Don Castle, Bonita Granville, Lee Tracy, Wally Cassell, and Julie Bishop
Not Rated
THE GUILTY - The Guilty, released by Monogram Pictures, is a triumph of resourcefulness for its nomadic Viennese director, John Reinhardt. Based on a short story by legendary suspense writer Cornell Woolrich, this little-seen B movie centers on war veterans Mike Carr and Johnny Dixon, roommates in a low-rent tenement. They are romantically entangled with twin sisters Estelle and Linda Mitchell. When one sister turns up dead, the boys are hounded by a suspicious police inspector although there's no shortage of suspects. Working on only three sets, with a shoestring budget, Reinhardt and director of photography Henry Sharp evoke the dreadful, dead-of-night ambiance that was the domain of the era's most prolific noir scribe, Cornell Woolrich. HIGH TIDE - This forgotten noir, set in a spectacularly corrupt Los Angeles, is a crackling crime thriller rescued thanks to the combined efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the British Film Institute. The action gets rolling with one of the greatest framing gimmicks in noir: a speeding car crashes onto a rocky shoreline and its occupants, newspaper editor Hugh Fresney and private eye Tim Slade recount the plot as the rising tide threatens to drown them. In flashback, we learn that Slade was brought in by muckraking editor Fresney as protection against a mobster his paper is investigating. Things quickly get complicated as Fresney's boss has a wife eager to resume a smoldering romance with Slade. When the main character gets iced early, everybody becomes a suspect, and the double-crosses start multiplying at a breakneck pace.
Reserve
