Foster on Film

Two soldiers murder Samuels (Sam Levene), a Jewish man. While police captain Finlay (Robert Young) is in the apartment of the victim, Montgomery (Robert Ryan), show up. He’s one of a group of recently returned servicemen that had met the victim the night before. His story sets the police after Mitchell (George Cooper), the most

What is often missed about Double Indemnity is that it is a comedy, a dark, twisted, comedy.  The world of most Film Noirs is an extreme version of our world–everything has been kicked up a notch. Billy Wilder just took it up an additional “notch.”  It’s a parody of Film Noir made while Film Noir was

A beautiful blonde model is murdered in her New York apartment. Lt. Dan Muldoon (Berry Fitzgerald) and detective Jimmy Halloran (Dan Taylor) are put on the case. It will lead to a string of jewelry robberies and to the nearly pathologically untruthful Frank Niles (Howard Duff) and his snooty fiancée Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart). Critics

In this lighthearted version of The Maltese Falcon, con artist Ted Shayne (Warren William in the Spade role) was just kicked out of town so drums up some business for his old partner Ames (Porter Hall in the Archer role) and then rejoins his detective agency in another city. He, of course, hits on secretary

Seventeen-year-old psychopath Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) runs a cheap protection racket in Brighton with his gang of Dallow (William Hartnell), Cubitt (Nigel Stock), and Spicer (Wylie Watson). He kills a reporter, and it is ruled a suicide, but Ida (Hermione Baddeley), a performer the reporter met briefly, doesn’t believe it and sets out to prove

In a town ruled by the wealthy Ivers family, on a stormy night, run-away Martha Ivers is brought back to her domineering aunt. The night ends with the aunt dead, tough kid Sam gone, and weak kid Walter at Martha’s side. Years later, Sam (Van Heflin) passes through town and meets recent parolee, Toni Marachek

Detective Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) is given the task of escorting Frankie Neall (Maria Windsor), the wife of a mob boss, across country by train. The mob has sent a group of assassins to kill her, though they don’t know what she looks like. They mistake an innocent woman on the train (Jacqueline White) for

Nick, a troubled policeman (Michael Douglas), becomes the mental and physical plaything of rich, educated, bisexual partier, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), a suspect in an ice pick murder.  His simple partner (George Dzundza) and ex-lover, psychologist Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), try to help him, but he falls deeper and deeper into addiction and Catherine’s

In London, General Sternwood (James Stewart) hires American expatriate detective Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) to deal with blackmail threats. However, what he really wants is for Marlowe to uncover what happened to his missing son-in-law.  Marlowe finds that both the blackmail and the disappearance are tied up with Sternwood’s wild daughters, Charlotte (Sarah Miles) and Camilla (Candy

Stuffy, British couple Fiona and Nigel Dobson (Kristin Scott Thomas, Hugh Grant) take a cruise to India in an attempt to bring some magic to their overly comfortable marriage.  On board they meet sexy, French, femme fatale, Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner), and her obnoxious, crippled, American husband, Oscar (Peter Coyote), who pick Nigel to hear the

Abby (Frances McDormand) has an affair with Ray (John Getz) to distract herself from her life with Marty (Dan Hedaya), who is also Ray’s boss.  Marty has hired a detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to watch his wife.  With the best of these four people a cheat and liar, and the worst an amoral murderer and

Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Richard Crenna) is seduced by housewife Phyllis Dietrickson (Samantha Eggar) into killing her husband. Walter falsifies an accident policy for the husband that has a double indemnity clause: it pays double if the insured dies in a train accident. Their one foreseeable problem is Barton Keyes (Lee J. Cobb), a crack insurance investigator