jaferacer's - Rented List

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Frontiersman Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) wanders the West obsessed with finding the men responsible for murdering his fiancee.

His quest leads him to 'Chuck-a-Luck' - the film's original title - a combination horse ranch and criminal hideout overseen by saloon chanteuse Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich). Posing as an escaped criminal, Haskell falls in with murderous gunslinger Frenchy Fairmont (Mel Ferrer) and slowly but surely becomes indistinguishable from those he is hunting. Adapted from a story the director had developed with Sylvia Richards, Lang and screenwriter Daniel Taradash fashioned a highly moral and distinctly feminist tale that innovatively re-worked his quintessential themes of love, betrayal and retribution. A troubled production due to the interventions of studio head Howard Hughes and the fiery relationship between Lang and the iconic Dietrich - seldom better - 'Rancho Notorious' is now justly celebrated as a unique and visionary classic.

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Ruthless criminals, a dedicated honest cop, sultry women and a gripping plot - all the elements of a classic police action-drama are here in force. Police Sergeant Bannion (Glenn Ford) is investigating the apparent suicide of a corrupt cop, then is suddenly ordered to stop - and The Big Heat is on.

Driven to unravel the mystery, Bannion continues probing until an explosion meant for him, kills his wife. He resigns from he force and soon learns that behind it all is the powerful underworld led by Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and his cold-blooded henchman, Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). When Stone's girl Debby (Gloria Grahame) makes a play for Bannion, Stone disfigures her face and in revenge, she tells all she knows. A life-or-death confrontation between Bannion and Stone brings this classic film noir thriller to a climatic unmissable finale!

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After his release from the asylum, to celebrate his return to the real world, Neale (Ray Milland) visits a local carnival, only to accidentally receive the "prize" of a cake which was meant for a Nazi agent.

When he discovers the error, he turns for help to a detective, whose investigations only serve to make the situation more complicated. Neale soon winds up on the run from both the Nazis and the police, who mistakenly believe him guilty of murder. He is led to Scotland Yard, where his fate entwines further with a Nazi front organization, and an unlikely love affair.

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The film is Fritz Lang's seventh Hollywood feature, made in 1953 on a miniscule budget and shot in just twenty days by one of the best 'noir' cameramen Nicholas Musurca and is considered one of his best murder mystery films.

Norah (Anne Baxter) is a pretty telephone operator engaged to a soldier posted overseas. When she receives a letter from him ending their engagement, feeling despondent, she falls for the charms of Officer Lothario and agrees to a date. They go to the Blue Gardenia Club, where he gets her drunk and then takes her back to his apartment. She is later forced to fight off his lecherous advances by bludgeoning him to death and flees, leaving behind her handkerchief, high heels and a blue gardenia at the scene. She awakes the next morning remembering nothing while a nationwide murder hunt gets underway, but journalist Casey Mayo (Richard Conte) offers his support and suggests an interview in exchange for a fair trial.

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After his brother Jesse is shot in the back by former accomplice Bob Ford (John Carradine), Frank James (Henry Fonda) retires from his life of crime to become a peaceful farmer, though he has never given up his search for the treacherous Ford.

The killer and his cohorts are eventually rounded up, but are pardoned due to political intervention. That's when Frank takes up his Colt once more to seek his own form of justice, accompanied by Clem (Jackie Cooper), a headstrong young sprout. Making her screen debut is Gene Tierney, in the role of an Eastern reporter who wants to tell Frank's true story to the world.

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Carl Buckley (Broderick Crawford) needs the intervention of his beautiful wife Vicki (Gloria Grahame) to keep his job, so Vicki meets with Carl's boss Owens, and secures Carl's job. Insanely jealous, Carl finds Vicki with Owens on board a train and brutally beats her and kills Owens.

Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford), an off-duty engineer, protects Vicki and they begin an affair. Still obsessively jealous, Carl becomes an alcoholic and blackmails Vicki into staying with him. Vicki then comes up with a plan for Jeff to dispose of her violent husband...

A German architect (Paul Hubschmid) is commissioned by an Indian Maharaja (Walter Reyer) to construct a temple on his palatial grounds. After saving the life of a bewitching dancer (Debra Paget), the hero is pulled ever deeper into the classic Lang motif of Man vs. His Fate.

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While on holiday in Bavaria, wildlife hunter Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) stumbles upon the Fuhrer's country retreat, eventually spotting Hitler in the gardens.

After lining up the leader in the crosshairs of his empty rifle, Thorndike is arrested by members of Hitler's Gestapo bodyguard, who try to beat a confession out of him. After eventually escaping and navigating a tortuous route back to Britain, Thorndike is forced to seek help from local seamstress Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett) when he discovers German agents are hunting him down.

While a police-eluding serial killer prowls the New York streets, newspaper publisher Walter Kyne pits his three top newsmen against each other to catch the maniac and scoop the story, but in the ensuing chase the hounds become entangled in professional rivalry and romantic complications - with deadly consequences.

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Harry Caine is a successful writer but a man who writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years ago Harry was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote, resulting in not only the loss of his sight, but of something much greater.

However Harry Caine is a pseudonym and only a few people know Harry's real identity, and of the life he led before the accident. Now Harry has decided to tell the moving and terrible story of his former self, a story of "amour foil*, dominated by love, jealously, treachery and fatality.

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Rudolf Klein-Rogge plays Dr. Mabuse, the criminal mastermind whose nefarious machinations provide the cover for - or describe the result of - the economic upheaval and social bacchanalia at the heart of Weimar-era Berlin.

Initiated with the arch-villain's diabolical manipulation of the stock-market, and passing through a series of dramatic events based around hypnotism, charlatanism, hallucinations, Chinese incantations, cold-blooded murder, opiate narcosis and cocaine anxiety, Lang's film maintains an unrelenting power all the way to the final act...which culminates in the terrifying question: "Where is Mabuse?!"

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Based on Ira Woldert's true account, the movie casts Tyrone Power as an American Navy officer stranded after the wreck of Bataan.

Along with harassed local - Jeanne Martinez (Micheline Prelle) - he leads a small, heroic band in feats of espionage until General MacArthur's famous return to the Philippines at the end of WWII.

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As Joan (Sylvia Sidney) excitedly awaits the release of her thrice-convicted criminal lover Eddie (Henry Fonda), she has little idea of the tragic consequences that lie in front of them.

Once released, Eddie struggles against a society that refuses to give ex-cons a second chance and before long they are on the run, condemning themselves to an early demise.

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Intriguing film noir about a novelist (Dana Andrews) out to expose the injustices of capital punishment. Working with his fiancee's (Joan Fontaine) father, a newspaper publisher (Sidney Blackmer), he frames himself for murder, intending to produce exonerating evidence at the last moment.

But the publisher suddenly dies, the evidence is lost...and that's only the first twist in a brilliantly layered plot ideally suited to Lang's talents.