An eclectic stack of B&W thrillers — Island of Doomed Men, The Red Menace, The Burglar, and 13 West Street — is given [Imprint]’s deluxe packaging treatment. The organizing factor for their fifth noir box is a star associated with noir classics: Pete Lorre, Dan Duryea, Alan Ladd, Rod Steiger and . . . Commies?  The contents include one odd prison camp thriller, an anti-Red exposé, a genuine noir written by a celebrated hardboiled crime novelist, and a juvenile delinquency revenge drama. The leading ladies ‘in peril’ include Rochhelle Hudson, Hanne Axman, Betty Lou Gerson, Jayne Mansfield, Martha Vickers and Dolores Dorn.

Essential Film Noir Collection 5
Island of Doomed Men (1940), The Red Menace (1949), The Burglar (1957), 13 West Street (1962)
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint]
1940-1962 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen, 1:78 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 325 min. / Street Date November 29, 2023 / Available from [Imprint] / au 139.95
Starring: Pete Lorre, Rod Steiger, Dan Duryea, Alan Ladd, Jayne Mansfield, Martha Vickers.
Directed by Charles Barton, R.G. Springsteen, Paul Wendkos, Philip Leacock

We’ve reviewed all of the [Imprint] Essential Noir Collections to date, which amount to quite a collection of Noir and Noir-adjacent crime and murder thrillers: Collection 1,  Collection 2,  Collection 3,  Collection 4.  The new Essential Film Noir Collection 5 has only one title square in the formal category of film noir, but all are entertaining in different ways.

They’re spread across 22 years. A pre-war thriller is a mix of pulpy crime, adventure and proto-espionage elements, an anti-Red propaganda picture endorses a certain brand of late- ’40s patriotism, a noted pulp fiction author is behind a hardboiled crime tale, and an aging noir star makes a good effort on an exposé of ‘affluent delinquency.’

Island of Doomed Men
[Imprint] # 262
1940 / 1:37 Academy / 68 min. / Dead Man’s Isle
Starring: Peter Lorre, Rochelle Hudson, Robert Wilcox, Don Beddoe, George E. Stone, Kenneth MacDonald, Charles Middleton, Stanley Brown.
Cinematography: Benjamin Kline
Art Director: Lionel Banks
Gowns: Robert Kalloch
Film Editor: James Sweeney
Musical director: Morris Stoloff
Screenplay by Robert Hardy Andrews
Produced by Wallace MacDonald (uncredited)
Directed by Charles Barton

Island of Doomed Men is a ‘B’ programmer from Columbia, a creative attempt at a good role for the unusual star Peter Lorre. After initially failing to find a popular groove in Hollywood, Lorre had settled for lower tier success as the crimefighting Japanese detective Mr. Moto, a series that ended in 1939. Lorre flitted over to RKO for the goofy horror comedy You’ll Find Out, with a side trip to a small role in a much bigger MGM picture Strange Cargo. Another RKO thriller turned out to be what is now listed as the first officially-acknowledged film noir. A roll of the dice at yet another studio led to a noir classic that elevated Lorre to star status again, as a featured supporting player.

A definite sideways slide away from real career progress, Island of Doomed Men nevertheless shows how well Peter Lorre could carry any picture, with minimal effort and minimal screen time. The not-too-logical storyline is a blend of pulpy thriller ideas. A government intelligence agency gives its operative Mark Sheldon (Robert Wilcox) a code name and sends him to find out what’s happening on an island off the California coast. Is it really some kind of slave labor hellhole?  When his partner is killed, Mark gets himself convicted of the murder so that he can be ‘paroled’ into the care of the island’s owner, Stephen Danel (Peter Lorre).

Mark indeed finds a slave labor setup on the island. The effete Danel lives in a plantation house while his overseers (Charles Middleton, Don Beddoe) work the prisoners to death. Mark befriends Danel’s cook Siggy (George E. Stone) and attracts the attention of Danel’s wife Lorraine (Rochelle Hudson). She considers herself the pampered prisoner of a madman.

The screenplay skirts obvious irrational ideas in this setup — how secret can this island be, if it’s generating income?  Sheldon is a standard two-fisted undercover agent who overturns Stephen Danel’s crooked little empire, and claims Danel’s trophy wife in the process. We wonder why Danel bothers with such a vast conspiracy, considering the bleakness of his lifestyle — how much fun can it be to rule over a tiny enclave where everybody hates you?  Mark learns that both Lorraine and Siggy want to escape, and also finds that a guard can be bribed with a promise of a takeover from the obviously psychotic Danel.

The by-the-numbers tale is made palatable by Peter Lorre’s weird madman. We first see Stephen Danel pretending to be a bystander at a murder scene — Lorre only needs to hook an eyebrow to grab our attention. Stephen flaunts his power on his island. He acts the cultured gentleman while cooly menacing his own wife, and wears a pith helmet as he threatens his prisoners. He doesn’t seem to be a sex pervert, however, and shows no particular sadistic interest in a savage whipping. Danel/Lorre gets most riled up over Siggy’s unwanted pet monkey — the standout scene is a bit of non- P.C. violence with the monkey and a .45 automatic.

Doomed Men can’t have been given a whole lot of studio attention. Parallels with the current word of concentration camps in Europe make us wonder if the writers were pursuing some kind of anti-Nazi statement. But there are no speeches in that direction, and the show finishes as a superficial thriller with a fun main performance.

Director Charles Barton is competent and fast; he’d later become one of Abbott and Costello’s go-to directors. Although supposedly not too far away in the Pacific, the island is represented by some jungle sets, and the slave labor operation is in good old Bronson Caverns. Lorre give the movie definite fan appeal, but even the weak analysis offered here may amount to more thought than Columbia put into the movie’s concept.

For whatever reason, actors George E. Stone and Stanley Brown returned to play support for Lorre in the next year’s The Face Behind the Mask (also out exclusively from [Imprint].)

The Red Menace
[Imprint] # 263
1949 / 1:37 Academy / 81 min. / Underground Spy
Starring: Robert Rockwell, Hanne (Hannelore) Axman, Betty Lou Gerson, Lester Luther, William Lally, Barbra Fuller, Shepard Menken, Duke Williams, James Harrington, Lloyd G. Davies, Gregg Martell.
Cinematography: John MacBurnie
Art Director: Frank Arrigo
Special Effects: Howard and Theodore Lydecker
Film Editor: Harry Keller
Original Music: Nathan Scott
Screenplay by Gerald Geraghty, Albert DeMond from a story by DeMond
Executive Producer:  Herbert J. Yates
Directed by R.G. Springsteen

In the ideological – political – religious confusion of postwar America, productions preaching progressive social messages were balanced by a less popular but much-examined vein of anti-Red exposés. Communist political groups were real, as were the actions of Soviet agents. Encouraged by a state department that wanted to bolster German recovery and oppose Stalinist aggression, some studio heads eagerly promoted the idea that a Kremlin-directed conspiracy was actively undermining American institutions. Several films presente paranoid fantasies that overstated the situation, and were mostly rejected at the movie box office.

An example of a respectable anti-Red story was a Fox picture directed by William Wellman: The Iron Curtain (1948), the true account of a Russian couple that defected in Canada. Republic Pictures chief Herbert J. Yates got on the bandwagon with The Red Menace, a relatively crude exposé thriller about a Communist cell deceiving recruits and controlling them with fear. Republic’s writers fashion a story about two ‘dupes’ tangled in Party treachery, that must run for their lives to escape their murderous comrades.

The drama delivers plenty of patriotic, propagandistic speeches. Sinister foreign agents are enlisting Americans — veterans, minorities, immigrants — susceptible to their Marxist rants about capitalist evil. Disgruntled veteran Bill Jones (Robert Rockwell) lost his savings in an own-your-own-home swindle; the Red kingpin Earl Partridge (Lester Luther) lures suckers like him with attractive date-bait femme comrades: Eastern European refugee Nina Petrovka (Hannelore Axman), the jealous and vindictive German Yvonne Kraus (Betty Lou Gerson) and the unhappy Irish immigrant Mollie O’Flaherty (Barbra Fuller).

The most subversive thing this cell can accomplish is a pathetic picket outside a real estate office. Several new members soon want out, including Jewish poet Henry Solomon (Shepard Menken) and African-American Sam Wright (Duke Williams). After Partridge’s thugs murder an Italian-American who disrupts a recruitment meeting, people start informing on each other, one member considers suicide, and Bill and Nina decide that their lives are in danger. Sure enough, Partridge privately says that all of the people working for him will eventually need to be liquidated.

99% of the Party’s effort goes into the intimidation of their own comrades. An Italian-American is slurred as a ‘Mussolini Wop,’ and the idealistic Sam is considered to be racially inferior. Partridge entreats his female agents to debase themselves. Barbra Fuller is pathetic as the ‘fallen woman’ Mollie — the movie implies that a loss of self-respect is the first step toward ideological doom. Betty Lou Gerson’s manically overplayed Yvonne is hugely enjoyable. Cornered by the G-Men, she delivers a psychotic fit complete with cackling laughter: “I’m going insane while you watch!”  Viewers with sharp ears may recognize Gerson from Disney’s 101 Dalmatians: she’s the original voice of Cruella De Vil.

Robert Rockwell’s Bill Jones calmly under-reacts to all the crazy happenings, and comes off as unreasonably passive. The attractive Hannelore Axman is dressed and coiffed almost exactly as was Greta Garbo in Ninotchka. She’s a terrified innocent in love, yet simultaneously a suave ‘agent of an alien power.’ The final scene transplants the movie to a western setting. Nina and Bill roust a Texas lawman in the middle of the night to confess their sins. The friendly galoot assures them that America will be kind and forgiving. Why, the solution to their problems is to get married!  Those insidious Commies would agree with the sheriff: Nina might more easily avoid deportation if she’s married to an American citizen.

Subtle it’s not. A Soviet octopus — with a Stalin mustache — is seen under the main titles. The background for the ‘The End’ card is the Statue of Liberty.

The Red Menace is the one title in the collection given substantial extras, including a fine commentary by Samm Deighan. The extras are discussed below.

The Burglar
[Imprint] # 264
Viavision [Imprint]
1957 / 1:85 widescreen / 90 min.
Starring: Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield, Martha Vickers, Peter Capell, Mickey Shaughnessy, Wendell Phillips.
Cinematography: Don Malkames
Art Director: Jim Leonard
Film Editor: Herta Horn
Original Music: Sol Kaplan
Screenplay by David Goodis from his novel
Produced by Louis W. Kellman
Directed by Peter Wendkos

The one bona fide film noir in the package is Columbia’s The Burglar, scripted by the noted hardboiled novelist David Goodis from his own novel. That distinction and presence of the oft-praised director Peter Wendkos (Gidget,  Angel Baby) has given this show a special cachet. Noir stalwart Dan Duryea does what he can to hold the movie together, but it’s kind of a mess. It plays slightly better for us now than it did back in 2012, but the direction and performances are still too uneven to hold our full interest. David Kalat tells us that it was an independent production from 1955. It found no buyer until Jayne Mansfield’s star bloomed brighter, and Columbia saw an opportunity to billboard her name.

The Burglar is a character study of Nat (Dan Duryea), an aging thief who has become the guardian of Gladden (Jayne Mansfield), the now-adult daughter of the criminal who taught him how to crack safes. Nat uses Gladden to case the house of an eccentric spiritualist, but later sends the young woman away to Atlantic City because his lecherous associate (Mickey Shaughnessy) can’t keep his hands off her. Gladden is actually in love with Nat, and resents the move because she thinks Nat is rejecting her romantic advances. Nat then meets the sexy Della (Martha Vickers of The Big Sleep) just as a mystery man surfaces in Atlantic City and begins to woo Gladden. Nat is no dummy — he soon discovers that a crooked cop on the case is trying to grab the loot and kill him in the bargain.

Was The Burglar too short when submitted to Columbia?  It opens with a largely extraneous newsreel that seems modeled on Citizen Kane (I kid you not). The performances don’t illuminate the characters clearly, or keep them from coming off as crude types. The great Duryea is directed to spend much of his screen time staring dumbly, in an existential funk. While her acting is not fatal to the movie, Jayne Mansfield’s persona works against playing such a relative innocent — Gladden would have learned about boys and men back when she was 13. The one interesting supporting actor is Mickey Shaughnessy, and he makes an early exit. An extended soliloquy from a fourth gang member may just be the most awful bit of acting in any late-period noir.

We rush to add that many noir fans and pundits have high praise for Paul Wendkos and The Burglar. Some of the location work is attractive but the conflict between Nat and his Bad Cop nemesis doesn’t engage us — the other actor just has no presence. The climactic showdown comes off as awkward, while Wendkos reaches for significance. We like many similar lower-budget independents, even some that are far from perfect. Irving Lerner’s City of Fear has some weak performances and far fewer production resources, yet has more directorial control.

The one 100% satisfying David Goodis adaptation is still Nightfall, from the much better director Jacques Tourneur. We’re surprised to learn that the same story was adapted for the 1971 French crime picture Le casse (The Burglars), starring Omar Sharif and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

13 West Street
[Imprint] # 265
Viavision [Imprint]
1962 / 1:78 widescreen / 80 min.
Starring: Alan Ladd, Rod Steiger, Michael Callan, Dolores Dorn, Kenneth MacKenna, Margaret Hayes, Stanley Adams, Chris Robinson, Jeanne Cooper, Arnold Merritt, Bernie Hamilton, Frank Gerstle, Ted Night, Brenda Scott.
Cinematography: Charles Lawton, Jr.
Art Director: Walter Holscher
Costume Design: Israel Berne, Pat Page
Film Editor: Al Clark
Original Music: George Duning
Screenplay by Bernard C. Schoenfeld, Robert Presnell, Jr. from the novel A Tiger Among Us by Leigh Brackett
Produced by William Bloom, (Alan Ladd)
Directed by Philip Leacock

13 West Street takes as its premise the ordeal of a man beaten by teen punks for thrills. Seven years after Blackboard Jungle and Rebel without a Cause Hollywood had more or less burned out the teen delinquent movie, so the show offers little that is new. Audiences would likely be impatient with this narrative, wondering why the characters can’t see the next scenes coming. The show was made through Alan Ladd’s company for Columbia, which likely provided the services of director Philip Leacock, an English talent known for sensitive movies, often emphaszing children. Leacock’s sweet little gem Hand in Hand promotes Christian-Jewish harmony.

Adapted from a book by the celebrated screenwriter Leigh Brackett, 13 West Street went through some pertinent changes on the way to the screen. Leigh’s originally located her teen punks in East L.A., so we’re presuming that the social and ethnic chemistry in the book was much different. If that’s the case we can see why Columbia would want the story changed. Ten years before, Paramount had bad luck with Joseph Losey’s The Lawless, aka The Dividing Line, a story about small town hatred against Mexican-Americans. As with many social issue films, the blacklist gave it associations with anti-American subversion.

One of the few quotes about 13 West Street is Alan Ladd’s claim that it was he who asked for the story’s delinquents to be changed from East L.A. to the West Side — Beverly Hills and Westwood, with the reasoning that privileged boys can be delinquents too. But it would seem that the filmmakers wanted to avoid the extra social comment baggage.

The show instead recounts the difficulties of a white professional who becomes a victim of a senseless modern crime, the kind committed by ‘good kids’ seeking kicks. Attacked on the street, Alan Ladd’s aerospace engineer Walt Sherrill escapes with his life and a broken leg that requires weeks of recovery. Against the advice of his loving wife Tracey (Dolores Dorn) and Detective Sergeant Pete Koleski (Rod Steiger), Walt presses forward with a personal investigation. The thugs that beat him are led by Chuck Landry (Michael Callan), a spoiled rich kid who dominates his friends and uses his privileges to hide the fact that he’s a psychopath.

The kind Sgt. Koleski behaves more like a social worker, especially with director Leacock’s policy of being fair to all parties. In one scene, a black man and his Latin friend (Bernie Hamilton & Pepe Hern, listed on Columbia documentation as simply ‘Negro’ and ‘Mexican’) cooperate only after Koleski breaks the ice with talk of being called a Polak. The unstated enemy are the spoiled rich parents, who indulge their boys, make excuses for them, and verbally assault Koleski when he tries to investigate.

The movie gives us a full hour of repetitive reasons Walt Sherrill should have called off trying to be a vigilante avenger, starting with the disruption at his job. His rash investigation puts his docile wife in jeopardy and gets him beat up again. Walt buys a gun and hires a detective (Stanley Adams), and his persistent ‘private harassment’ results in two unnecessary deaths. The film’s weakness is that it ends before Walt’s culpability in those deaths can be addressed — are we supposed to call it even because he stops himself from beating a young man to death?

Alan Ladd was reportedly in bad health during filming. He looks weary throughout, and convinces when hobbled on crutches. This is his final starring role. Dolores Dorn (Underworld USA) is directed to initially behave like her husband’s lapdog, until it comes time to tell Walt that his actions are jeopardizing their marriage. Commercially speaking, this sensitive approach was likely not appreciated in a crime thriller that advertised potential rape — the original poster has five images of Michael Callan’s hoodlum attacking Dolores Dorn’s housewife.

Supporting roles provide a small bit for Ted Knight as a high school principal. Good old Chris Robinson puts in a solid J.D. performance . . . we know him better as a noted fabricator of a movie monster.

Viavision [Imprint]’s Blu-ray of the Essential Film Noir Collection 5 contains five excellent feature encodings. Three come from the Columbia vault, where every remotely marketable title has been remastered at the highest quality. Two of those are Blu-ray debuts. The outlier The Red Menace is now held by Viacom-Paramount, and its excellent encoding shows the high quality given Republic productions from the 1950s.

[Imprint’s] extras run lean this time around. The Red Menace is the only title with a full set. The commentary by Samm Deighan is refreshing in that it doesn’t back away from calling the film outright political propaganda — critical discussion of Cold War weirdness often tries too hard to give an appearance of neutrality. Ms. Deighan’s discussion of Cold War attitudes and the depiction of villainy, innocence and sexual politics is refreshingly clear-eyed … and backed with information about the Whos and Whys of the production.

The Red Menace disc contains a nice bonus, the full 90-minute documentary Hollywood on Trial narrated by John Huston. It’s a perfect introduction to the blacklisting menace of the late 1940s-early 1950s, that doesn’t lose sight of the bigger threat to American Democracy. The additional short subject The Hollywood 10 (1950) was once political dynamite, as it offered a reasonable defense of the contempt-of-Congress convictees at a time when America had been turned into an anti-Red lynch mob. The encoding on The Hollywood 10 looks a bit off, as if a frame-rate issue wasn’t resolved.

All in all, Essential 5 is a solid Noir collection for the keen collector — and our final review for 2023.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Essential Film Noir Collection 5
Blu-ray rates:
Movies: Good but for Noir obsessives Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Red Menace:
Audio commentary by Samm Deighan
Hollywood on Trial 1976 feature documentary narrated by John Huston
The Hollywood 10 1950 short film
Burglar
Introduction by Martin Scorsese
Theatrical Trailer
13 West St.
Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: December 18, 2023
(7048noir)

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