TCM’s Noir Alley on Sunday mornings has quickly become about my favorite movie experience. Its hosted by Eddie Muller. You can’t imagine anyone else in his place. These movies are so gritty. Right now the movie just ended and Eddie is giving the background on the movie, the director and the cast. The inside tidbits he throws out are fascinating. The attraction the director Budd Boetticher had for star Rhonda Fleming (who frankly I had never heard of before). Villain Wendell Corey who was dead at 54 from liver failure due to acute alcoholism.

The Killer Is Loose starts off with a bank job being pulled off with the help of the head teller Wendell Corey. Too many clues come out about how the robbers knew where the alarm was, and why did they know the managers name? Pretty soon the coppers figure it out and go knocking on Corey’s apartment door. “You’ll never take me alive coppers!” He fires a shot through the door at them. “You said he wasn’t armed?!” They bust into the darkened apartment and shoot the silhouetted figure they can just make out, and as they turn on the lights they realize they killed – her! The coppers have gunned down Corey’s wife!

The rest of the move is how Corey gets away from the prison farm, past 2,000 southern California law enforcement, and get’s to the climatic scene where he’s just 5 paces behind the detectives wife who he vowed to kill in revenge for his own wife’s murder! Great stuff. There’s a scene a few minutes before where our killer is in the kitchen with an old war buddy, trying to figure out his next move. The buddy is standing in front of the frig holding the glass milk bottle that they used back then, and our killer shoots him right through the milk bottle! Glass and milk go flying!

The beauty of film noir is the location shooting, getting it done in 2 weeks, getting to see actors like Alan Hale in a serious role, the side boob shots of the dames in tight blouses! This stuff is just up my alley. The creative writing that leads just “where you know its going”, then there’s the surprise twist! One of my favorites was in last week’s Asphalt Jungle when during the getaway after the heist, they successfully pull the copper through the door and punch his lights out, but as he loses consciousness, he drops his service revolver and shoots their safe man Anthony Caruso through the heart! Setting off a cavalcade of bad luck. Their caper goes bad because of that copper!

In our movie Wendell Corey gets his in the end (looking like Swiss cheese!), and Rhonda Fleming goes on to dazzle for many more years! Looking her up I found some absolutely stunning images and posted some of them below. Knowing a little bit about photography of that era, I would say by the quality, quantity and variety of the styles, she must a been pretty popular. That and I can never resist posting pictures of a good lookin’ dame!

“While she was always a competent actress, she was more renowned for her exquisite beauty, and the camera absolutely adored her. One time a cameraman on one of her films remarked on how he was so struck by her beauty that, as a gag, he intentionally tried to photograph her badly; he was astonished to discover that no matter how deliberately he botched it, she still came out looking ravishing.”