"The Rains Came" (1939)

20th Century Fox broke the bank on this epic disaster film and it shows. Adapted from a big popular bestseller by Louis Bromfield, it's a soapy melodrama about a bunch of wealthy white British colonials in the province of Ranchipur, India. They have no more pressing concerns than where to have their society teas and which race horse to buy. Lovely Myrna Loy has fun playing the ennui laden countess and wife to a blow-hard imperialist, Nigel "Dr. Watson" Bruce. Her old flame, George Brent, is a louche international playboy trying to parry the advances of a sex-starved debutante, Brenda Joyce. Of course, everyone gets their karmic comeuppance via the hand of God (or is it Brahma?) when the monsoon season hits. And boy, does it hit. You could read into the ensuing catastrophic floods that happen as a spiritual cleansing of all these meaningless lives and how they find personal redemption because of it, but let's face it, in a disaster picture you come to see the death and destruction and this movie delivers in spades. Not only do the rising waters lay waste to everything in sight, there's a big earthquake to boot. And if that's not enough a malaria plague afterwards! This was the first move to win an Oscar for visual effects and they're tremendous and downright scary. Folks, this was how it was done without the crutch of CGI. Dams burst, rivers overflow, thousands of extras meet their doom...harrowing stuff. Loy has a touching romance with the one upstanding Indian character, a noble surgeon, but he's played by...Tyrone Power?? Ugh. Hollywood whitewashing strikes again. The only saving grace was that Power was at the height of male pulchritudinous and he's lit here in his dark pancake makeup and turbans like a Hurell photograph, and he never looked more scrumptious.

"Dark Waters" (1944)

You could think of this psychological suspenser  as "Gaslight" with a Cajun accent. Merle Oberon is the sole survivor of an ocean liner torpedoed by a German U Boat. Her parents were two of the casualties, so naturally she comes through her recovery in a highly fragile state. She decides to connect with her only surviving relatives, a long lost aunt and uncle (Fay Bainter and John Qualen) who live in a moss covered plantation deep in the back bayous of Louisiana. When she arrives there's something...not...quite...right. Her family is oddly detached, plus there's an off-putting boarder (Thomas Mitchell), and an overly forward caretaker (Elisha Cook, Jr.). Before you can say "crawfish etouffée" someone or something tries to drive Oberon crazy. Lights going on and off, spooky voices calling her name from the sinister bayous at night, etc. The only person who she can turn to is the local handsome doctor (Franchot Tone). Despite a few plot holes so big an alligator could crawl through them, the whole piece hangs together with a great sense of atmosphere and the game cast. Mitchell is having a ball playing against his normal jovial type, and Oberon's regal beauty is ravishing in the black and white noir lighting. A tasty cinematic gumbo.

"The Unknown" (1927)

There's no other word to describe this disturbing silent film but 'twisted'. And you should expect nothing less from Tod Browning, the director of the infamous horror chiller "Freaks". This story is another set amongst the bodily deformed performers of a traveling circus. Lon "Man of a Thousand Faces" Chaney is an armless knife thrower and sharp shooter. His beautiful assistant, the girl on the receiving end of all those sharp knives, is a young Joan Crawford. She's the daughter of the circus owner and Chaney is obsessively in love with her. Problem is, so is the troupe's strongman, the musclebound mustachioed Norman Kerry. And this is where things get creepy. Really creepy. To describe any more of the plot would short-change the gobsmacking shocks that occur. Let's just say it's weird, it's gruesome, and there's not a little bit of demented humor sprinkled in to make you feel just a tad queasier about the proceedings. The big finish alone is one of those "Oh no, they're not going there, are they?" You'll watch through your hands, believe me. Chaney's performance here is like a man possessed. This is what lovelorn mania really looks like. And Crawford always credited this film as a big turning point in her career, one where she learned how to act in front of a camera. Call it macabre, call it sick, there's no denying it's unforgettable.

"Three Hours to Kill" (1954)

In his best film noir roles, like"Laura" and "Fallen Angel",  actor Dana Andrews was expert at conveying a world-weary melancholy, a lonely man trying to hold onto his values in a sinister world. He brings that same attitude to this nicely plotted western. He's a gunslinger hired by the railroad to protect it's interests. One fateful night he awakens from a blackout with a pistol in hand standing over a dead body, his fiance's possessive brother. The town is quick to lynch him up right away but he escapes. And the rest of the picture turns into a quasi whodunnit as he sleuths his way to finding the real killer. Is it the town barber? The saloon keeper? The local gambler? Or even his best friend? Donna Reed has little to do as his suffering girl but she brings a nice sincerity to her scenes, and she and Andrews create a nice depth to their tortured romance.

"The Hitch-Hiker" (1953)

Actress Ida Lupino knew her way around a film noir picture. She was always terrific playing the hard-bitten dame. So it's no surprise when she went behind the camera to direct (a rarity in itself for Old Hollywood), she spun gold out of the genre in this first-rate economical thriller. "Ripped from the headlines", this is based on the real story of a serial killer hitchhiker in Southern California who'd gun down his unsuspecting victims, steal their money and make off with their vehicle. (Did movies make hitching so scary...or was it always such a terrifying thing?) The bad boogeyman in this scenario is a doozy. Played by William Talman this dude is creepy personified, right down to one eye that never closes, even when he's sleeping. He hitches a ride with two friends going on a fishing trip ( Edmund O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy). At gunpoint he forces them  to take him down to Baja California where he can make an escape from the nationwide manhunt on his tail. Afterward he'll presumably kill them both. Lupino juxtaposes the claustrophobic interior of the car with the desolate desert roads, so empty and rocky they look like an alien planet. With no help in sight the victims are doomed. There's a dragnet that ensues with the Mexican police but will they find them in time? Adding to the suspense is an extra layer of storytelling that gives the story even more emotional resonance: there's a decided gay subtext to the relationship between the two gentlemen friends. The 'fishing trip' excuse is thin, a pre-"Brokeback Mountain" cover if there ever was one. And there are too many subtle body language cues--knees touching, arms gently draped over shoulders--for their solicitous gestures to mean anything less. Since Lupino was co-screen writer it's clear what she was aiming for and the hitcher only adds to the sexual tension. Polanski would create the same kind of sexy pressure cooker ten years later with three travelers on a boat in his "Knife in the Water".

"The Pumpkin Eater" (1964)

"Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her..." This is a disquieting character study of an upper middle class British woman (Anne Bancroft) who realizes her cad of a husband (Peter Finch) is a serial cheater. The sad truth rocks her world and the film is a fluidly episodic reveal of how she slowly comes undone from the pressure of trying to understand what she really wants from life. A happy marriage? Good sex? A bunch of kids? A tasteful home? We may not get the answers but Bancroft gives a heartfelt and fragile performance nonetheless, you feel her pain and it aches. When she finally confronts Finch about his misdeeds her rage is cathartic, it shatters the screen. Harold Pinter did the screenplay from a novel by Penelope Mortimer and yes, you get some of those dreaded Pinteresque pauses and his menacingly banal dialog, but Finch and Bancroft pull it off. It helps that the scenes are short snippets, just fleeting glances at the marriage's disintegration. It's all shot in stunning black and white (Bancroft resembles a Modigliani painting come to life) and the jumpy cutting keeps things moving. Credit goes to Jack Clayton for the cool direction. A fleeting bit of a young Maggie Smith is on hand, she steals her few scenes, and so is an acidic James Mason as the cuckold husband of Finch's mistress. The whole piece is like bracing swig of a strong gin and tonic in a chic London flat. It's not necessarily festive and fun but the icy buzz packs a punch.

"Brighton Rock" (1948)

A tight, intense thriller noir adapted from a novel by Graham Greene. This is a British production, so it's fun to see what they did with the genre's tenets across the pond. A young baby-faced Richard Attenborough is a streetwise gang member who kills a journalist in the seaside resort town of Brighton. The victim has a ladyfriend (Hermione Baddely, Mrs Naugatuck from TV's "Maude") who isn't buying the police's theory of suicide so she takes matters into her own hands. Attenborough gives a lean and menacing performance, this was years before all those angry young men that the British New Wave cinema gave us in the 1960's. He's ruthless in wooing a naive waitress (Carol Marsh) who, unbeknownst to her, can identify him as the killer. Will the amateur lady sleuth finger the hoodlum before he's found out by his girl? Therein lies the suspense. And it's a smartly plotted ride. Amazing and  gritty on-location photography provides loads of atmosphere to backdrop all the action. And a terrifically poignant ending to boot.