Customer Reviews

Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This collection is the DVD debut for all ten of these films, and I don't even know if any of them are available on VHS. I've only seen them thanks to Turner Classic Movies playing them at odd hours, along with other cable channels presenting them over the years. They are excellent but not well remembered film noirs. I would rate them all between 4 and 5 stars. I thought I would list their descriptions, stars, and special features below, not in any particular order:

Crime Wave: (1954) Starring Sterling Hayden and Gene Nelson. An ex-con is trying to go straight, but circumstances force him into crime one more time. Gene Nelson plays a hard-nosed cop. Note a young Charles Bronson playing a minor role.
Commentary by James Ellroy and Eddie Muller
Crime Wave: The City is Dark
Theatrical trailer

Decoy: (1946) Starring Gene Gillie and Edward Norris. Sci-Fi meets Film Noir in this story of a woman who will stop at nothing to retrieve 400K stolen in a robbery. Gillie would make Barbara Stanwyck proud as she chews up man after man in her quest.
Commentary by Stanley Rubin and Glenn Erickson
Decoy: A Map to Nowhere
Theatrical trailer

Illegal: (1955) Starring Edward G. Robinson and Nina Foch. Robinson plays a D.A. whose upwardly mobile career faces a train wreck when a man he convicted is executed and then found to be innocent. After he hits bottom he resurrects his legal career, this time as a criminal attorney. The plot can be hard to follow, but Robinson's performance is great.
Commentary by Nina Foch and Patricia King Hanson
Illegal: Marked for Life
Behind the Cameras: Edward G. Robinson
Theatrical trailer

The Big Steal: (1949) Starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. The lead duo from "Out of the Past" trade wisecracks and insults in a cross-country chase over a suitcase full of stolen money. For once, Mitchum is actually not the bad guy. Almost too much fun to be considered Film Noir.
Commentary by Richard B. Jewell
The Big Steal: Look Behind You

They Live By Night: (1948) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. The story of an escaped convict trying to live a normal life with the help of his girlfriend. Granger plays the convict who isn't entirely bad, but not entirely reformed either.
Commentary by Farley Granger and Eddie Muller
They Live By Night: The Twisted Road
Theatrical trailer

Side Street: (1950) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. Granger plays a struggling husband trying to make ends meet when he spots some cash lying around in an office one day. He takes the money, but finds out it is much more than he thought. When he tries to return the money, he gets caught up in a murder mystery. Hitchcock-like in its twists and turns.
Commentary by Richard Schickel
Side Street: Where Temptation Lurks
Theatrical trailer

Where Danger Lives: (1950) Starring Robert Mitchum and Faith Domergue. The plot is somewhat unbelievable, even for Film Noir, but Mitchum gives a strong performance that makes it worthwhile. Mitchum plays a doctor who becomes taken with a patient. Due to a concussion, his judgement becomes clouded and he believes he has murdered the patient's husband. He and the woman go on the run, have some strange adventures, and then Mitchum realizes what kind of illness his new girlfriend was being treated for in the first place.
Commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini
Where Danger Lives: White Rose for Julie
Theatrical Trailer

Tension: (1950) Starring Richard Basehart and Audrey Trotter. Basehart plays a mild-mannered man whose salary and disposition are not enough for his wife. She leaves him for a tough and wealthy man. Why Basehart would want her back is anyone's guess, but he does and plans to murder his wife's new boyfriend. The tough guy is murdered, but not by Basehart's character.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward with Audrey Trotter
Tension: Who's Guilty Now?
Theatrical Trailer

Act of Violence: (1948) Starring Van Heflin and Robert Ryan. Van Heflin plays a family man trying to adapt to life after the war and internment in a prison camp. Enter Robert Ryan, who plays a man with Terminator-like determination in his quest to murder Heflin's character for something that happened during their joint stay in the German prison camp.
Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper
Act of Violence: Dealing With the Devil
Theatrical Trailer

Mystery Street: (1950) Starring Ricardo Montalban and Sally Forrest. Montalban plays a detective who, working with a forensics expert, tries to solve a murder case and exonerate the lone circumstantial suspect. One of the first films I know of to use science to help solve a murder decades before DNA made this aspect of crime solving so interesting and important.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward
Mystery Street: Murder at Harvard
Theatrical Trailer

Okay...I'll let others go into the actual films..
I enjoy them all for different reasons but am a noir fan and a big fan of Mitchum and Sterling Hayden who appear here so I didn't need convincing to purchase. Lets not forget these are directed by Andre De Toth, Nicholas Ray,Don Siegel, Anthony Mann,John Sturges and Fred Zinnemann...legends all. Its also fun to see Charles Bronson as a bit player in "Crime Wave" along with Gene Nelson (not singing or dancing in this one) as well as a young Janet Leigh in "Act OF Violence".

I'd like to review the DVDs themselves...(having just made my way through much of this).
first ...the transfers are excellent (typical for WB's older titles)
The extras...commentaries are by legit experts who know the films and add real value.The commentary by James Ellroy on Crime WAve is the most unbelievably NONPC and hysterically funny/interseting one I've ever heard PERIOD. The short featurettes are also enlightening and give extra value to the project as well as info on the films which added to my enjoymment. These featurettes which feature folks like Oliver Stone, show film clips and the interview subjects are shot/lit very noirish which ads to the flavor and class of this presentation.

I picked this up for $39...thats $4 per film!! If you are a noir fan its simply a no brainer and if you aren't ...why are you reading this(not being smart , sincere). If you have an interest you will not be dissapointed with the quality of the presentation on these films. I agree with the other reviewer..after a slight misstep on NOIR 3..WB is back on the ball...great job!

Whoever put this collection together should get a promotion, a raise, and a personal letter of thanks from every serious noir fan. This is an absolutely wonderful assortment of moody, gritty noirs that deserve to be better known. Of the ten (yes, TEN!) movies in this collection, none except "The Big Steal" has ever been on commercial VHS, much less DVD. "Decoy" is so scarce that the only version generally circulating before now was taken from a European TV broadcast, complete with Croatian subtitles.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea: these are not masterpieces. They are, however, very good movies and quintessential noir. The selection has been made with care and affection. This set is ideal for newcomers to noir who have seen a number of the genre cornerstones and want to further steep themselves in the essential style without the glitter of A-list productions. Dedicated noirphiles, of course, have been awaiting official high-quality transfers of these films for years.

I can't say enough good things about this set. The intelligent mini-documentaries for each film and the insanely low price tag are the icing on this ten-layer cake. We can only hope the same people will be in charge of Volume 5 of this series! Maybe we'll get a similar assortment of worthwhile "Never on home video" films such as The Breaking Point, Cry of the City, The Locket, My Name is Julia Ross, Nightfall, The Prowler, Screaming Mimi, Talk About a Stranger, The 13th Letter, The Unsuspected, The Verdict, and more. (Okay, I didn't bother to check who owns the rights to those movies, but you get the idea.)

I as a little annoyed with Volume 3 in the series. The films were all good choices (let's face it, I'm a noir completist, so just about any classic noirs making it to DVD qualify as good choices to me), but the packaging was irritating - the titles were not sold individually and they were packaged in dinky slim cases not in keeping with the rest of the series. Now, not only has Warners gone back to the original packaging, but they are generously offering 10 films as double features for the same price as the previous 5, all of them great lesser-known choices (the top of the heap here being Crime Wave, They Live by Night, Act of Violence, and Where Danger Lives), plus commentaries and short documentaries for each and every feature and the original trailers for many of the films. Here's hoping for Volume 5 - I can't imagine there's much left in the vaults, but then again I believe Warners owns the whole RKO catalog, so there are probably enough additional titles to make another set. Note to Warner's - please release ALL of your noir holdings. And don't forget about some of the espionage films that fall loosely into the noir category - perhaps a separate box set of those?

My guilty pleasure is film noir, so even though I had never heard of a single one of the films featured in Film Noir Collection Vol. IV, I bought it anyway just as I have bought and mostly enjoyed the previous three. After viewing this entire set the week it arrived, I came to the conclusion that overall, this is the strongest of the four film noir classic collections issued to date.
I won't rehash the films. The reviewer that currently is "most helpful" has done a creditable job. But I will comment on each film and sometimes why I like them.
1)Act of Violence: Cowardice under pressure in a Nazi prison camp comes back to haunt successful contractor/family man Van Heflin as he is stalked by one of his former fellow prisoners. The movie is filled with suspense and the ending is a surprise. Five stars.
2)Mystery Street: Ricardo Montalban is excellent as the dogged and resourceful detective who tracks down the killer of a scheming whore whose skeleton is found on Cape Cod. Five stars.
3)Crime Wave: An ex-con trying to go straight is forced back into crime by some escaped ex-jailmates who have precipitated a rash of hold-ups to finance their existence on the lam. Lots of harrowing moments as the police close in. Five stars.
4)Decoy: Gene Gillie is perfect as an avaricious and vicious femme fatale who will stop at nothing to get her hands on a cache of money. She is a real piece of work. Five stars.
5)Illegal: Edward G Robinson stars as an attorney on his way back up after hitting bottom when he resigned following the execution of a man he had wrongly prosecuted and convicted as DA. He makes amends defending lowlifes and soon finds himself enmeshed by intrigues involving the new DA and a man he had long wanted to prosecute when he himself was DA. Many twists of the plot and Robinson proves his mettle by pushing the envelope on the law. He always had to win and his final case will show you just how far he was willing to go! Five stars.
6)The Big Steal:Kind of a goofy noir that takes place, like some other Robert Mitchum films, in Mexico. Lots of fun and misadventure as Mitchum tries to track a suitcase full of stolen money. Not quite noir in my book though. Four stars.
7)They Live By Night: Farley Granger is excellent as a mild-mannered escaped con who is pressured by fellow escapees into participating in more crimes. He runs off with the daughter of one of the convicts' brother, marries her and wants to go straight, but he just can't. Real noir, there is no happy ending. Four stars.
8)Side Street: Farley Granger stars as a day-dreaming part time mail carrier who succumbs to momentary weakness and greed, setting in motion a chain of events that nearly cost him his freedom and later his life. The voice-overs detract ever so slightly. Four stars.
9)Where Danger Lives: Robert Mitchum stars as a doctor who falls for a dangerously psychotic patient convincingly played by Faith Domergue. His bad judgement nearly costs him dearly. Some silliness along the way detracts. Four stars.
10)Tension: Hoo boy, can anyone top Audrey Trotter's performance as a sneering, faithless, gold-digging trollop or Richard Basehart's transformation from a trollop's doormat into a man of purpose and resolve? Basehart's character Warren Quimby reminds me of the old Charles Atlas ads where a bully humiliates a wormy guy in front of his girlfriend at the beach and the guy gets revenge by taking Atlas' body-building course then returning to confront the bully and physically avenge himself.
The film is filled with twists of plot as Basehart struggles internally between the new and the old Quimby. And Trotter is scheming and hateful to the end. In many ways, this is the best of the set. Five stars.
If you are a fan of film noir which I must assume you are because you are reading this, this is a set you will return to over and again. I haven't seen all the extras yet and so cannot comment on those, but the quality of the films alone make this a set well worth owning. Five stars overall.

Compared to the other volumes in the 'Film Noir' series, this one is solid and contains a number of good films. You get ten movies here, with most being in the 2 1/2 to three star range. Volume one is by far the best, and no film here and compete with those, but if you like film noir then you will enjoy volume 4. Robert Mitchum stars in two, and teams up with Jane Greer again in 'The Big Steal'. However, this is lightweight compared to their great classic, 'Out of The Past'. His other film is 'Where Dangere Lives', with gorgeous Fairth Domergue, which is classic noir with Domergue being the fatal lure in a very interesting plot. My favorite film in this volume is 'Decoy', which is totally outrageous and features the most dazzling bit of femme fatale you'll ever see in this genre...courtesy of Jean Gillie. Edward G. Robinson, one of my favorite actors, is in top form in "Illegal". Sterling Hayden, who is masterful in volume one of this collection in 'The Asphalt Jungle', returns for 'Crime Wave', this time as a policeman! Also, Audrey Totter stars in 'Tension' and of course she is one of the great ladies of film noir and its always a pleasure to watch her work. This is a great value and you'll enjoy these suspenseful and entertaining films.

While all the titles included are film noir must-haves, the real jewels amongst the treasures in this Warner Brothers box set are a pair of cult films that hardcore noir geeks have been itching to get their mitts on for years-"Crime Wave" and "Decoy".

"Crime Wave" (originally released in 1954) was directed by Andre de Toth, who is perhaps more well-remembered for helming stark westerns like "Ramrod" (1947) and "Day of the Outlaw" (1959). After languishing in B-movie obscurity for decades, this strikingly photographed, low-budget wonder has slowly built a cult following.

The story itself is standard issue; an ex-con trying to go straight (Gene Nelson) is framed and blackmailed by two former cell mates (portrayed by ubiquitous noir heavy Ted de Corsia and a young Charles Bronson). Nelson's character gets a shot at clearing himself by helping a homicide detective (a looming, toothpick-chewing Sterling Hayden) bring his blackmailers to justice.

The two main factors setting "Crime Wave" apart from other B-movies of the era are the meticulously composed cinematography (by DP Burt Glennon) and the ingenious use of L.A. locations. Although the decision to shoot almost exclusively on location was likely based more on pragmatism (budget constraints) than artistic vision, the end result was an almost documentary-like realism unusual for its time. The flawless DVD transfer looks to be from a pristine vault print.

It was also an inspired idea to pair up film noir expert Eddie Muller with the master of modern pulp crime fiction, James Ellroy, for the commentary track. Muller's encyclopedic torrent of fascinating trivia and savant-like grasp of All Things Noir is always worth the ride. Ellroy is a riot; panting and growling his way through the commentary and acting like a perverse version of the proverbial kid in the candy store. Most interestingly, he posits "Crime Wave" as a spot-on time capsule of the 1950s LAPD milieu that informed the backdrop for the series of crime novels referred to as his "L.A. quartet" ("The Black Dahlia", "The Big Nowhere", "L.A. Confidential" and "White Jazz").

And then (hoo, boy!) there's "Decoy" (1946), which gets my vote for the closest thing to a David Lynch film prior to, well the moment David Lynch unleashed his first full-length feature film on an unsuspecting public. Featuring a truly demented performance from British actress Jean Gillie as one of the most psychopathic femme fatales ever (replete with an insane cackle that could decalcify your spinal column at twenty paces), this mash-up of "Body Heat " with "Re-Animator" nearly defies description.

Gillie masticates all the available scenery as Margot Shelby, the mastermind of a small gang of thieves, who comes up with an elaborate scheme to literally bring a former associate back from the dead immediately following his execution in the gas chamber (don't ask) so she can put the squeeze on him and find out where he hid $400,000.

In order to get to that loot, Margot charms, uses and then unceremoniously discards a string of hapless male chumps in record time (the film runs less than 80 minutes). In the film's most infamous scene,she runs over her lover, then just for giggles, backs up the car and runs over him again (remember, this movie predates "Faster, Pussycat!Kill!... Kill!" by a good 20 years). A must see for genre diehards who think they've seen it all.

FILM NOIR: VOLUME 4 has no less than ten movies, five double features and all excellent. Each has a notable audio commentary, a short filmmaker discussion, and the theatrical trailer. This set is a must-own knockout.

Volume One has ACT OF VIOLENCE and MYSTERY STREET. ACT OF VIOLENCE is a most interesting film noir, brilliantly photographed by Robert Surtees, who is better known for epics like BEN-HUR and RAINTREE COUNTY. In a rather ordinary small town, crippled Robert Ryan chases after happily married husband and father Van Heflin over something Heflin did to Ryan and several other men during World War Two. This film is fascinating because the characters slowly switch roles--who is good and who is bad? Janet Leigh and Phyllis Thaxter are the likeable wives, and Mary Astor is unforgettable as a sympathetic middle-aged prostitute. Audio commentary is by Dr. Drew Casper, my old thesis advisor at USC Cinema.

MYSTERY STREET has fine location work all over Harvard and Cape Cod. Jan Sterling is murdered on the cape one foggy night. The crime lab here is a forerunner of all the C.S.I. shows on TV now. We start with just a skeleton, then add a face, then find out who stole a yellow car on a given day, and so forth. John Sturges, who did BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, directed this gripping police procedural. John Alton, who worked a lot in noir land and won an Oscar in a different vein for AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951), photographed. Starring are Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce Bennett, and Elsa Lanchester. Question: Why does the film say "Filmed in Hollywood, U.S.A." at the end when the whole thing was made in and around Harvard? Audio commentary is by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward.

VOLUME 2 has CRIME WAVE and DECOY. Andre de Toth's CRIME WAVE, brilliantly photographed by Bert Glennon all over night for night Los Angeles on actual locales, has Sterling Hayden as a homicide detective trying to solve a rash of gas station armed robberies and murders. Also with the good guys are Gene Nelson and Phyllis Kirk. The opening is memorable--a gas station robbery with a Doris Day recording on the soundtrack. Kirk, de Toth, and writer Crane Wilbur later collaborated on HOUSE OF WAX. Audio commentary is by novelist James Ellroy (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) and Eddie Mueller.

DECOY is a lulu, even for film noir. Made by Monogram, with a strong script by Ned Young and story by Stanley Rubin, this has femme fatale Jean Gillie bringing her partner in crime (Robert Armstrong) back to life chemically after he has died at San Quentin! There is no love lost, she just wants to know the whereabouts of a stash of money. Let's not say anything more about this unusual and suspenseful film, except that the ironic ending is dazzling. Directed by Jack Bernhard. Rubin and Glenn Erickson do the audio commentary.

Volume 3 has ILLEGAL and THE BIG STEAL. ILLEGAL 1954) is another neglected noir gem with formidable talents--it stars Edward G. Robinson as a prosecuting attorney who sends an innocent man to the death chamber and has to live with the consequences. Lewis Allen (THE UNINVITED) directed a script by no less than W. R. Burnett (LITTLE CAESAR) and James R. Webb (HOW THE WEST WAS WON). And the superb photography is by J. Peverell Marley (THE TEN COMMANDMENTS). An unusually sour Nina Foch, co-star, is part of a disappointing audio comentary with historian Patricia King Hanson.

THE BIG STEAL (1949) is a tongue-in-cheek extended car chase through small Mexican towns that had to be filmed on location. Super nasty bad guy William Bendix is after money that Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer have. Don Siegel, who jump-started Clint Eastwood's career with the early DIRTY HARRY movies directed. Richard Jewell, whom I knew at USC Cinema in the 1970's, does the superb audio commentary that reveals volumes about Mitchum, his marijuana bust, and RKO working methods in the late 1940's..

Disk Four has two of the finest offerings in this noir set--Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as two married couples involved in crime in Nicholas Ray's THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948) and Anthony Mann's SIDE STREET (1949). Ray made his directorial debut with THEY LIVE, based on a novel called THIEVES LIKE US, which Robert Altman later made into a movie with that title. It has Granger as a newlywed forced to be a crime accomplice in the Depression era Deep South; the truly bad villains are Howard da Silva and and Jay C. Flippen. Both romantic and violent, the movie is an unforgettable noir with a happily alive Granger helping on the audio commentary.

Even better is Mann's SIDE STREET, strikingly filmed all over Manhattan by lighting master Joseph Ruttenberg. Newlywed postman Granger steals what he thinks is an innocent $200 to pay bills for wife O'Donnell. It is really $30,000 in mob money, and they will kill to get it back! The climactic car chase through Wall Street canyons on a Sunday morning is one of the all-time greats. Sydney Boehm wrote the great screenplay. Watch for Jean Hagen as a treacherous femme fatale posing as a nightclub singer if you have just seen SINGIN' IN THE RAIN and want to know what the actress really sounds like. Of the ten films noirs in this boxed set, SIDE STREET is one of my personal favorites. The renowned Richard Schickel does the audio commentary.

Best of all for me is Volume Five, with WHERE DANGER LIVES (1950) and TENSION (1949). Where have these masterpieces been hiding, and why is Leonard Maltin so stingy with his ratings on them? In director John Farrow's DANGER, brilliantly written by Charles Bennett and Leo Rosen, we are in noir San Francisco from the first scene: a nighttime hospital with overworked doctor Robert Mitchum. He falls in love with wealthy mystery woman Faith Domergue, who is the wife of Claude Rains (in his bad mode). A murder goes wrong, Rains ends up dead, and Mitchum finds himself headed south for Mexico with Domergue. So we have a doctor and a femme fatale sharing a car in small town California and then Arizona small towns at night. Let's not reveal any more, except to say that WHERE DANGER LIVES, which I had never even heard of, is now one of my favorite films noir.

And director John Berry's TENSION tops it and is my favorite film noir in this ten-film boxed set. Again, we have noir from the word go: scholarly Richard Basehart working as a pharmacist and soda jerk in a nighttime Los Angeles. He has an unfaithful wife, the matchless femme fatale Audrey Totter, who has a lover at a beach.cottage. Basehart creates a second identity and what he thinks is the perfect alibi to kill the lover, but Totter beats him to it and says she still loves Basehart! Now it gets good, with likeable photographer Cyd Charisse living at the same apartment as Basehart and knowing him only in his #2 identity. And Barry Sullivan and William Conrad, both always great, as homicide detectives. This film was made under the Hays Office and censorship, so we know that Totter will probably get caught at the end. But how, when she and Basehart both have an air-tight alibi? And remember that noirs usually end unhappily. A photo and contact lenses are key evidence in the magnificent and little-known TENSION, superbly written by John Klober (story) and Allen Rivkin (screenplay). The moody jazz score is by Andre Previn.

I bought Volume 4 because it was sold as a "deal" with another 50's film that I remembered and bought.

It was quite an experience seeing films that I had watched as a teenager. I was impressed with the crisp black and white photography. It was like going through an old family album looking at the early pictures of actors such as Robert Mitchum in "The Big Steal," Edward G. Robinson in "illegal," "Farley Granger in "They Live by Night," and Sterling Hayden in "Crime Wave". Even though they are all crime movies, they have a certain sweetness that is reminiscent of earlier Anerica. If you want something different, perhaps a bit of nostalgia, this set offers ten hours of viewing.

All of the DVD's played well using my Samsung player.

The first volume of the Film Noir Classic Collection was indeed a collection of classics, including Out of the Past, Murder My Sweet and The Asphalt Jungle among others. By the next volume, the true classics were a little sparser, though films like Narrow Margin and Born to Kill might merit the title. With Volume 4, the titles are getting more obscure, but on the plus side, there are ten movies in this set and they are almost all pretty good.

Disc One (at least in the order I watched it) has Act of Violence and Mystery Street. Act of Violence has Van Heflin as a nice family guy who committed a dubious act during World War II that led to the deaths of several soldiers. The one survivor, Robert Ryan, is now out for revenge. The supporting cast includes a post-Maltese Falcon Mary Astor and a pre-Psycho Janet Leigh. Mystery Street (probably the only weak movie in the set) has Ricardo Montalban investigating the murder of a gold-digging woman. It plays out like an early version of a CSI episode, but despite all the scientific work, the evidence handling is laughable. On the plus side, this movie has Elsa Lanchester who is a lot of fun.

Disc Two has Crime Wave and Decoy. Crime Wave has ex-con Gene Nelson forced to join his old partners-in-crime (including a young Charles Bronson using his original Buchinsky surname). Sterling Hayden is the tough cop out to put them in jail. Decoy is a bit of a noir oddity with its Frankenstein-like twist involving the resurrection of an executed prisoner (played by Robert Armstrong of King Kong fame). Jean Gillie plays one of the nastier femme fatales of the era.

In Disc Three, we get Illegal and The Big Steal. Illegal stars Edward G. Robinson as a prosecutor who quits his job after a bad conviction leads to an innocent man being executed. He finds new life as a defense attorney but soon gets tangled up with a crime boss (and his mistress, played by Jayne Mansfield. The Big Steal is a slightly more comic movie which reunites Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer (who starred together in Out of the Past). The movie is essentially one long chase, with Mitchum pursuing one crook and being pursued by a cop in the Mexican countryside.

Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell are a couple in both the movies on the fourth disc, They Live By Night and Side Street. In They Live By Night, Granger's a fugitive who broke out of prison with some harder criminals. Eventually, he will run away with O'Donnell (and a bunch of loot), but the long arm of the law will ensure their romance is ill-fated. In Side Street, they are married and she's expecting a baby. Earning a meager living as a postal carrier, Granger sees the opportunity to pilfer a couple hundred dollars but actually steals far more, the ill-gotten gains of a blackmailer. Stuck between the law and the crooks, things will get pretty desperate, leading to one of the first great movie car chases.

The final disc has Where Danger Lives and Tension. Where Danger Lives has Robert Mitchum as a doctor who gets romantically entangled with the dangerously insane Faith Domergue. Soon enough, he's on the run, being led to believe that he's killed her husband (Claude Rains). In Tension, Richard Basehart is the pathetically mild-mannered husband of Audrey Totter. When she throws him over for another man, he adopts a new identity in a scheme to commit the perfect murder. Cyd Charisse becomes his love interest under his false identity.

The fact that these are more obscure movies is actually a plus, as you can get a chance to discover some hidden gems. Each movie comes with extras including theatrical trailers and mini-documentaries. The biggest extra, however, is the commentary track that comes with each movie: not only are noir commentary stalwarts like Alain Silver, James Ursini, Drew Casper and Eddie Mueller featured, but we also get commentary by James Ellroy, Audrey Totter, Nina Foch and Farley Granger. With films that would generally rate four stars (maybe three for Mystery Street, maybe five for Decoy, The Big Steal and They Live By Night) and all these extras, this is overall another great, five-star set.