Anatomy of a Murder James Stewart is superb as Paul Biegler, an attorney who is plagued with doubts about the innocence of the man he is defending in a tawdry murder case. A beautiful young wife, Laura Manion (Lee Remick) has a penchant for sleeping around town. Laura tells her husband that she was raped and beaten up in their trailer by a bartender, Barney Quill. Enraged, Laura’s husband, Sgt. Fredrick Manion (Ben Gazzara), kills Barney Quill. It’s up to attorney Biegler to unravel the truth before the case goes to the jury.
	Appointment with Danger Before the expression ‘gone Postal’ was commonplace in America, film fans were thrilled by Alan Ladd’s performance as postal inspector Al Goddard in this solid mystery from 1954. Investigating a murder of one of his colleagues, Goddard must find the only witness to the murder, an attractive nun, Sister Augustine (Phyllis Calvert). Goddard is forced to go undercover as he tries to track down two murderers, oddly cast with Harry Morgan and an unusually vicious Jack Webb (before Webb would star on TV in his own noir-inspired Dragnet).
	The Big Sleep Humphrey Bogart and a sultry Lauren Bacall starred in this 1946 classic based on the Raymond Chandler mystery. Gumshoe Philip Marlowe is hired by millionaire General Sternwood to investigate a case of blackmail. Sternwood’s pouting and petulant daughter Carmen is a sulky sex kitten with a stack of gambling debts. Rare book dealer, Arthur Geiger, is demanding that Sternwood make good on the debts but it is obvious that the ‘debts’ are really a sham cover for blackmail.
	The Blue Dahlia This fast-paced film, with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler, stars Alan Ladd as Johnny Morrison, a soldier who returns from the war to discover his wife Helen (Doris Dowling has been two-timing him. Helen is found murdered and Johnny knows he’s been set-up to take the fall. Enlisting the help of the ex-wife of Helen’s former lover (a sexy Veronica Lake as Joyce Haywood), Morrison struggles to clear his name and track down the true murderer. Ladd earned a nomination for an Academy Award in 1947 for The Blue Dahlia and this dark and dramatic mystery is film noir through and through.