Singapore (1947)
Directed by John Brahm
Written by Seton I. Miller and Robert Thoeren
Starring Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner
Running Time: 1 hour and 19 minutes

Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949)
Directed by William Castle
Written by Henry Jordan and Robert L. Richards
Starring Howard Duff, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, and Tony Curtis
Running Time: 1 hour and 16 minutes

The Raging Tide (1951)
Directed by George Sherman
Written by Ernest K. Gann
Starring Richard Conte, Shelley Winters, and Stephen McNally
Running Time: 1 hour and 32 minutes

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

Kino Lorber’s sixth installment of resurrected and remastered film noirs that have essentially been lost to history is...fine. To be honest, it feels like one of those bundles with one thing that you really want, and then a couple of extras tacked on to goose the asking price. All three of these films feel like movies that would air on TCM once and if you didn’t catch them, you’d never be able to see them again. And yet despite none of these really being true classics, they’re not without their charms.

The crown jewel of this installment of The Dark Side of Cinema is John Brahm’s 1947 Singapore. The billing of Fred MacMurray (Double Indemnity) and Ava Gardner (The Killers, The Night of the Iguana) immediately elevates the film. Though the plot is a relatively boilerplate noir story of contraband, lost love, and amnesia, the leads make this one something special. Fred MacMurray has this big handsome goon vibe that you really don’t see in any other leading men of the era. Where he’s a scumbag in his most famous role in Double Indemnity, here he’s a lovelorn pearl smuggler returning to Singapore after WWII to retrieve some hidden contraband. Memories of his fiancée (Gardner)—who he thought to be killed in a Japanese bombing of the city during the war—come flooding back and wouldn’t you know it, she’s alive! And married! And has no memory of anything that happened before the bombing! A potboiler for sure but MacMurray and Gardner are such a charismatic coupling it's easy to overlook the film’s forced happy ending. It probably goes without saying that since this movie was made in the 1940s, its depiction of “The Orient” is problematic to say the least and has no real interest in using the city as anything other than an exotic backdrop. That said, in terms of cultural insensitivity there’s nothing anywhere close to, say, Mickey Rooney playing an Asian landlord and most of the issues elicit little more than an eyeroll.

Next up is William Castle’s (The House on Haunted Hill) 1949 cop drama Johnny Stool Pigeon. The film lets you know what it is up front with a scroll about the film being dedicated to the hard-working men of law enforcement and the narcotics bureau. A far cry from the morally complicated antiheroes you expect from a noir. Though the cinematography bears all the hallmarks of the genre, the film itself is a plodding look at the narcotics bureau taking down drug smugglers by infiltrating their smuggling ring with the help of the titular Johnny stool pigeon (Dan Duryea, whose surprising intensity peps up an otherwise snore of a movie). Despite its clipped running time, the film drags on toward its inevitable conclusion. Considering that film noir typically tracks in the gray areas between good and evil, it’s odd to see a story that has such a clear black and white morality. If anything it provides a nice contrast to the other, far better expressions of the genre in this set.

George Sherman’s The Raging Tide rights this set’s ship quite literally as it involves a gangster (Richard Conte) taking refuge on a fishing ship in an effort to lay low after a hit. The unorthodoxy of that plot point is enough to make this noir stand out, and while it doesn’t exactly feel like a lost classic like Singapore, there’s a lot to like here. Conte’s gangster is taken into the good graces by the fisherman and his son, and daddy issues emerging as the film’s core theme was something I didn’t see coming. You get lines along like, “If I’d had an old man like yours I wouldn’t have turned to crime” and it’s fascinating watching Conte’s cold-blooded killer develop a moral center only after it’s too late. Shelley Winters played the gun moll in Johnny Stool Pigeon, and she plays the gun moll here. It’s hard to explain Winters’ magnetism. She doesn’t have the natural grace of an Ava Gardner and her acting chops are barely above water, but she has this natural charm that works so well in this gangster’s girlfriend role. The Raging Tide culminates with the fishing boat being caught in a raging storm at sea, and while it’s a little bit too thematically on the nose, it is nice to see a noir set outside of the confines of the grimy city streets.

Though only two of the three films in the set are worth a look, it’s still a noble effort on Kino Lorber’s part to make these underseen noirs available. None of these films are truly essential, but Singapore and The Raging Tide take the genre in some interesting directions while still feeling very much like archetypical film noir. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would naysay the Lord’s work Kino Lorber is doing by reissuing these forgotten films, but it’s hard to recommend this set to anyone but the most diehard of film noir fans.