Crime

Synopsis:
In the wake of The Bomb, ex-soldier Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) joins a Hiroshima yakuza gang — the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia — and then the shootings, slashings, betrayals, and scheming begin. Premiering a year after The Godfather, The Yakuza Papers also broke box-office records and spawned sequels, but, in contrast, took a ruthlessly de-romanticized view of the underworld. Based on an actual gang boss’ memoirs, The Yakuza Papers plunges the audience into a gritty, brutal, violent newsreel of a three-decade struggle for power of Shakespearean complexity, a nihilistic epic unlike any other.Read More »

Quote:
The story opens just before Christmas, when solitary, apathetic bank clerk Flemming Borck uncovers a plot to rob his bank. (It’s a convoluted set-up, so we’ll just leave it at that.) After doing a little rookie recon, Borck identifies the would-be bank robber as a faux shopping-mall Santa Claus, and counter-plots to steal the money himself and let Santa take the blame. This works out about as badly as you might imagine, and our bumbling protagonist spirals further and further away from the carefree, laconic lifestyle he had hoped to ensure for himself.Read More »

Synopsis:
In this gritty film noir, cynical ex-RAF flyer Morgan, bored with civilian life, joins a break-in gang led by Narcy. On his first job, the getaway car crashes after killing a policeman. Morgan is framed as the driver and sent to jail. Seeking revenge, he escapes and heads for London. Along the way he’s helped by a woman (Mrs. Fenshaw), who wants him to murder her husband. In London, Morgan is sheltered by Sally, who falls in love with him. He confronts Narcy and the gang in an abandoned warehouse. Brazilian Director Cavalcanti’s crime drama should not be confused with the totally unrelated “They Made Me a Criminal” (1939).Read More »

Victoria has survived Nazi concentration by assuming the identity of one who died there. She arrives in San Francisco to see her “son” just as the boy’s great-aunt dies leaving a lot of money to be inherited. Victoria falls in love with the boy’s trustee Alan Spender, and they move into the mansion on Telegraph Hill. Living life in a new identity isn’t without its dangers, however.Read More »

Synopsis:
Police detective Joe Warne investigates the shooting of womanizing composer Keith Vincent. Evidence points to suicide and that is the official verdict, but Joe doesn’t buy it and obsessively keeps looking, tracking down one discarded love after another, despite being ordered off the case.Read More »

Synopsis:
Nick Cherney, in prison for embezzling from Torno Freight Co., sees a chance to get back at Johnny Torno through his young priest brother Jess. He pays fellow prisoner Rocky, who gets out a week before Nick, to murder Jess…who, dying, tells revenge-minded Johnny that he’d written a clue “in the Bible.” Frustrated, Johnny obsessively searches for the missing Gideon Bible from Jess’s hotel room. Meanwhile, Nick himself gets out with murder still in his heart. But another factor is in play that none of them (except the murdered Jess) had planned on.Read More »

A single teacher allows a stranger to share his home with him before it is to be torn down by developers. The stranger has a fascination with statistics and claims he can predict crimes based on statistical analyses. Intrigued by this talent, the teacher tells a married, female friend that the man seems to have done what he claims. Then the numbers show that there is a slip-up and a murder that was supposed to have occurred, did not. The stranger is adamant that a balance has to be achieved or the whole town will suffer – and he leaves.Read More »

A serial killer in London is murdering young women whom he meets through the personal columns of newspapers; he announces each of his murders to the police by sending them a cryptic poem. After a dancer disappears, the police enlist an American friend of hers, Sandra Carpenter, to answer advertisements in the personal columns and so lure the killer.Read More »

After gangster Phil Crowley robs a mail truck and murders its driver, postal secretary Doris Martin and postal inspector Tom Mallory are called on to track down the elusive fugitive. They follow the trail of stolen loot, sent to ‘general delivery’ in care of Jane Turner, to post offices across the United States ranging from the east coast to Arizona to Los Angeles. Complications arise when a real ‘Jane Turner’ picks up one of the letters intended to be picked up by gang moll Marge Sanders, using Jane Turner as her name.Read More »