The Chase
(1946) /
Bury Me Dead (1947)

VCI Entertainment Classic Film Noir Double Bill Vol. 2.

US VCI DVD edition

VCI informs that they have had problems with the audio and picture when restoring The Chase

Text below written 2020-03-05


The Chase
(1946) directed by Arthur Ripley

An obscure and unusual B Noir with a very intricate almost experimentally constructed narrative. Yes, a Film Noir with somewhat of an
artmovie character and as a viewer you don't know whats for "real" and what's a dream. Very interesting and just what made me love the
writings of crime master Cornell Woolrich. When reading his novels and stories you feel like you're walking in a fever induced dream.
This film is based on his 1944 novel "The Black Path of Fear" a novel in his famous Black Series (that started out with his 1940 the Bride
Wore Black, his first regular crime novel after writing an enormous amount of pulp fiction stories published in a plethora of magazines).

A man, Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) is back from WW2 and without a job and money when he finds a wallet full of money. He finds
the owner, the psychopathic gangster Eddie Roman (played excellently by Steve Cochran, slimy like a Eric Roberts B movie character)
who offers him a job as his chauffeur. But, and there's always a But in a film noir, the unhappy and beautiful wife of Eddie, Lorna (Michele
Morgan, the french actress) offers Chuck 1000 USD if he saves her and takes her to Havana, Cuba, and soon The Chase is on and reality
and fantasy is floating and start to mix. A state of mind the Woolrich protégées often find themselves struggling with, dream or reality?

The director Arthur Ripley show us some bravery when he try to do something original and new with this crime writing material, but
without really succeeding that well. The dreamlike story is very well photographed however by acclaimed cinematographer Franz Planer
(1894-1963, born in Austria-Hungary) who shot the film in a cool expressionistic european style, and that is why i feel so disappointed
that this VCI DVD edition of the movie NOT manages to present the exquisite visuals of this film in a better way.

But, BUT, when re-writing this text in february 2020 i see that Kino Classics has released this film on a Blu-ray in 2016 with a UCLA
restoration of the film. Even though the direction and else is strictly B the dreamlike structure of the story and the visuals makes it
worth buying, i think .... maybe. Perhaps mostly for Cornell Woolrich fans

The film was presented by VCI in an original fullscreen 4:3 format, mono audio, black & white, with a commentary track by Jay Fenton

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Bury Me Dead (1947) directed by Bernhard Vorhaus

A Film Noir comedy !? where rich Barbara Carlin (June Lockhart) witnesses her own funeral after supposedly having died in a fire.
Who's in the coffin then, and could her husband Rod and/or her young sister Rusty (a fine as always Cathy O' Donnell) have had
something to do with it? Film Noir and Comedy, could that work? Well, not so much i think, but that's me.
Great photo from master John Alton.

The film was presented by VCI in an original fullscreen 4:3 format, mono audio, black & white, with a commentary audio track by
Jay Fenton, text sheet, biographies, filmographies, stills, trailers and, for some reason, a 1942 Superman cartoon (8 minutes)

 

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