Seminal Image Friday #4: The Last Days of Film noir

In its final hours, that mode of cinema we call Film noir became the most forbidding tapestry of human life memorialized by cameras, projected onto screens and set before moviegoing eyes; a ruthless fun house mirror where every notion of fun was a shuck. These images hail from those final days, many of them from works not normally thought of in this context.


Scum of the Earth
(Herschell Gordon Lewis; 1963)


Mister Buddwing
(Delbert Mann; 1965)


The Love Merchant
(Joseph W. Sarno; 1966)


The Sin Syndicate
(Michael Findlay; 1965)


Cape Fear
(J. Lee Thompson; 1962)


Date Bait
(O'Dale Ireland; 1960)


Strangers in the City
(Rick Carrier; 1962)


The Days of Wine and Roses
(Blake Edwards; 1963)


Strange Compulsion
(Irvin Berwick; 1964)


Brainstorm
(William Conrad; 1965)


The Wild and the Naked
(Stan Roberts; 1962)


Aroused
(Anton Holden; 1966)


The Strangler
(Burt Topper; 1964)


Good Time With a Bad Girl
(Barry Mahon; 1966)


Blast of Silence
(Allen Baron; 1961)


Who Killed Teddy Bear
(Joseph Cates; 1965)


Kitten With a Whip
(Douglas Heyes; 1963)


Sin in the Suburbs
(Joseph W. Sarno; 1964)


Common Law Wife
(Eric Sayers, Larry Buchanan; 1963)


The Naked Kiss
(Samuel Fuller; 1964)