Angela Lansbury in A Life At Stake 1954

Our first film noir post this week featured Angela Lansbury, and here she is again playing another dangerous dame.

Keith Andes plays Edward Shaw, an architect who has lost his business in a deal gone bad. He's approached by an attorney who is looking for someone to partner with his clients (Lansbury and her husband) to take advantage of the post war building boom in Southern California. When he meets Doris Hillman (Lansbury) the sparks fly, and it looks like some pleasure will be mixed in with the business. The deal seems too good to be true - they'll pay off his debt and establish the new company with him with no upfront money from him at all. The only catch is they want to take out an insurance policy on him. This might not phase another man, but Mr. Shaw is nothing if not suspicious - of everyone. When more and more things start to point toward a scheme to murder him to collect on the insurance he starts to run scared. Look for veteran character actress Jane Darwell as Andes' landlady.

This film, like the others this week is available on the Hollywood Bombshells Collection DVD, and it's also uploaded in full to YouTube by Timeless Classic Movies. It's another one of those noir films that's gotten lost among the many available titles, so it's primarily unknown. The poster above is available at MoviePosterShop.com.

Obscurity factor: 6 (available on DVD and YouTube, largely forgotten)

Angela Lansbury & Raymond Burr in Please Murder Me 1956

The phenomenon of film noir produced quite a few obscure specimens. By its very nature, film noir was a low budget medium, despite its more high profile, high budget examples. This week I'll be covering some fun examples of the more obscure film noir titles, thanks to a DVD set that was loaned to me by my neighbor, Steven Menendez.

Angela Lansbury seemed to be cast in more than her share of film noir titles. Please Murder Me is one of them. She plays a femme fatal, one of the stock characters of film noir, who falls in love with her husband's best friend. When the husband turns up dead, his friend defends her for the murder. After he gets her off he finds out that she was never in love with him at all. She used him to murder her husband and get away with it, though his brilliance as a defense attorney. It's then that he plots to have her murder him so he can be sure she'll receive justice. The film has all the elements of good noir. It's moody in its cinematography, clever in its plot points and heavy handed in its acting, in a good way. Raymond Burr is a great counterpart to Lansbury.

 

This film is available on the Hollywood Bombshells Collection compilation put out by Pop Flix. The quality isn't great, but good enough to get the idea. It's also available on YouTube in its entirety, uploaded by VideosbyBob. Installment 1 is above. The poster is available at MoviePosterShop.com

Obscurity factor: 6 (available on DVD and YouTube, rarely screened on TV, largely unknown)