Tonight: 99 River Street

I’ve read better lobby card tag lines: “One did it with sheer stockings…One did it for sheer excitement!” But the more I think about it, it does have a rather perverse ring to it.

Diligent hard work all day Saturday earns downtime later Saturday night, as in Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley on TCM at 11:00 PM CST. Tonight: John Payne, Evelyn Keyes and Peggy Castle in 1953’s 99 River Street, directed by low budget noir-ish crime film maestro Phil Karlson, who did three such movies with Payne in the lead. John Payne plays a washed up prize fighter reduced to driving a cab, with a wife who’s none too pleased with cutting coupons in dumpy flat. Which may be why she’s having an affair with a smooth talker, who also happens to be a thief, and who knocks off the the unfaithful wife and then tries to pin the murder on boxer-now-cabbie.

99 River Street didn’t earn rave reviews when released but its reputation has increased in the years since, thanks in large part to film noir experts like Eddie Muller himself. I was sure I’d seen this movie before, but now I’m thinking I’ve mixed it up with a different film altogether (a few of them do start to look the same after a while), so I’m doubly anxious to shut off the computer a few hours from now and settle in at 11:00 for Muller’s intro and an hour and half of some prime viewing. Thank you once again to TCM and Eddie Muller for Noir Alley!