Forgotten Noir Collectors Set Vol. #3

9 movies/3 DVDs

DAVID HARDING, COUNTERSPY – Based on the popular 1942-1957 network radio series created by Phillips H. Lord. Howard St. John is the Washington DC-based David Harding, head of a covert counter-espionage organization, charged with preventing top-secret scientific information from reaching the hands of America’s enemies around the world, and trying to convince a hell-raising radio correspondent to join the fight. 1950|80 min.|B&W|1.33:1|NR

DANGER ZONE – When you deal with dames, you are in the Danger Zone, as the character of crime detector Dennis O’Brien (Hugh Beaumont) learns in his inaugural mystery-drama. The private eye first cracks a case involving smuggling ring, then tackles an assignment that involves blackmail, murder and film noir’s top bad guy, Tom Neal. 1951|57 min.|B&W|1.33:1:|NR

THE BIG CHASE – As his expectant wife (Adele Jergens) enters the hospital in anticipation of the blessed event, cop Glenn Langan is off to the races, trailing payroll robbers (including Jim Davis and Lon Chaney Jr.) on a mad chase that goes from cars to rowboat to motorboat to helicopter. The chase sequence, captured in all its bullet-to-bullet glory, comprises a third of the movie. 1954|60 min.|B&W|1.85:1|NR

MR. DISTRICT ATTORNEY (1947) –From Phillips H. Lord’s popular NBC radio series comes an intriguing “legal film noir” filled with double-crosses and unusual twists–starting in the opening reel when a woman is slain in her apartment to an escaped killer, and the paper prints that the alive-and-well girlfriend (Marguerite Chapman) of a local crime boss was the victim. 1947|81 min.|B&W|1.33:1|NR

RINGSIDE – Middleweight boxer works his way up to a title fight, and loses it and his eyesight when the champion seeing that his opponent is blind in one eye goes to work on the other one! His brother decides to avenge him by taking up boxing himself and…and eye for an eye? 1949|63 min.|B&W|1.33:1|NR

HI-JACKED – Parolee/ truck driver Jim Davis now wants to stick to the straight-and-narrow, but finds himself riding a highway of terror when his truck is hijacked and police suspect him because of his past record. The hijackers will stop at nothing to frame him–and even frame his wife! — unless fugitive Davis can deliver them to justice himself. 1950|61 min.|B&W|1.33:1|NR

SCOTLAND YARD INSPECTOR – Cesar Romero stars in this Hammer Films mystery as a Yank newspaperman in London who sets out to solve a murder, American style. The rest of the typically tangled plot includes assaults, a mysterious tape recording, a visit to an asylum and even a plot to steal an inventor’s secrets! Lois Maxwell, the James Bond series’ “Miss Moneypenny”, co-stars. 1952|73 min.|B&W:1.33:1|NR

PIER 23 – Two more “brushes with crime” for ace private detective Dennis O’Brien (Hugh Beaumont). In the first, he gets mixed up with a crooked wrestling referee, an equally corrupt arena owner and murderous grappler Mike Mazurki. Next is a case involving a murdered cop and film noir’s ultimate femme double-crosser, the unforgettable Ann Savage (Detour). 1951|59 min.|B&W|1.33:1|NR

THE CASE OF THE BABY-SITTER: Jewel thieves, operating in the guise of a Duke and Duchess, hire the Ace Detective Agency to “baby sit” the infant they are using as a blind for their thefts. A rival mob dopes the detective’s dumb aide and make off with a valuable diamond. 1947|43 min.|B&W|1.33:1|NR

SPECIAL FEATURES:  LORD OF THE RADIO (Jean Lord Greenlaw interview, with Richard Roberts), SCOTLAND YARD INSPECTOR – Featurette by Joel Blumberg, PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE (Radio program and source for PIER 23),  , MR. DISTRICT ATTORNEY – RADIO PROGRAM, THE BIG CHASE (Robert L. Lippert Jr. interview with Tom Weaver – reenactment), and Trailers.