Double Feature
Born to Kill
Director Robert Wise’s suspense classic of love, money and cold-blooded obsession! Helen Brent knows Sam Wild is more than a social climber who married her wealthy foster sister. He’s a remorseless killer. And yet she finds his brash confidence, square-shouldered good looks and constant aura of menace completely irresistible. Versatile director Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Sound of Music, West Side Story) shows his film noir chops with this dark gem whose mix of heiress sisters, stone-hearted men, needy hangers-on and inexplicable but inevitable love plays like a soap opera that refuses to wash itself clean. Walter Slezak portrays the verse-quoting shamus. And Claire Trevor and Lawrence Tierney portray the illicit lovers who play with fire… and burn their names forever into film noir lore. (Warner Bros)
- Director
- Robert Wise
- Writer
- Screenplay by Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay based on the novel "Deadlier Than the Male" by James Gunn
- Starring
- Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook Jr.
- Year
- 1947
- Country
- USA
- Format
- 35mm
- Running Time
- 92 minutes
The Set-Up
Boxing Wednesdays. Wrestling on Fridays. Stoker Thompson is on Paradise City’s Wednesday card, fighting after the main event. He’s been 20 years in the game and is sure he’s just one punch away from big paydays. But there’s one thing Stoker doesn’t yet know: his manager wants him to take a dive tonight. The Set-Up comes out swinging as one of the great films about the so-called sweet science. Robert Wise directs, shaping real-time events into an acclaimed and unsparing film-noir look at the stale-air venues, bloodthirsty fans, ring savagery and delusional dreams of boxing’s palooka world. Robert Ryan embraces perhaps his finest screen hour as Stoker. Audrey Totter, like Ryan an icon of the noir genre, plays Stoker’s steadfast wife. In a sport that would take their last flicker of dignity, the Thompsons are reclaiming theirs. (Warner Bros)
- Director
- Robert Wise
- Writer
- Screenplay by Art Cohn from the poem by Joseph Moncure March
- Starring
- Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter, Wallace Ford
- Year
- 1949
- Country
- USA
- Format
- 35mm
- Running Time
- 73 minutes