Race Street (1948)

Race Street is an obscure 1948 RKO crime thriller starring George Raft and Raft’s presence is a good enough reason for me to want to watch such a movie.

Dan Gannin (Raft) is a big-time San Francisco bookie. His pal Barney Runson (William Bendix) is a police lieutenant. Dan might be a racketeer but he’s a decent guy and he’s definitely no hoodlum. Barney is an honest cop and he doesn’t approve of Dan’s operation but he doesn’t let him worry him. Maybe there are worse things than people wanting to bet on the ponies, and as long as people want to do that there are going to be bookies.

Dan is intending to retire. He’s opened a night club and he’s going to marry a swell gal named Robbie Lawrence (Marilyn Maxwell). 

Now there’s a new racket operating in the city. A protection racket. And that’s a whole different ball game. These people really are hoodlums. They’re moving on the city’s bookies. Barney would like Dan’s help but he’s not going to get it. Dan likes Barney a lot but he can’t be seen to run squealing to the cops when he’s in a jam. In Dan’s circle that is frowned upon. Dan isn’t in a jam yet, but he will be. And Dan’s best friend is already in that jam with the protection racketeers. That’s not the sort of thing Dan Gannin will hold still for. Barney know that no matter what he says Dan will insist on handling things his way and that’s going to be awkward.

It’s a straightforward plot setup but there is a twist which Dan doesn’t know about yet.

Dan and Barney are both on the track of the guy behind the protection racket ad they both intend to find him first.

Director Edward L. Marin was enjoying a successful career up until his untimely death in 1951. He does a generally decent and occasionally inspired job here. He pulls off a couple of pretty decent set-pieces, including two very different and equally tense scenes on the same staircase.

As to being a film noir, there’s really not much of the noir visual style here.

Content-wise there’s not much noirness in evidence either, except perhaps in the sense that Dan is a guy who was just about to get out of the rackets when all this aggravation descended upon him. But there’s only just enough to make it film noir. It’s just a noir-tinged tough-guy crime thriller really.

This is the sort of rôle George Raft carries off with effortless style. Raft had the ability to convince an audience that he was a seriously tough guy with a steak of ruthlessness but also a man who was fundamentally kind and generous. And that’s the sort of guy Dan Gannin is. If someone tries to push Dan around, well let’s just say he’s likely to push back,  but if you’re straight with him he’ll be the best friend you ever had. Dan is a likeable tough guy. His sensitive side is kept under wraps but Raft is good enough to make sure we know that that side is there.

William Bendix is pretty good as Barney, a very ordinary rather amiable cop who knows his job and takes it seriously.

Marilyn Maxwell, a second-string star now largely forgotten, is quite adequate as Robbie. Singer-actress-cheesecake model Gale Robbins adds some glamour as Dan’s sister Elaine, a sexy canary who headlines at Dan’s new club.

The Warner Archive release is what you expect - no extras but a very good transfer.

Race Street is minor-league stuff to be honest, with just not enough in the plot department to make it stand out. It’s the strong cast that carries it with Raft being particularly good. I like the gruff affection between Dan and Barney, guys who’ve been friends a long time.

Race Street is a competent crime melodrama. If you’re a George Raft completist like me you’ll want to buy it, otherwise it’s worth a rental. On the whole I liked it well enough.

A Dangerous Profession (1949)

A Dangerous Profession is a 1949 RKO film noir staring George Raft. Not everyone likes George Raft but I like him a lot. His co-star is Ella Raines and that’s another reason for me to be interested in this movie. She’s a rather underrated film noir player.

Raft is Vince Kane, an ex-cop who is now a bail bondsman. He likes it better and it pays better. A while back there was this dame by the name of Lucy Brackett and he thought maybe there might be something between them but it didn’t work out. She had a husband but he didn't know that at the time. He hasn’t forgotten her though. And there was a securities robbery and a cop who got killed and a guy named Claude Brackett that the police wanted to talk to. Brackett claimed to be innocent. Maybe he was. Either way he took a powder and that was the end of that. Until now. Now Vince’s buddy Nick Ferrone (Jim Backus), a cop, has picked up Claude Brackett. The D.A. is pretty interested in Brackett and the bail is set very high - $25,000.

Claude Brackett cannot raise that sort of money and Lucy Brackett can't either. It would be crazy for Vince to put up the money but Vince likes to gamble and he likes women and he likes Lucy and if he’d thought about it maybe he wouldn’t have done it but he does put up the money. To no-one’s surprise Claude skips out again but this time it’s more complicated and this time it ends in murder and Vince is in a bit of a spot.

There are a lot of angles to this case. There’s a less than reputable lawyer called Dawson who put up a lot of money for the bail as well even though Claude Brackett had never heard of the guy. And there’s the guy that Vince spilled coffee on. Vince is interested in that guy.

Vince is under pressure from Nick Ferrone. He’s also under pressure from his partner, Joe Farley (Pat O’Brien. Actually the odd thing is that Farley doesn’t seem too worried.

Nick Ferrone is plenty worried though, and he’s not happy about Vince and that dame.

The essence of film noir is a protagonist who isn’t evil but has a weakness and it drags him into the noir nightmare world. In this case Vince has been tempted into playing a very dangerous game with some very dangerous people. But exactly what game is it that he’s playing? Which side is he playing on? And what is he playing for? Is it the girl? Or is it the money? Is he a hero or a villain? Maybe Vince isn’t sure of the answer to that question.

This is a typical George Raft performance. Raft was an actor who played tough guys in an admirably effortless way. Raft really was a tough guy. He didn’t have to act it. But what he was really good at was playing tough guys who were kind of sympathetic, and especially tough guys who took big chances because they liked taking chances. Vince Kane takes a lot of chances. This is a case he should have steered well clear of but that was never going to happen.

Ella Raines plays Lucy Brackett and she’s not an obvious femme fatale but sometimes it’s the ones that aren’t obvious that you really have to be careful of. Lucy tells a lot of lies. Sometimes maybe she tells the truth, but you can never be sure. She’s a pretty good liar.

The supporting cast is excellent. Jim Backus is better remembered for comic rôles (he was the millionaire in Gilligan’s Island and did a lot of cartoons including Mr Magoo) but he was actually quite versatile and here he does a fine job as a hardboiled cop. Pat O’Brien is terrific as Farley.

Everyone in this movie is a bit ambiguous. It’s hard to know who’s on the level and who’s a crook and who isn’t.

Ted Tetzlaff was at best a journeyman director but he does OK here. The script has some nice twists. It’s a bit confusing at times but in a film noir that can be a feature rather than a bug.

The Warner Archive release is very decent.

A Dangerous Profession may not be top-flight noir but it’s fine entertainment. It helps if you’re a George Raft fan (which I obviously am) but even if you’re not there are fine performances from all the other cast members. Highly recommended.

Johnny Allegro (1949)

Johnny Allegro is a 1949 Columbia film noir starring George Raft. Now if you’re a regular reader you’ll know that George Raft’s name in the credits is more than enough to entice me.

Johnny Allegro (Raft) is a florist, and apparently a fairly successful one. Then Glenda Chapman (Nina Foch) waltzes up to him in the lobby of the hotel in which his florist shop is situated and starts kissing him. Which is slightly surprising since he’s never set eyes on her before. She hurried explains that she needs him to pretend to know her so she can get out of the building. She’s being tailed by some guy (and Johnny has already spotted the guy as being a cop). What can you do when a beautiful blonde you don’t know asks you to help her out in that kind of situation? You help her out. She is a beautiful blonde after all.

Within the first few minutes Raft, in the most effortless manner, has let us know everything we need to now about Johnny Allegro. He has a shady past (people without shady pasts don’t recognise someone as a cop with a single glance), he’s a guy with a sublime confidence in his ability to handle himself, he likes women and he’s prepared to take risks.

We find out a bit more about him later on. He used to go by the name of Johnny Rock. He’s been in Sing Sing and he left the prison several years ago without bothering to let the prison authorities know he was leaving. We also find out that he was a war hero. He may have had his differences with the law but he’s more than just a common hoodlum.

As for Glenda, she’s a Woman of Mystery. Johnny has no idea what she’s up to. He doesn’t care. He’s hooked.

In fact he’s hooked in more ways than one. He’s had an interesting conversation with a guy called Schultzy (Will Geer). Schultzy is a Treasury Agent and he’s real interested in Glenda. He wants Johnny’s help in the case and he holds out the implied promise that Johnny’s difficulties with the authorities can be made to go away. Johnny doesn’t care too much about that either. He the kind of guy who only cares about the important things in life, like beautiful blondes.

Glenda wants to disappear somewhere and she wants Johnny’s help. At this point he’s going to follow her wherever she decides to go.

Johnny is a fairly typical noir protagonist. He’s an ex-criminal but that was in the past and now he’s a respectable citizen with a solid business. He has an eye for the ladies but he’s a pretty nice guy. He’s well-liked. But like any good noir protagonist he has a couple of weaknesses. His weaknesses are dames and his tendency to take risks. Those weaknesses are going to get him deeply involved with dangerous people. People like Morgan Vallin (George Macready), and people like Glenda.

George Raft is close to being my favourite actor of this era. He has a minimalist acting style which to everyone likes but it’s a style of acting that I like very much. I’m also a fan of Alan Ladd and Robert Mitchum. It’s an acting style that is much harder to pull off successfully than it looks. George Raft practically invented it and no-one does it better. He doesn’t have to go around slugging guys to convince you he’s a tough guy. In this movie we see him arranging flowers and he does it in a way that lets you know that his confidence in his toughness is absolute. Raft also had charm, and he had cool in prodigious quantities.

Nina Foch had an unbelievably long acting career (65 years in the business) and she was no stranger to film noir. She handles the femme fatale rôle without any difficulties and her chemistry with Raft is subtle but effective.

George Macready of course was always a great villain. In this case he combines menace with hints of craziness and does so with panache. Will Geer is excellent as Schultzy, the Treasury Agent who has plenty of tricks up his sleeve.

Ted Tetzlaff was a cinematographer turned director. As a director he has an honest workman rather than an artist but he knows what he’s doing here. The script, by Karen DeWolf and Guy Endore from a story by James Edward Grant, has some nice hardboiled dialogue (which the three main stars relish) and a decent plot. It’s a movie that moves along at a brisk pace and it has enough noir style to satisfy those who enjoy such things.

The climactic hunt scenes on the island are pretty exciting.

Johnny Allegro was released on DVD by Sony and it’s also available in the nine-movie Noir Archive Blu-Ray set from Kit Parker Films. The Blu-Ray release was essentially a way to fit nine movies on three discs. Johnny Allegro gets a transfer that is basically DVD quality, but good DVD quality. Image quality is excellent.

As George Raft movies go it’s not quite in the same league as the superb Nocturne or even the underrated Johnny Angel but Johnny Allegro is still a treat for George Raft fans. He’s in top form and this movie delivers solid entertainment. Highly recommended.

Johnny Angel (1945)

Johnny Angel is an interesting little 1945 RKO film noir.

Johnny Angel (George Raft) is a sea captain, like his father. When he finds his father’s ship, the Emmaline Quincy, drifting at sea in the Gulf of Mexico, with its cargo intact but the crew (including his father) nowhere to be found, he is determined to find out what has happened. 

He puts a salvage crew aboard the Emmaline Quincy. After it docks in New Orleans a mysterious French girl is seen leaving the ship - this girl is Johnny’s only clue to the mystery. First he has to find her, then having found her he has to keep her alive. Neither task will be easy.

Both Johnny and his father worked for the Gustafson Line, run by the pudgy and ineffectual George Gustafson (invariably referred to as Gusty). In reality it’s Gusty’s old nurse Miss Drumm (Margaret Wycherly), now his secretary, who runs the line. Between them Miss Drumm and Gusty’s wife Lilah (Claire Trevor) run Gusty. Gusty is the kind of man who is destined to be run by women.

Lilah is two-timing Gusty with night-club owner and gangster Sam Jewell (Lowell Gilmore) but she also has her sights set on Johnny. Lilah likes men but she also likes money. She can’t decide which she likes most.

The mystery which is slowly unravelled is rather complex. Suffice to say that gold is involved. Lots of gold. Enough gold to drive men (or women) to murder, or even more than one murder.

This movie is a relatively rare example of a film noir with a flashback and voice-over narration from the point of view of a female character. 

Steve Fisher’s screenplay hits most of the right noir notes. Edwin L. Marin was a competent director and a year later would direct George Raft in another excellent film noir, Nocturne. Marin captures the noir mood effectively in Johnny Angel, with some help from cinematographer Harry J. Wild (who also worked on Nocturne and in fact shot many notable noir films).

George Raft gives an excellent performance as the obsessed son investigating the mystery involving his father. Raft was always a very convincing heavy but he could be equally effective in more sympathetic roles. He was best of all when he got to combine the two tendencies as he does here. Johnny Angel is a very tough guy who never takes a backward step from any man but he’s also a very nice guy. I suspect that it was Raft’s sublime confidence in his own macho qualities (he was a very tough guy in real life) that allowed him to switch effortlessly from tough to gentleness and charm.

The rest of the cast is very strong. Claire Trevor does her femme fatale bit as the wife of the owner of the shopping line – she is very much in love with his money, with him not so much. It’s the sort of thing she always did extremely well. 

Signe Hasso (who was Swedish and whose slight accent is clearly and unsurprisingly Swedish) plays the enigmatic French girl and she does an effective job. Hoagy Carmichael (better known of course as a composer) is Celestial, a cab driver with a knack for being around when interesting things are happening. Naturally he also gets a chance to sing. He’s a likeable and amusing (and rather charmingly eccentric) foil for the very serious Johnny Angel. Marvin Miller is all thwarted ambition and weakness as the milksop owner of the Gustafson Line.  

The nautical background and the New Orleans settings give the film a distinctive and attractive flavour, and it’s a fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining movie.  It’s one of those lesser known noirs that is well worth seeking out. Highly recommended.

Nocturne (1946)

A George Raft film noir is something that will always attract my interest. Raft is not everybody’s cup of tea but he’s one of my favourite movie tough guys. Nocturne was made by RKO in 1946 and the idea sounds promising enough.

The movie opens with smooth womanising songwriter Keith Vincent giving his latest girlfriend the brush-off. Vincent thinks he’s pretty good at this sort of thing but this time it doesn’t go too smoothly - he ends up with a slug from a .38 in his brain. Some dames just don’t take kindly to getting their marching orders.

When the police arrive they don’t take long to decide this is a clear-cut case of suicide. Vincent’s fingerprints on the gun and the powder burns make this fairly obvious. 

It isn’t obvious to Detective Lieutenant Joe Warne (Raft). Why would a rich guy like Keith Vincent shoot himself right in the middle of writing a song? Joe is one of those cops who worries when things don’t look quite right. When he worries he gets obsessive. It makes him a good detective but it gets him into a lot of trouble as well. At the moment Joe is already in trouble. In fact he is always in trouble with the Chief of Detectives. Joe has a rather pro-active approach to investigations and he tends to tread on people’s toes. The Chief of Detective admires Joe’s skills as a detective but he doesn’t like Joe’s habit of treading on the toes of the sorts of citizens who like to lodge complaints with the Department. Sooner or later Joe’s habits are going to get him kicked out of the force and it looks like it might definitely be sooner rather than later.

Joe Warne is not the kind of guy to let that stop him. And he does have a lead. Vincent’s last girlfriend was named Dolores. The only problem is, all of Vincent’s girlfriends were named Dolores. If they weren’t named Dolores he called them Dolores anyway.

George Raft was very much a tough guy both on the screen and off but as an actor he does the tough guy thing with a fair amount of subtlety. He plays the sorts of guys who are so tough they never have to make a big noise about it. The sorts of guys who never raise their voice because people soon learn that it’s healthier not give them a reason to do so. Raft’s performance is flawless. 

Raft was clearly a natural for playing villains but he grew tired of it and by the 1940s he was keen to play heroes instead. Nocturne gives him the chance to play a reasonably interesting hero in a good film. Sadly good parts like this would become increasingly rare for Raft by the end of the 40s.

Lynn Bari gets the femme fatale role as one of Keith Vincent’s Doloreses. Virginia Huston as her kid sister, night club singer Carol Page and Joseph Pevney as the piano player in the club where she sings provide fine support.

Jonathan Latimer’s screenplay provides plenty of juicy hard-boiled dialogue and Raft and Bari make the most of it. In his novels such as Headed for a Hearse Latimer combined hard-boiled style with very generous amounts of humour. He tones the humour down somewhat in this script. 

This is not in any sense one of those Hollywood mysteries played primarily for laughs. The tone is mostly dead serious but there’s plenty of wit. There’s only a small amount of outright comic relief, provided by Joe’s mother and one of her friends who are keen detective story fans who just love a good murder, and these brief interludes are actually quite funny.

So is Nocturne film noir? It has the noir visual style and the atmosphere. It has the ingredients needed for a film noir. Having the ingredients is not enough - they have to be utilised in the right way. Nocturne shows signs at various times of veering off in a decidedly noir direction, but generally seems content to be a hard-boiled murder mystery. It happens to be a very very good murder mystery that has a great deal of style and wit.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD is absolutely barebones (not even a trailer) but it’s an excellent transfer.

Nocturne is a top-notch noir-flavoured mystery thriller. Very highly recommended.

Loan Shark (1952)

Loan Shark is a 1952 low-budget crime B-movie from Lippert Pictures that doesn’t exactly set the screen alight but it does deliver decent entertainment and film noir fans will find that it’s worth a look.

George Raft is probably best known for the parts he turned down than for the parts he actually played. He turned down lead roles in High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. He arguably did more to make Bogart a star than Bogart did! With a propensity for making such disastrous decisions it’s not surprising that by 1952 Raft’s career was on the downslide. Loan Shark is in fact, by the standards of the movies he was making in the 50s, pretty good.

Raft plays Joe Gargen who’s been doing time in the state penitentiary. He got into a fight with a guy in the bar, and since Joe had been a professional boxer he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, the deadly weapon being his fists. Now Joe has turned up on the doorstep of his sister Martha (Helen Westcott). Martha’s friend Ann Nelson (Dorothy Hart) is the secretary of the boss at the nearby tyre factory and she’s offered to try to get Joe a job at the plant. When it turns out that the boss is actually looking for somebody to do some undercover work Joe declines. He just wants to be a regular guy doing a regular job. 

The tyre plant is having trouble with loan sharks. Or rather their employees are having trouble with loan sharks, and it’s affecting the morale of the workers. The president of the company is the kind of guy who believes he has a responsibility to look after his workers and he wants this loan shark racket stamped out. Joe isn’t interested in joining a crusade until the loan shark racket affects his own family. Martha’s husband is one of the victims but he’d decided to fight back. Joe told him he was a fool and was asking for trouble and it turned out he was right. But Joe doesn’t like seeing his sister hurt so he changes his mind and takes the job. He’ll help the company take on the racketeers, but he’ll do it his way.

What Joe has to do is not just to find the loan sharks, which is easy. He has to find a way to get to the top men in the racket. He also has to find the loan sharks’ men on the inside in the tyre factory. These men have been encouraging other employees to become involved in gambling and then pointing them in the direction of the loan sharks when they start to lose. 

Pretty soon Joe has penetrated the racket. He’s now an insider, this being the only way to find the top man. This means Joe has to become a gangster himself, and as a result he finds himself hated by his former work mates as well as his sister. Even worse, it means he’s now hated by Ann, with whom romance had started to blossom quite promisingly. Of course Joe is also in real danger. The mobsters behind the loan racket aren’t likely to take kindly to amateur undercover men infiltrating their organisation.

Seymour Friedman had a fairly short career as a director, in both B-movies and television. The low budget on this film doesn’t offer much opportunity for doing anything fancy but he keeps the pacing taut and generally does a solid professional job. Cinematographer Joseph F. Biroc does a fine job, giving this movie a definite film noir feel. The excellent (and surprisingly brutal) opening sequence establishes the noir atmosphere very nicely.

George Raft isn’t everyone’s favourite actor. He’s often accused of being dull and wooden. Personally I like his hardbitten style and I find his performance here to be quite satisfactory. Joe is definitely a tough guy and Raft does the tough guy thing very convincingly.

He is however somewhat overshadowed here by a couple of very fine character actors who play the chief racketeers. Paul Stewart as Lou Donelli and John Hoyt as Vince Phillips  make superb mobsters and their performances are the highlight of the movie. Russell Johnson is better known as the Professor from Gilligan’s Island but he does well here as the crooked and slimy Charlie Thompson, proving himself to be better at playing crooks than he was at comedy. 

Dorothy Hart makes a decorative female lead although it’s not a part that offers  her much of an opportunity to display whatever acting abilities she may have possessed.

Loan Shark has been released by VCI on a two-movie disc paired with Arson Inc. This disc  is also included in their six-movie Forgotten Noir Collector’s Set. Loan Shark looks good although the sound is a little rough at times. Extras include an informative audio commentary track. VCI’s film noir releases always offer value for money and this is no exception.

Loan Shark isn’t a great movie but it’s a well-made B-feature with some good noir atmosphere, plenty of hardboiled dialogue and some good performances. On the whole it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

Red Light (1949)

For a noir fan there’s nothing more exciting than coming across a little-known and not particularly well-regarded crime movie and discovering that it’s a bona fide neglected film noir gem. Such a movie is Red Light.

Produced and directed by Roy Del Ruth for his own production company and distributed by United Artists this 1949 production stars George Raft, Virginia Mayo and Raymond Burr. It’s not only a genuine noir, it’s a very unconventional one.

Raft plays successful businessman Johnny Torno. Torno runs a large trucking company. You’re probably expecting me to say that his trucking company is a front for his gangland activities, or that he’s involved in corruption of some kind. But that isn’t the case. Johnny Torno is a perfectly legitimate businessman and he’s a thoroughly decent guy. Since he’s being played by George Raft it goes without saying that he’s a tough guy, but he’s tough in a completely honest and straightforward way.

Torno is a devout Catholic and he’s active in his local church. He’s just donated a very expensive stained glass window to his parish church. Torno raised his kid brother Jess himself and Jess became a chaplain in the army. He was a prisoner-of-war and he’s just retained to the US after his release. The two brothers are very close, although given the fact that Johnny is a good deal older it’s in some ways as much a father-son relationship as a brotherly relationship.

Jess’s return to the US was well publicised and one of the people watching the newsreel footage of the re-union between the two brothers is Nick Cherney (Raymond Burr). Nick isn’t watching the newsreel at a movie house - he’s watching it in prison. Nick had been a book-keeper employed by Johnny Torno, until he was convicted of embezzlement and got himself a four-year stretch in San Quentin. Nick was guilty as charged and Johnny had already given him one chance to repay the money he stole. Nick was not framed, he stole the money and he has no-one but himself to blame. But Nick doesn’t see it that way. He’s the sort of guy who always blames others for his troubles and for four years he’s been brooding and planning to get revenge on Torno. A chance remark by another prisoner gives him an idea - the most effective way to hurt Johnny Torno would be through his brother.

Jess Torno is murdered, but Nick Cherney is not a suspect. He’s now out of prison, but the murder took place before his release. It doesn’t occur to anyone that Nick may have used someone else to do the actual killing. The only clue to the murder is provided by Jess’s dying words, indicating that he has written the name of his killer in the Bible that Johnny gave him several years earlier. Johnny is the only one who knows this, and he has no intention of telling the cops. Johnny Torno intends to do the avenging of his brother himself.

The only problem is, he discovers that there’s no message written in the Bible. It takes him a while, but eventually he figures out he’s looking for the wrong Bible. Jess was killed in a hotel room and the Bible he was referring to is the Gideon Bible to be found in every hotel room. But this Bible has now vanished. Before he can find the killer Johnny will have to find that Bible.

Johnny finds an unexpected ally in the person of Carla North (Virginia Mayo). With her help he sets about the frustrating task of tracking down the missing Bible. Meanwhile both Nick Cherney and the man who did the killing for him are aware that Johnny is on their trail and they are determined to retrieve the Bible before Johnny can find it. The hunt eventually ends in a very unexpected way.

At this point I should point out that the Bible is not a mere plot device. Red Light belongs to a very small sub-genre - the religious film noir. It’s a small sub-genre but it does include a handful of terrific movies, the most notable being the two great Catholic noirs, the superb 1947 British noir Brighton Rock and Fritz Lang’s equally good 1937 film You Only Live Once. Like these movies Red Light is concerned with faith, forgiveness and redemption. If you’re not religious don’t be put off by this - Red Light is still very much a film noir and it has a great deal to offer noir fans. And it has no shortage of action and violence either.

Not everyone like George Raft. Personally I think he’s an under-appreciated actor. He’s certainly ideally cast as Johnny Torno. Johnny is a guy who is just a bit too tightly wrapped. He’s a good man but under stress he tends to become a bit of a pressure cooker and you worry that at any moment he’s going to explode. Raft handles the part rather deftly.

Virginia Mayo is solid but Carla is a fairly marginal character and she doesn’t get a great deal to do.  

Raymond Burr at this stage of his career was one of the great screen villains and he delivers a trademark bravura performance here. He’s vicious and menacing, but he’s also slimy and cowardly. Nick is a wonderfully repulsive character and Burr is in top form. Equally good is Harry Morgan, in one of the nastiest roles of his career. There’s an abundance of deliciously hardboiled dialogue in this movie and Burr and Morgan get more than their fair share of it, and they make the most of it.

Roy Del Ruth wasn’t really noted for this type of movie but he handles things very expertly. A very large proportion of the action takes place at night and Bert Glennon delivers plenty of glorious noir cinematography. This movie is visually very noir indeed. The ending is absolutely top-notch as well as being a very clever way of wrapping things up in a way that satisfies the demands of the story.

Given that it’s a movie that is trying to combine hardboiled crime revenge themes with a religious theme it’s not surprising that occasionally it seems like it’s about to stumble. What is surprising is that it doesn’t lose its footing. Even the surreal scene with the blind soldier can’t derail this movie.

This movie has been released in the Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD range. It’s totally barebones but it’s an excellent transfer.

Red Light is film noir gold. Very highly recommended.