Volume 25 in Kino’s long-running noir series could be called ‘The John H. Auer Collection’ — its trio of thrillers include the almost-a-classic City that Never Sleeps, the odd Hawaii-set noir Hell’s Half Acre and the newly rediscovered ‘annihilating romance’ The Flame. The trio has no lack of interesting noir personalities: Marie Windsor, Gig Young, Mala Powers, William Talman, Evelyn Keyes, Wendell Corey, Elsa Lanchester, Edward Arnold, Broderick Crawford, Nancy Gates, Chill Wills, Constance Dowling. All are newly remastered; one makes its disc debut in a corrected aspect ratio.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XXV
The Flame, City that Never Sleeps, Hell’s Half Acre
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1947-1955 / B&W / Street Date April 8, 2025 / 278 minutes / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95
Starring: Gig Young, Marie Windsor, Mala Powers, Evelyn Keyes, William Talman, Wendell Corey, Vera Ralston, John Carroll, Elsa Lanchester, Edward Arnold, Broderick Crawford, Nancy Gates, Robert Paige, Henry Travers, Jesse White, Chill Wills, Keye Luke, Hattie McDaniel, Philip Ahn, Paula Raymond, Constance Dowling, Jeff Corey, Blanche Yurka.
Associate produced and
Directed by John H. Auer

The term ‘film noir’ shines a light on a lot of interesting movies that might otherwise be passed up. This 25th edition of Kino’s branded line Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XXV could actually have been called ‘The John H. Auer Republic Collection I,’ but only a handful of readers would even know who John H. Auer was.

A former child actor in Hungary, Auer migrated to Hollywood in the twenties, and spent five years breaking into the directing game, getting a start by making a couple of movies in Mexico. He found his career home at Hollywood’s Republic Pictures, where he quietly churned out mid-level attractions, few of which garnered special attention. Although no supreme stylist, Auer was quietly competent. His direction often shows unexpected sensitivity and intelligence. The big limitation at Republic was the writing department — their standard program pictures didn’t always receive the script polish seen at the bigger studios.

In 2018 the Museum of Modern Art and Martin Scorsese presented a Republic Pictures series called Republic Rediscovered, showcasing scores of features and directors that had received little critical reevaluation. All three Auer films in this Noir set were featured. Two are familiar noir standbys, ‘A’ pictures by Republic standards. The new item is practically a re-premiere.

The Flame
1947 / 1:37 Academy / The Outcast / 97 minutes
Starring: John Carroll, Vera Ralston, Robert Paige, Broderick Crawford, Henry Travers, Blanche Yurka, Constance Dowling, Hattie McDaniel, Victor Sen Yung, John Miljan, Garry Owen, Vince Barnett, Jeff Corey, Chuck Roberson.
Cinematography: Reggie Lanning
Art Director: Gano Chittenden
Costumes: Adele Palmer
Film Editor: Richard L. Van Enge
Composer: Heinz Roemheld
Screenplay by Lawrence Kimble based on a story by Robert Terrance Shannon
Associate produced and
Directed by John H. Auer

Few noir fans will know The Flame, which shapes up as an interesting drama of poisonous romantic entanglements across the economic divide in New York city. Given a script that sometimes treads water instead of moving relationships forward, John H. Auer pulls sympathetic performances from a non-stellar cast.

After a brief opening with a murder in a Manhattan highrise, the story is told in flashback. George McAllister (John Carroll), the black sheep of a wealthy family, knows he has been written out of any inheritance. He remembers how he convinced his girlfriend Carlotta Novak (Vera Ralston) to encourage the romantic advances of his brother Barry (Robert Paige). Several weeks before … the responsible and well-liked Barry is threatened by sickness. George keeps egging Carlotta to marry him before something happens. Against the wishes of their Aunt Margaret (Blanch Yurka), Carlotta does wed Barry, but only to be impressed by how kind and decent he is. She balks at going along with George’s planned fratricide.

Seeing Carlotta on the sly, George also gets himself entangled in another sticky triangle of love and violence. Realizing he’s being followed, he accosts the stranger. Ernie Hicks (Broderick Crawford) is actually following his flighty, gold-digging girlfriend Helene Anderson (Constance Dowling), in a jealous bad temper. Helene is a nightclub performer with a racy act; she barely seems to tolerate the financially strapped Ernie. One day later, George and Helene are a secret romantic item; Helene aims to cause trouble but relents when she meets the sincere an inoffensive Carlotta. But Ernie catches George secretly meeting with the now-married Carlotta. He goes directly into blackmail mode, to get the money he thinks will allow him to keep Helene.

The movie is a prime example of so-so material being given exceptionally good treatment. John Carroll was a B-string leading man of no great distinction; Auer helps him give his character depth. Vera Hruba Ralston would eventually marry Republic Pictures’ chief Herbert J. Yates; hopeless as an actress, she at least hits the right notes of concern and piety here. The sickly millionaire Barry plays the organ and seems to have no flaws. Robert Paige plays him so smoothly that we’d think he would have had a bigger career. Only Broderick Crawford jumped the fence into topflight work, earning a surprise Oscar two years later for  All the King’s Men.

The hidden hot story in The Flame is that of model-turned actress Constance Dowling. She gives her all to her nightclub dance scene, which seems intended to compare with Rita Hayworth’s show-stopper in the previous year’s  Gilda. Constance would soon go to Italy with her sister Doris in search of career breaks; Doris won the leading role in  an Italian classic, but was pushed aside when the producer enlarged the part of another actress, making Silvana Mangano into a star. Constance was already known as a longtime lover of the married director Elia Kazan. In Italy she became associated with the very famous writer Cesare Pavese, who committed suicide soon thereafter. There were perhaps more causes but the tabloids emphasized Dowling’s breaking off the relationship. Pavese had dedicated a novel and poems to Constance; one line of poetry stood out: “Death will come and she will have your eyes.”

Republic’s technicians did their best to give The Flame a startling opening scene. Perhaps influenced by the ‘impossible’ camera movements that open Universal’s  Black Angel and RKO’s  Nocturne, Republic’s optical department attempts a dizzying camera crane from a view of Times Square, trucking past skyscraper exteriors (backlit photos?) and then past what looks like a miniature building. That composite and several other opticals have very rough edges, as if some elements were recycled from older movies.

The Flame is new to Blu-ray, and probably new to videodisc. Kino’s 4K remaster is said to have been done in 2017; it is so sharp that every optical stands out in relief, including several and dicey matte paintings.

Podcaster Heath Holland provides two audio commentaries for the set. He has an easygoing style and concentrates on information about the filmmakers, the actors, and the locations. He has the lowdown on the Vera Ralston story; he tells us that The Flame was Broderick Crawford’s only picture for Republic.

City that Never Sleeps
1953 / 1:37 Academy / 90 minutes
Starring: Gig Young, Mala Powers, William Talman, Edward Arnold, Chill Wills, Marie Windsor, Paula Raymond, Otto Hulett, Wally Cassell, Ron Hagerthy, James Andelin, Tom Poston, Roy Barcroft.
Cinematography: John L. Russell
Art Director: James Sullivan
Costumes: Adele Palmer
Film Editor: Fred Allen
Composer: R. Dale Butts
Written by Steve Fisher
Associate produced and
Directed by John H. Auer

City that Never Sleeps is as close as film noir ever came to outright fantasy, and it’s almost a classic. A corrupt policeman and a slimy master criminal are only two characters in a busy story given a screwy supernatural twist. A fanciful character gimmick feels like something from a short story by O. Henry.

Republic pictures allowed producer-director John H. Auer to film much of this one on location in Chicago. For once the writer is a noir specialist. Steve Fisher ( Dead Reckoning) weaves a web of intrigue and desire for a great cast that includes William Talman as a charismatic bad guy and Marie Windsor in full femme fatale mode. The odd non-noir storytelling gimmicks make the show instantly memorable:

As in the classic  The Naked City,  an omniscient, disembodied ‘Voice of the City’ (Chill Wills) tells us that another day is beginning in Chicago. Patrol cop Johnny Kelly (Gig Young) is already in trouble. He wants to leave his wife Kathy (Paula Raymond) for Sally Connors, a nightclub stripper who goes by the name Angel Face (Mala Powers). Johnny feels he was forced to become a cop out of family tradition. He resents the unwanted marital advice from his ‘Pop,’ Sgt. John Kelly (Otto Hulett).

Johnny has just decided to tell Sally that he’s calling off their plan to run away to California, when the crooked lawyer Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold) tempts him to use his badge for a quick payoff. Penrod wants to be rid of his too-ambitious henchman Hayes Stewart (William Talman). He tasks Johnny to quietly kidnap the ex-pickpocket Stewart and take him to the next state, where he can be arrested on an outstanding felony warrant. What Penrod doesn’t know is that the shifty Stewart is having an affair with his wife Lydia (Marie Windsor). They have a counter-plan: to rob Penrod and run away together.

Deceitful angles abound. Sally knows she’s breaking up a marriage, but is desperate to make a fresh start away from the sleazy Silver Frolics nightclub. Hayes Stewart’s ambition was to become a magician — he even keeps a rabbit for practice — before Penrod roped him into criminal servitude with promises of a future as a rich gentleman. John doesn’t know that his younger brother Stubby (Ron Hagerthy) has taken a bad first step in the same crooked direction — he’s been working as Hayes’ helper and stooge.

But is John slipping into ‘The Twilight Zone?’  His patrol partner for the day, an unfamiliar cop named ‘Sgt. Joe’ (Chill Wills), seems to have materialized out of thin air in response to Johnny’s disillusion. Joe’s voice is also that of The Voice of Chicago. The older, wiser cop immediately goes to work on Johnny’s conscience, reminding him that he’s got a duty to his badge.

This show’s oddball ideas are really refreshing. The masterstroke is a ‘Mechanical Man’ who performs in the storefront window of Sally’s nightclub, snaring the attention of passers-by that try to guess if he’s real, or an actor with silver paint on his face. He’s Gregg Warren (Wally Cassell of  White Heat) and he’s in love with Sally as well. Gregg maintains his robot act even when he sees Johnny Kelly enter the club to romance the girl of his dreams. With Cassell’s expressive performance, this Mechanical Man is a genuine ‘clown crying on the inside.’

Does the fantastic element mix well with noir tone?  Folksy Chill Wills is a heavenly figure out of a  film blanc, making us wonder if the movie will transform itself into a sentimental hybrid, It’s a Wonderful Cop’s Life, with Sgt. Joe taking the place of the Guardian Angel 2nd Class Clarence Oddbody. The Mechanical Man may have been inspired by William Saroyan’s  The Human Comedy. A crucial showdown creates a unique conflict for Hayes Stewart: at one point he realizes that the killing he just committed was witnessed by the Mechanical Man. Gregg Warren’s Zen-like commitment to his ‘robot’ act may be his undoing.

The fantastic story points stay clear of the film’s rich noir atmosphere, with cameraman John Russell’s skillful filming of the Silver Frolics’ cheap floor show and the night-for-night exterior of downtown Chicago. One sly shot of a messy bed suggests that Hayes Stewart and Lydia Biddel have just had sex. Good suspense is derived from a scene in which Johnny and Sgt. Joe search an business building, unaware that Hayes Stewart is cracking a safe just a few offices away.

The story sketches three strong relationships. Marie Windsor and William Talman are a dynamite pair of noir losers, and we feel for them almost as much as we do the heroes. Edward Arnold’s cuckolded husband gains our sympathy when he protects his wife, even after she’s laughed in his face and tried to kill him. The one-sided romance of Mala Powers and Wally Cassell gains emotional depth when Cassell’s Mechanical Man risks his life to prove that he’s as brave as Johnny Kelly. The movie really stumbles by not making more of Sally’s recognition of The Mechanical Man’s devotion.

City that Never Sleeps pushes a decent pro-police message, but also displays an outdated attitude toward gender roles. Everybody seems to agree that it’s awful for Johnny’s wife Kathy to want a career of her own, or to earn more money than Johnny does. The resolution of that issue will have feminists throwing things at their TV monitors.

The action climax is a brilliantly-filmed footchase atop one of the windy city’s elevated train lines. Collapsed on the rails, one luckless victim seems to ooze through the gap between the railroad ties before dropping three or four stories to the street below.

This picture will have a special appeal for Chicagoans interested in a peek at their town sixty years ago. Among the memorable visuals is one classic image, the detail of a tell-tale teardrop running down the Mechanical Man’s silver-painted face, proving that he’s real flesh and blood. Filmed just as classic expressionist noir was beginning to disappear, City that Never Sleeps remains an audience pleaser.

City that Never Sleeps was previously released on Blu-ray by Olive Films in 2013, and then by the import label [Imprint] in 2021. The 4K scan remaster is definitely new, as Kino says it was done in 2024. The consistently excellent images showcase the lighting talent of cinematographer John L. Russell ( Psycho).

Olive offered no extras, but the Australian disc carried an excellent audio commentary by Imogen Sara Smith, which has made the transition to Kino’s disc. Ms. Smith can’t help but be incensed by the film’s retrograde notions about woman’s place in the world. There’s plenty to discuss in the careers of John H. Auer, writer Steve Fisher and cameraman John Russell.

Hell’s Half Acre
1954 / 1:66 widescreen / 91 minutes
Starring: Wendell Corey, Evelyn Keyes, Elsa Lanchester, Marie Windsor, Nancy Gates, Leonard Strong, Jesse White, Keye Luke, Philip Ahn, Robert Shield.
Cinematography: John L. Russell
Costumes: Adele Palmer
Film Editor: Fred Allen
Composer: R. Dale Butts
Written by Steve Fisher
Associate produced and
Directed by John H. Auer

Director John H. Auer regrouped most of the same creative team from City that Never Sleeps for a follow-up pulp fiction tale filmed in Hawaii, Hell’s Half Acre. One wonders if Republic honcho Herbert J. Yates green-lit the picture to give himself a working vacation in the Island Paradise. We get the benefit, to soak up sunny scenes of Honolulu, which in 1954 was still relatively undeveloped.

The sordid story at first seems an odd fit in the gorgeous setting: this Honolulu seems a den of thieves, with nightly shootouts and stabbings. But a film noir set in sunny Waikiki shouldn’t be a contradiction in terms: remember the previous year’s  From Here to Eternity, with its shady ‘serviceman’s clubs’ and knife fights in back alleys?  Hell’s Half Acre gathers an interesting cast for a tale that evokes the old Duvivier classic  Pépé le moko. The ‘Hell’s Half Acre’ neighborhood functions much like the French film’s Algerian Casbah.

Steve Fisher packs his screenplay with colorful characters. Beautiful Eurasian Sally Lee (Nancy Gates) is the lover of Chet Chester (Wendell Corey of  The File on Thelma Jordon). Previously a local gangster, Chet is now a popular nightclub owner and songwriter. An old partner in crime, Roger Kong (Philip Ahn) murders Sally Lee, but Chet takes the rap, convinced that his lawyers can get him off with a light sentence. When one of Chet’s new songs reaches the states, Donna Williams (Evelyn Keyes) hears it on the radio and immediately recognizes it as ‘her’ song. The lyrics convince her that Chet is really the sailor-husband she knew for only a few days back in 1941. For 12 years she has believe that her husband was killed on the Arizona.

Newly arrived in Honolulu, Donna makes fast friends with her taxi driver, the eccentric Lida O’Reilly (Elsa Lanchester). She finds Roger Kong without realizing how dangerous the man is. When Chet finds this out, he breaks free from police custody to track Kong down in a warren of mid-Honolulu tenement apartments known as Hell’s Half Acre, or just “The Acre.”

Police Chief Dan (Keye Luke) reluctantly allows Donna to stay in town. Kong still wants to find and kill Chet. He enlists the alcoholic Tubby Otis (Jesse White) to kidnap Donna as bait for a trap. The four-way search is even more complex. Tubby’s wife Rose (Marie Windsor of  The Killing,  The Narrow Margin and  The Sniper) is also Kong’s illicit lover. When Donna finally meets up with Chet, he tries to protect her by pretending that he’s never seen her before.

Nobody in the film says that line of dialogue, but this moderately expensive Republic Picture comes very close to being a great film noir. For originality it can’t be beat. It is unusual to see the expected generic double and triple-crosses carried out on sun-bathed streets, or in the dark of night with everyone clad in Hawaiian shirts, even the police detectives. The atmosphere says Honolulu in the ’50s, a place not yet overrun by giant hotels. Chet Chester’s swank Waikiki restaurant with the hula floor show, was almost certainly filmed at Don the Beachcomber’s (he’s credited as a technical advisor).

In keeping with the changing face of noir thrillers, Steve Fisher’s screenplay stays clear of hardboiled dialogue clichés. The cast meshes well, although the lack of a big star must have been a limiting factor for the box office. Wendell Corey was often disparaged for a perceived lack of masculine assertiveness; here he’s perfect as a former crook trying to secure an honest lifestyle. Chet’s violent background is suggested with a facial scar. We feel his love for Sally Lee, and his regret over his long-ago past with Donna.

An asset to any picture, star Evelyn Keyes  (The Prowler,  The Killer that Stalked New York,  99 River Street) carries the main story thread with ease. Donna Williams must pry herself loose from her present fiancé before she can investigate the husband she barely knew before the Pearl Harbor attack. Once enmeshed in the Honolulu underworld she proves her tenacity under trying conditions. The film’s most daring sequence has Donna wake up clutching a blanket, in the apartment of the uncouth Tubby and his low-rent wife Rose. A stupid thug, Tubby doesn’t realize that Rose is two-timing him with his own boss. With Jesse White playing Tubby as a disgusting slob and Marie Windsor slumming it up, we’re sorry when the story moves on to other scenes.

The depiction of Evelyn Keyes’ and Marie Windsor’s characters skates close to the censorship zone, suggesting sexual thrills that ’50s movies promised but couldn’t deliver. Donna is clearly naked under that blanket, with the lecherous Tubby unpleasantly close. Rose’s amorous dishonesty is likewise out in the open. She all but flaunts her stray-cat interest in Roger Kong, but her tubby Hubby Tubby is too much of a clod to catch on. Rose seems to derive her only pleasure in life from cuckolding him. At the time, these were genuinely racy roles.

The third ‘noir babe’ in the picture is young Nancy Gates, who in the ’50s seemed to land in one interesting genre picture after another:  The Atomic City,  Suddenly, World Without End,  Comanche Station. Her part is small, but her Eurasian makeup is good. We understand why Chet would break jail to avenge Sally Lee’s death.

Less interesting but professionally sketched is third-billed Elsa Lanchester. Her ditzy cabdriver Lida drops everything to become Donna’s companion, confidante and chauffeur for the weekend. She’s set up nicely, but fades out of the story in the third act. Another ‘lazy’ character is Ippy, a weasel-like informer played by character actor Leonard Strong (Ernie in the same year’s  Shane). Ippy’s behavior seems an imitation of Peter Lorre in Casablanca, right down to various shifty mannerisms.

John Auer has a harder time connecting all the character emotions in Hell’s Half Acre. Not all of it feels as tense as it should, yet he manages a satisfying conclusion. We have rousing shootouts in the Casbah Acre and on the Honolulu streets. Chet and Donna must then sort out their unhappy personal issues. How did he survive the attack on Pearl Harbor?  Does he know he has a son?  Can a deserter/crook and a forgotten wife get back together again?  Can all the problems of two little people amount to more than a hill of poi in this crazy world?

Hell’s Half Acre is a great picture for those who remember Honolulu ‘back when’ — we see a lot more of the city than just Diamond Head. The Waikiki hula show is just down the beach from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, perhaps at the same place my family went for an evening tourist Luau before we came back to the states. Is the little patch of Army beach called Fort DeRussy still there?  Don’t tell the President, he’ll want to put a branded Hotel on it.

The show was made before American municipalities became Public Image-conscious. I remember that the streets around the old Hawaii Theater were rough-looking, at least as seen through the eyes of a 9-year-old. In 1958 a new divided highway stretched the few miles between Hickam Field and Honolulu, where a new shopping center surrounded by a giant parking lot was called ‘Ala Moana’ or perhaps ‘The Alamoana.’ Could its construction have wiped out the less savory neighborhood called ‘The Acre?’  When viewing the newer movie  The Descendants I wonder how anyone could possibly find the space to build its new miles of suburb-like housing tracts. So much of Oahu seemed packed with development, even back then.

Hell’s Half Acre was previously released just once, on a standalone Olive Films disc from 2013. Kino’s disc is not only from a newer 4K scan (2017), it is properly formatted at 1:66, correcting the older flat presentation.

Olive’s disc has no extras, but Kino brings back Heath Holland for an informative audio commentary covering Republic’s Hawaii-based attraction with the cast of Noir veterans. He discusses Hawaii as a location for movies — in 1953 it still hadn’t seen that many film shoots — and has some facts about the ‘Hell’s Half Acre’ section of Honolulu. He mentions another neighborhood with an equally sordid reputation for vice. Holland has a welcome approach to his commentary work — congenial, modest and centered on the show, not himself.

The KL Studio Classics Blu-ray of Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XXV surprises us … we’d think that after finding 75 titles for the series, they would have run out of nice surprises like this one. The consistent new and improved transfers is what makes the difference, and we appreciate the commentaries. And for once, all three pictures are demonstrably noir, in the original definition of the style.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XXV
Blu-ray rates:
Movies: Flame Good, Sleeps Very Good ++; Hell’s Good.
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Audio commentaries:
for The Flame by Heath Holland
for City that Never Sleeps by Imogen Sara Smith
for Hell’s Half Acre by Heath Holland.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: May 5, 2025
(7322noir)

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