The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948, USA, Huston)

Being poor doesn’t make you a better person.  It makes you greedy and mean and paranoid, and desperate to hold on to any wealth that may come your way.  Well, or maybe that’s just Humphrey Bogart, whose latent psychotic tendencies are triggered by the sight or thought or even smell of GOLD, GOLD I tell you, the hills are full of GOLD, and it’s all mine!!!!!  Watched it all.

.. and so we enter .. 1949!

House of Strangers (1949, USA, Mankiewicz)

You can put a moustache on Edward G. Robinson and teach him to talk like Chico Marx, but that still doesn’t make him a believable Italian-American.  And it’s a shame too, because this looked pretty good until he showed up.  Watched: 20 minutes.

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Reign of Terror (1949, USA, Mann)

Trust Anthony Mann to make the most out of a low budget, and bring out the Reign of Terror not the way it actually happened, but the way it appears in our nightmares, a time of blood and chaos and fanaticism.  Watched it all.

The Red Menace (1949, USA, Springsteen)

The Communist Party has tentacles all over America, and every time they manage to seduce and ensnare another disaffected veteran, a Party boss in some secret Party lair strokes his Party cat and goes muwhahahaha.   Watched: 14 minutes.  I kind of look forward to seeing some genuine red scare movies now.  Maybe there are even a few good ones?