CRISS CROSS (1949)

"I wish we'd never met."

Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo have been in a troubled on-again-off-again relationship for years. At one point they were even married!  The marriage only lasted for a few months though before they busted up and Burt hit the road (for over a year) in hopes of getting her out of his system.  It didn't work, cause now he's back and immediately looking for her.  Well, he finds her and quickly discovers that she's now the main squeeze of a local gangster (Dan Duryea), but that's not gonna slow him down though. Ohhh no, not this idiot.  He's head over heels for this chick, no matter how bad is gets.  He even goes so far as to agree to be the inside man on an armored car heist!!! Holy fook!

CRISS CROSS is a highly entertaining film packed into a tight 87 minutes and it has a lot of things going for it.  Most notably Burt Lancaster, director Robert Siodmak, a pre-"Munsters" Yvonne De Carlo, an uncredited appearance by a young Tony Curtis and nice photography by Franz Planer.

If you're into film noir, then I say check it out. I think you'll enjoy it.

THE DEVIL STRIKES AT NIGHT (1957)

During the war years, German director Robert Siodmak made a number of great movies in America, including THE KILLERS (1946) and CRISS CROSS (1949), then in the early 1950's he returned to Germany where he continued to make films, but many of them are hard to find...at least by me. I did recently come across a copy of THE DEVIL STRIKES AT NIGHT and it's an well-made film about a intellectually disabled strongman who's going around killing women during the chaos of the last years of WW2.

The SS are secretly investigating the murders.  When they arrest an innocent man for one of the killings, a lone police detective goes to great lengths to prove his innocence, but unfortunately for him the SS isn't interested in justice only keeping the population under their boot.

The guy who plays the investigator does a fine job, but it's the serial killer (played brilliantly by Mario Adorf) that steals the show. One look at him and you know he's bad news. You wouldn't want to be stuck in a broken elevator with this guy! But even more disturbing are the SS guys who lurk around behind the scenes pulling the strings with no concern for right or wrong or even who dies in the process.

If you can find a copy, it's well worth watching.