Second Run Showcase :: Alive with Excitement, Packed with Adventure, an Enthralling Viscous Mystery (February, 1947)

 

 

 

 

 

For the Love of Film Noir :: Violent Love! And Violent Thrills! (August, 1947)

 

 

 

 

This post is part of my rehash and continuation of the For the Love of Film Noir Blogathon originally held back in February of 2011. Thus and so, we will be heading down the rain-soaked streets and neon-drenched back alleys of Noirville again for the entire month of March. And along with all the old material migrating over from the old site, we’ll also be scattering around a lot of new stuff as well. Also of note, we’ll be posting them in chronological order to show how the genre evolved and progressed from the 1940′s through the late ’50s. And as an added bonus, I’ll be posting some vintage adverts to stuff I’ve always associated with the genre — cigarettes, booze and fashionable ladies.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) First National Pictures :: Warner Bros. / EP: Jack L. Warner / P: Mark Hellinger / D: Peter Godfrey / W: Thomas Job, Martin Vale (play) / C: J. Peverell Marley / E: Frederick Richards / M: Franz Waxman / S: Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Alexis Smith, Nigel Bruce, Isobel Elsom, Ann Carter

Yankee Fakir (1947) W. Lee Wilder Productions :: Republic Pictures / P: W. Lee Wilder / D: W. Lee Wilder / W: Mindret Lord, Richard S. Conway / C: Robert Pittack / E: Jodie Copelan / M: Alexander Laszlo / S: Douglas Fowley, Joan Woodbury, Clem Bevans, Frank Reicher, Marc Lawrence

Entering the 3rd Dimension :: A Lion in Your Lap, a Lover in Your Arms! (May, 1953)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
It was while on a stock-footage expedition to Kenya in 1948 that famed radio personality and burgeoning filmmaker Arch Oboler first became intrigued by J.H. Patterson’s novel, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, which recounted the tale of two lions that wreaked havoc on a railway construction crew. Soon determined to turn this harrowing tale into a movie, it was Oboler’s cameraman on the same expedition, William Snyder, who suggested that, when he did, he should shoot it in a new process called Natural Vision; an improved technique in the rapidly evolving 3-D process. But when no studios showed interest in his pet project, Oboler set out to make it on his own, with the majority of the financing coming from star Robert Stack’s mother. And, using the stock-footage they’d already shot in Kenya to flesh it out, the majority of the film was shot on the Paramount ranch. And when it was finished, with fingers crossed, Bwana Devil was released, with a hope and a pair of tinted glasses that a curious audience would come and see.
 

 
It was famed film exploitationeer Sidney Pink (of Reptilicus and The Angry Red Planet infamy), who had earlier salvaged Oboler’s post-apocalyptic flick Five, that coined A Lion in Your Lap … A Lover in Your Arms… for the ad campaign. It worked beautifully, and after United Artists saw how much money Bwana Devil was raking in, despite an almost universal critical drubbing, took over the distribution. And, when the receipts kept on rolling, Bwana Devil triggered an avalanche of other 3-D films over the next couple of years to cash in.

Bwana Devil (1952) Gulu Productions :: United Artists / P: Arch Oboler / AP: Sidney W. Pink / D: Arch Oboler / W: Arch Oboler / C: Joseph F. Biroc / E: John Hoffman / M: Gordon Jenkins / S: Robert Stack, Barbara Britton, Nigel Bruce, Ramsay Hill

For the Love of Hitchcock :: Cheat? Embezzler? Faithless? Or Worse?! (January, 1942)

 

“If you’re going to kill someone, do it simply”

 

 

 

 

 

 
This post is part of the For the Love of Film Blogathon, a new age telethon to raise funds for The National Film Preservation Foundation to help bring The White Shadow (a/k/a White Shadows), an early silent film that a certain master of suspense did just about everything for except direct — assistant director, screenwriter, film editor, production designer, art director, and set decorator, to the streaming masses and help defray the costs of adding a new musical soundtrack.
 

 
There’s no donation too small, folks. So please, click on the link above, wherever you see it this week and give what you can. Thanks. For more information, check out the group’s Facebook page. Big thanks, as always, to Ferdy on Film, The Self-Styled Siren and This Island Rod for throwing such a wide net for contributors. Until tomorrow, then, I bid you all a good ev-ah-ning.
 

 I’m participating. Are you?

 
Suspicion (1941) RKO Radio Pictures / P: Harry E. Edington / D: Alfred Hitchcock / W: Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, Anthony Berkeley (novel) / C: Harry Stradling / E: William Hamilton / M: Franz Waxman / S: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty