 
House Of Bamboo Panic In The Streets Hustle Wire In The Blood: The Complete First Season Fox has been cleaning out the closet lately and making a number of B-movies available as part of their new film noir series. While none of them can legitimately be designated as ‘classics,’ they are evocative of a certain time and mood that was popular in the ‘40s and early ‘50s. Panic In The Streets was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Richard Widmark as a representative of the U.S. Public Health Service who discovers a strain of bubonic plague spreading throughout New Orleans and must capture a pair of infected thugs before they spread the disease to the population at large. Zero Mostel, Paul Douglas and a young Jack Palance add weight to the cast of this suspense-filled drama that benefits from being shot on location. The Street With No Name refers to the area of any city where crime runs rampant and in this flick, Widmark plays the head of a crime syndicate that’s infiltrated by an FBI agent, following two deaths that are traced to the same gun. The same plot was used again in House Of Bamboo, except this time the city is Tokyo and Robert Stack plays an Army officer charged with getting the dirt on Robert Ryan and his well-dressed gang of thugs. Samuel Fuller directed Bamboo on location again, adding to the realism of the picture. Additional titles in the current series include Laura, Call Northside 777 and Nightmare Alley. While not officially film noir, Hustle could easily fit on a double bill with any of the aforementioned films. Burt Reynolds plays an L.A. cop investigating the murder of a young hooker with connections to a high-ranking political figure (Eddie Albert). Catherine Deneuve plays his girlfriend – also a hooker, who wants nothing more than to leave the life and go away with her man. Reynolds is joined by Paul Winfield, Ernest Borgnine and Eileen Brennan, all of whom turn in strong performances. BBC America’s Wire In The Blood is a fine adaptation of Val McDermid novels and stars Robson Green as Dr. Tony Hill, a clinical psychologist with the uncanny ability to get into the minds of both killer and victim, but not on the level of say, Lance Hendriksen in Millennium. In “The Mermaids Singing” Hill appears to be a little nutty, talking to himself, stuttering, etc. but by the second episode, his natterings are all but gone and he turns into more of a traditional investigator. Teaming up with D.I. Carol Jordan, they search out and arrest repeat offenders using a combination of forensics and psychological profiling. The dialog is sharp and engaging and the program is not afraid to dance along the edges of the dark side, both visually and thematically. - David Bassin
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