Fly-By-Night (Siodmak 1942)
A young doctor is suspected when an escaped maniac who abducts him ends up murdered. On the run, he kidnaps a pretty sketch artist who he eventually convinces he’s on the level. The more he discovers about the maniac’s story, the more he’s convinced they’re onto something big. A few phony doctors, crooked cops, Freudian analysts, fake weddings and nuclear scientists later, they’ve got it all figured out.
Pickup On South Street (Fuller 1953)
Fresh from the pen, Skip McCoy picks the pocket of a young woman on the train. Nothing to write home about in New York City, but Candy’s billfold held important slides being delivered to prominent communists. Realizing she lost the goods, she checks in with Joey, a desperate coward who uses his ex-girlfriend as a human shield. He’s not exactly thrilled. The cops are also perturbed, as they were tailing Candy at the time and hoped she’d lead them to the reds. With the help of a Moe, a colorful informant hoping to save up enough dough for a fancy funeral, the cops link the robbery to McCoy, a “three-time loser.” Everyone must surrender to the greater good. Captain Tiger has to put aside his goal to put McCoy away for keeps, eventually working with him to bust the commies. Crooks like Candy and McCoy are forced with the choice to cooperate with the cops for the red, white and blue. Ultimately, they prove that nobody believes in capitalism more than crooks. The commies don’t stand a chance against this neo-liberal crook-cop consensus.
Human Desire (Lang 1954)
Carl Buckley loses job with railroad and asks his sultry younger wife Vicki to talk to a big man she knows about helping him get it back. They do more than talk, so Buckley has Vicki write the big man a letter asking him to meet her on the train where he stabs the big man to death right in front of her. She’s shocked but trapped. While scouting outside the cabin, she’s spotted by Jeff Warren, an off-duty conductor and former co-worker of Buckley’s. They fall for one another. He falls so hard he’s blind to Ellen, the daughter of his friend and co-conductor Alec, a gorgeous young innocent head over heels for him, so hard he neglects to mention he saw Vicki that night when questioned at the inquest. The whole town seems to know about their fling. The whole town but Buckley, who gets drunk(er) and (more) beligerent, but keeps Vicki in check by lording the letter over her head. He’ll pin the killing on her if she scrams or squeals. While he bullies her into staying by his side, she bullies Jeff into doing her bidding with sex. sadness and sympathy. Meanwhile, Jeff is immune to Alec’s lectures about decency and propriety. Eventually, Vicki convinces Jeff to kill Buckley. After all, he killed people in the war, she reasons. The spell is broken, though, and he can’t go through with it. She says he’s not the man she thought he was. He walks away. Alec notices a change in his friend, and as Jeff stares at the dance ticket Ellen gave to him, it’s clear he’s ready for something new.
