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By Tim McGlynn

$70,000 is hidden somewhere on the Fleagle family farm and everyone wants to find it. Kino-Lorber has released a Blu-ray of the madcap comedy Murder, He Says from Paramount in 1945 wherein a wild cast of crazies will do just about anything to find the loot.

Fred MacMurray plays pollster Pete Marshall who is searching the highways and byways of rural Arkansas looking for a fellow employee of his company, Trotter Polls. After he gets lost on a dark road one night he meets the Fleagle family led by the whip-snapping matriarch Mamie Fleagle Smithers Johnson (Marjorie Main). Aided by her twin sons Mert and Bert (Peter Whitney), Mamie believes that Pete knows where the booty from a bank holdup that their sister, Bonnie Fleagle (Barbara Pepper), hid on the grounds before she landed in the slammer. Add in Elany (Jean Heather...

Director Steve Sekely’s hardboiled film noir leans heavily on the talents of star-producer Paul Henreid and camera ace John Alton — the three of them whip up the best gimmick-driven noir thriller of the late ‘forties. Strained coincidences and unlikely events mean nothing when this much talent is concentrated in one movie. It’s also a terrific show for star Joan Bennett, who expresses all the disappointment, despair and angst of a noir femme who knows she’s in for more misery.

The Scar (Hollow Triumph)

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date April 18, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz, Leslie Brooks, John Qualen, Mabel Paige, Herbert Rudley, George Chandler, Robert Bice, Henry Brandon, Franklyn Farnum, Thomas Browne Henry, Norma Varden, Jack Webb.

Cinematography: John Alton

Film Editor: Fred Allen

Original Music: Sol Kaplan

Written by Daniel Fuchs from a...

Remember Charlie Chaplin's 'The Killer with a Heart?' You too will be frustrated by this well-produced story of a slum kid who commits an unpardonable crime... except that a do-gooder priest wants to pardon him. Dana Andrews and Farley Granger star but the good work is in the smaller roles of this urban tragedy. Edge of Doom DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1950 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 97 min. / Street Date February 9, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 18.59 Starring Dana Andrews, Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Robert Keith, Paul Stewart, Mala Powers, Adele Jergens, Harold Vermilyea, John Ridgely, Douglas Fowley, Mabel Paige, Howland Chamberlain, Houseley Stevenson Sr., Jean Inness, Ellen Corby, Ray Teal. Cinematography Harry Stradling Film Editor Daniel Mandell Original Music Hugo Friedhofer Written by Philip Yordan Produced by Samuel Goldwyn Directed by Mark Robson

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

What's the most hopeless, depressing, feel-bad film noir on the charts? How about Detour,...

Paul Henreid: Hollow Triumph aka The Scar tonight Turner Classic Movies’ Paul Henreid film series continues this Tuesday evening, July 16, 2013. Of tonight’s movies, the most interesting offering is Hollow Triumph / The Scar, a 1948 B thriller adapted by Daniel Fuchs (Panic in the Streets, Love Me or Leave Me) from Murray Forbes’ novel, and in which the gentlemanly Henreid was cast against type: a crook who, in an attempt to escape from other (and more dangerous) crooks, impersonates a psychiatrist with a scar on his chin. Joan Bennett, mostly wasted in a non-role, is Henreid’s leading lady. (See also: “One Paul Henreid, Two Cigarettes, Four Bette Davis-es.”) The thriller’s director is Hungarian import Steve Sekely, whose Hollywood career consisted chiefly of minor B fare. In fact, though hardly a great effort, Hollow Triumph was probably the apex of Sekely’s cinematic output in terms of prestige...

Someone to Remember (1943) is a Robert Siodmak film so obscure even Deborah Lazaroff Alpi, author of the near-definitive R.S. overview Robert Siodmak, A Biography, apparently hadn't seen it.

Shot during Siodmak's early B-movie days, before he got his Universal contract and started to make a name for himself, it was produced by Republic and seems more in keeping with their occasional arthouse experiments like Macbeth and Moonrise than with the westerns they otherwise specialized in. Someone in charge must have just liked the story. (Original author Ben Ames Williams also penned the source novel of Leave Her to Heaven, but this one is no noir.) Certainly Siodmak didn't have the artistic reputation in America of Welles or Borzage (or Ford, who made several of his more artisitically rarified ventures at Republic). Siodmak had gone from prominence in Germany and then France, to undistinguished B-movies in America, and only gradually...