Danny (Charlton Heston) and his pals Augie (Jack Webb), Soldier (Henry Morgan), and Barney (Ed Begley Sr.) set up a poker game to take Arthur Winant (Don DeFore) for all his money, but after the fact they discover that the money he lost wasn't really his and, in desperation, Arthur killed himself. Arthur's brother Sidney (Mike Mazurki), a large man not known for his emotional stability, becomes enraged when he learns the facts about Arthur's death, and he vows to kill the men responsible. When his friends start dropping like flies, Danny hides out with his girlfriend, nightclub singer Fran Garland (Lizabeth Scott), and pays a visit to Arthur's widow Victoria (Viveca Lindfors) in hopes of finding out who the killer might be.

Robert Rossellini's Vanina Vanini was released in many US markets as The Betrayer. Based on a Stendhal novel, the film is set in Italy during the turbulent years of the mid-19th century. Princess Vanini (Sandra Milo) confronts a strange looking woman in her palace. The woman turns out to be a man (Laurent Terzieff), an Italian revolutionary on the run from government troops. Princess and rebel fall in love, but when he leaves her for another, she jealously turns him over to the authorities...
This is the recently restored version.

Documentary on the people of the Po valley. A family on a barge travels down the river and stops to get medicine for their sick daughter. Inhabitants of the Po valley delta prepare for a storm. In Antonioni's film the river is a chief character, defined by her colossal will, but not her impatience, to reach the sea. When she does, the sea, instead of embracing her, gives her a leg up and she clambers into the white bed of the sky.

Dr. Allan Fields (Ray Milland) has been spying for the Soviets by passing top secret documents from his position as a scientist at the Atomic Energy Commission, the AEC, to them. One afternoon in New York City one of Field's contacts is struck by a car and killed while he had in his possession a tin canister of microfilmed documents that Fields had given him. When the FBI finds out that the documents came from the AEC in Washington D.C they start to check out all those that are employed there and Fields seeing that the noose was closing in on him becomes a man on the run.

In a large city, a series of violent murders of young girls terrorizes citizens and baffles police. A nervous young man, Martin Harrow, stalks several children and soon focuses his attention on a little girl playing alone at a neighborhood carnival. Martin buys a balloon from a blind street vendor, then walks away with the child, whistling a peculiar tune. Later, after the child's body is discovered, police chief Regan makes a television announcement disclosing that evidence collected in the case indicates the same modus operandi found in previous killings, death by strangulation and the shoes of the victim taken. After the police warn the public to take extreme caution and report all suspicious behavior, many people overreact and harass several innocent men.

Department of State courier Mike Kelly ends up in postwar hotbed Trieste after failing to collect a package from a colleague. The Military Police are happy for him to get more involved, but things get a bit tough. After all, he is just a postman. This is one of the best of the post-war intrigue/suspense flicks. What all of these have in common is the gritty black-and-white look of cities that haven't recovered from the war, usually in ruins, to varying degrees. (Think The Third Man, The Search, Berlin Express) There are no ruins in Diplomatic Courier, but you still get that shadowy, melancholy, sinister, exotic atmosphere that marks the genre...

Though he doesn't speak his first line of dialogue until the film's final ten minutes, Peter Lorre spiritually dominates the fascinating RKO film Stranger on the Third Floor. The plotline is carried by John McGuire, playing Ward, a newspaper reporter whose courtroom testimony sends the hapless Briggs (Elisha Cook Jr). to the death house. Ward is certain that he saw Briggs leaving the scene of a murder, but as the days pass, he is tortured by guilt and doubt -- especially during the film's surrealistic knockout of a nightmare sequence. When another murder is committed, Ward finds himself as much a victim of circumstantial evidence as the unfortunate Briggs. The reporter's girlfriend (Margaret Tallichet) tries to clear Ward....and that's when she first makes the acquaintance of Lorre, who is heard ordering a pound of raw meat! Stranger on the Third Floor was a "film noir" long prior to the genesis of that cinematic movement. Long ignored or trivialized by film historians, this 7-reel quickie has in recent years graduated to classic status.

Inspector Wens is on the trail of a serial killer who has committed four street killings in the space of a few months. The only clue is a visitor’s card signed "Monsieur Durand" found at the scene of each murder. Wens receives an unexpected tip-off that the murderer is living in a boarding house. Disguised as a cleric, he takes a room in the boarding house and finds that lodgers to be a very strange bunch indeed. One of them must be the murderer...

"The House" opens to the image of a mansion as the narrator reads a confessional letter written to his mother about their inability to communicate with each other. The house and mother are, of course, metaphors for the motherland that will be explored in the two hours that follow...

The story is a powerful and fascinating tale of several prisoners on temporary leave from a prison, and the crucial events that they face. Tragedy and sadness are prevalent, despite the fact that each character's leave has a very different outcome, and the film excellently and compellingly explores how the characters must face their difficult circumstances. It addresses a wide range of forces, political, social, familial, that impact the lives of the characters, and comments on all of these. The film's exploration of these issues ranges from blunt and harsh, to subtle and satirical and the actors are simply fabulous.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s third full-length film is this cleverly updated version of Alexandre Dumas (fils)’s novel La Dame aux caméllias, with the central role of the prostitute replaced, tellingly, with that of an actress. Although somewhat lacking in emotional power (mainly on account of the generally subdued acting performances), the film’s beautiful black and white photography makes it a strangely mesmerising film. Along with his contemporaries, Fellini and Visconti, Antonioni sets new standards in filmmaking which would herald a major revival in Italian cinemas in the 1950s and 1960s, combining the visual power of the neo-realists with a classy modernity, tinged with a hint of cynicism.

This well-acted, suspenseful B-noir by director Jacques Tourneur features inspired casting, with Aldo Ray an unlikely yet sympathetic leading man, and Anne Bancroft suitably adventurous as his new love interest. Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant (working from a story by David Goodis) makes good use of flashbacks to unveil Ray’s story, gradually revealing why he chooses to stay on the lam rather than go to the police. The snowy climax in Wyoming brings this enjoyable yarn to a tense and dramatic end.

The film opens in a displaced persons (refugees and released prisoners) camp in Germany after the WWII armistice. Peter Lorre is Dr. Karl Neumeister a world-weary, strangely acting, chain-smoking, hard-drinking and hard-working physician in the camp. The loner doctor is confronted with his sordid past when a refugee by the name of Nowak (Karl John) shows up posing as a chemist and is assigned by the barrack's head to assist the doctor in giving inoculations. The film goes into flashback when the doctor and his mysterious new assistant go into the canteen to get stinking drunk and talk about their coincidental meeting.

Max Ophüls explores the scandalous life of dancer and courtesan Lola Montes with a bittersweet empathy that turns melodrama into a tragic melancholy masterpiece. Using the theatrical re-creation of Lola's life in a big-top pageant as a framing device, Ophüls contrasts the outrageous sensationalism of her reputation with poignant, poetic flashbacks that explore her many affairs, most notably with Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg) and King Ludwig of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook).

The Bandera guerilla is a group composed of Ukrainians and others, who fought under the Germans during World War II. In this story, five men from the gang are attempting to make it to the border of Austria before Czechoslovakia comes under communist rule in the summer of 1947. They wind up hiding out in a remote village near the border, holding a farmer and his family hostage. At first the farmer tries to comply with their wishes, in order to save his wife and children. He goes so far as to kidnap the town's doctor to treat one of the group's wounded. When he fully understands the gang's ruthlessness and deceitfulness, he realizes he must find another way if everyone he cares about is to survive.