Cereal At Midnight

Even though it was released in 1950, Outside the Wall  feels like it has a foot in the crime pictures of the 1930s. The film opens on the Cherry Hill prison in Philadelphia where we meet Larry Nelson (Richard Basehart), a man who is about to be paroled after doing a 15-year sentence for murder. We find out more about his crime later in the movie, but the film is more interested in showing us how he's been jailed for so long that he has trouble adapting to a world he no longer recognizes. He ends up working in a sanatorium that's far from the city, but it's not so far away that trouble doesn't arrive in the form of a gangster from his past with a tempting offer that could lead him back to the wrong side of the law. Complicating matters further are two women--a proverbial devil (a materialistic blonde played by Marilyn Maxwell) and angel (virtuous, kindhearted brunette Dorothy Hart)--who pull him in two very different directions.  While this does feel heavily influenced b...

 The "supernatural noir" is a rare breed. By nature, Film Noir tends to focus on humanity's fears and foibles, with the central characters either caught in circumstances beyond their control or trapped in a web of their own making. Supernatural occurrences seem to be at odds with the cold, criminal reality that exists in most of these films. That's one of the things that makes 1947's Repeat Performance such a wonderful anomaly. It's a hard movie to pin down, but it does indeed possess many of the hallmarks of noir while also including elements of romance, melodrama, and yes, the supernatural.  The film begins on New Year's Eve. It's almost midnight and the wind rages outside while the city celebrates. The camera approaches an apartment, zooming into the balcony as the double doors fly open and gunfire rings out. A body lies dead on the floor and the beautiful-but-stunned Joan Leslie holds the murder weapon. She throws on a coat and flees to a party in ...