excellent part-subjective camera work puts us within the action, as when Bronson’s brutish Ben Hastings assaults the veterinarian in his surgery. Some scenes were filmed in the actual LAPD offices. Low angles make Sterling Hayden seem enormous as he bulls his way under the glaring fluorescent lights. One scene begins with Hayden bursting into a dark room, gun drawn. The moment is timed and staged so sharply that it’s almost frightening.

De Toth’s audacious bedroom scene must have earned him slaps on the back from other directors. The prudish Production Code saw to it that most married couples in Hollywood movies were shown using twin beds. When the Laceys decide to ignore a late-night phone call, we see only a close-up of Ellen’s hand restraining Steve’s, from below as he reaches for the receiver. The angle features her wedding band, and strongly suggests that she must be underneath him on the bed.  ↖  In the next cutback shot they are already smoking. We don’t know of an earlier Hollywood noir with such a direct suggestion of sexual activity.   Well, since I was born around that time, I have concluded that sex definitely existed.

The crooks are slick and mean, with Ted De Corsia  (The Killing,  The Naked City) leaning on Steve just enough to get him to play ball with his crooked scheme. Nedrick Young is a luckless cohort (more on Young below) and Timothy Carey is Johnny Haslett, a leering goon enlisted to babysit the terrorized Ellen. We fully expect Haslet to rape Ellen the moment they’re left alone. He instead invites her to play gin rummy!

Crime Wave evokes a great atmosphere of endless night in Los Angeles. Bert Glennon’s expert photography takes us into a time tunnel to the streets of Glendale in 1952. In addition to Bob’s Big Boy, we see L.A.’s Chinatown and a lonely stretch of San Fernando Road. Upscale movie patrons might have wanted more fanciful escapism, but the authentic settings in films like Crime Wave and  Without Warning! now give us an up-close look at the way things were. We get a good look at the Red Cars on Glendale Blvd., the transporation system that would be discontinued only a few years later.

Instead of giving in to Warner’s casting suggestion of a star the studio thought more bankable, André de Toth held out for the dependable Sterling Hayden. The line-up of villains compensate in impact for what they lacked in marquee power. Menacing Ted de Corsia doesn’t care who dies. Psycho Timothy Carey is allowed to snarl and grimace like a fiend. Later on, director Stanley Kubrick had to be tough to keep Carey from running amuck.  ↘

Gat Morgan, the least lucky holdup man, is played by the actor-writer Nedrick Young. By the time Crime Wave was released Young was blacklisted. Warners was denying him most of his screen credits, even on House of Wax. Young fell back on his writing, contributing to the hits Jailhouse Rock, The Defiant Ones and Inherit the Wind. Being blacklisted, he had to use a fake name. This created problems when the non-existent Nathan E. Douglas won the Oscar for The Defiant Ones. Nedrick Young was placed in the insane position of accepting the award under a different name. Many in the big audience must have known exactly who he was. We can see how it went down!

Crime Wave gives the rough-looking Charles Buchinsky (Bronson) his biggest part yet. The talented Phyllis Kirk also has a showase role as the worried parolee’s wife. She plays opposite De Toth’s inspired casting choice Gene Nelson. At this time Nelson was almost completely associated with lightweight musical comedies. A top-notch dancer, Nelson’s film acting career would both peak just a year later with Fred Zinnemann’s 65mm & Todd AO roadshow colossus  Oklahoma!

The violent bank robbery leads to a convincing car pursuit from Glendale to Chinatown, culminating in a satisfying surprise ending. De Toth gave Warners a hard-driving thriller, delivered on a very short shooting schedule. At 74 minutes, we’re wondering if it was perhaps shortened even more in editorial. Did the studio want to present it as a ‘programmer’ fit for double-bill use?  The concluding robbery shies away from opportunities for additional violence. Did more violent material need to trimmed?  Crime Wave is the perfect 50s noir: realistic, fast-moving and unpretentious.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of Crime Wave continues the company’s track record for excellent remasters. All the Night-for-Night scenes have inky blacks. The docu-real texture gives us glaring florescent lights at the gas station and police headquarters, and a large range of shadows, even in apartment interiors. Camerman Bert Glennon’s work could be called ‘newsreel plus’ — scenes are well lit, but retain a you-are-there grit.

The audio is sharp. David Buttolph’s music score is recorded with the brassy clarity that was Warners’ house style. Buttolph was a utility composer at Warners around this time, picking up odd assignments like providing the socko score for the independent pickup  The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Crime Wave is a 1954 release, so we were at first curious as to why the Warner Archive would present it at the pre-Widescreen flat Academy ratio. The answer is that the film was actually shot in late 1952, and spent over a year on the shelf. Did Jack Warner simply not like it?  Or could he have delayed its release because of its sordid, violent content?  WB’s big hit  White Heat had drawn sharp criticism for sadistic violence, which newspaper editorials condemned as an encouragement to juvenile delinquency. The James Cagney picture had been followed by a number of brutal crime pix, namely  Highway 301 and  Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Crime Wave could have been delayed ’til ’54 because of its violent content, or simply because WB had too much product in the pipeline.

The movie certainly wasn’t given a class sell, what with its main tag line, “Before your shocked eyes – The City blasted Sin-Side Out!” A key poster is a catalog of images discouraged by The Production Code — a dead body, a smoking gun, a half-dressed woman under assault.

Other physical evidence suggests that the star-challenged Crime Wave wasn’t the Warner front office’s proudest product. The opening title sequence has glaring editorial goofs that would normally be corrected. The first thing we see is the Warners shield logo, which comes up as an odd blur. Also left in place is the blacklisted Nedrick Young in the cast list. With the exception of this movie, his screen credit was denied from 1953 on. The film then begins by repeating a few seconds of action already seen under the title sequence; it really looks as if the film had been scored with this mis-edit, and the studio decided to leave it this way.  That’s just one possible theory to explain the fumbled opening.

The film’s Aspect Ratio also tells us that the release was delayed. The titles are formatted for 1:66 widescreen, but the disc’s flat 1:37 transfer is correct, as that is how it was filmed in 1952. This movie can’t have looked good when cropped for widescreen in. ’54. On-screen license plates read 1952, a detail confirmed by Eddie Muller in his commentary.

That commentary is quite a listen; it was recorded for an older DVD, a double-feature with the Monogram noir  Decoy (which carries a commentary by yours truly). The talk track connects Eddie Muller with author James Ellroy, who offers plenty of seamy insights on this exceptional picture. Much of Ellroy’s key crime fiction takes place in the exact same time period, in the same city, as does Crime Wave. The track bleeps out Ellroy’s occasional profanity. It’s just your average academic conference. Ellroy growls and pants like a dog at every mention of a particular ’50s noir actress. They both think that Crime Wave is the tops for gritty L.A. noir.

Also repeated from the older DVD is the featurette The City is Dark.  It uses on-camera input from Richard Schickel, Oliver Stone, Alain Silver, Christopher Coppola, Elizabeth Ward and an archival appearance by director André De Toth.

The new Blu-ray adds two shorts from 1954. The cartoon Baby Buggy Bunny sees the bank heist of ‘Baby Face Finster’ foiled by a wascally wabbit. Gadgets Galore is a Robert Youngson novelty about the development of the automobile, compiled from borrowed footage from silent movies, etc.

We’re told that a working title was ‘The City is Dark.’ That would have been a big mistake. Come on, cities aren’t really all that dark. When you think ‘dark,’ you naturally think ‘Suede,’ right?  Everyone will instead the delightful old saying,   “For Dark Is The Suede, Which Mows Like A Harvest.”

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Crime Wave
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video:Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Eddie Muller with author James Ellroy
Featurette Crime Wave, The City Is Dark
WB cartoon Baby Buggy Bunny
WB Short Gadgets Galore
Original Theatrical Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: August 9, 2026
(7565crim)

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