Tonight's Movie: City of Shadows (1955) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

Today I returned to the Kino Lorber Dark Side of Cinema XVIII collection, which consists of a trio of 1955 movies: FINGERMAN (1955), CRASHOUT (1955), and CITY OF SHADOWS (1955).

CITY OF SHADOWS is a brisk 70-minute Republic Pictures "B" film directed by Westerns and serial specialist William Witney.

Witney keeps the film fast-paced and entertaining. It's definitely nothing more than a mid-range "B" film but at the same time, it's just the kind of movie I enjoy checking out.

Dan Mason (John Baer) grew up as a streetwise kid (played as a child by Jimmy Grohman) who hit if off with racketeer "Big Tim" Channing (Victor McLaglen).

Channing becomes a father figure to Dan, eventually sending him to law school. Dan has a knack for finding legal loopholes that help Dan in his crooked dealings, but after meeting Fern (Kathleen Crowley), the lovely sister of his roommate (Nicolas Coster), Dan determines to only work in businesses which are on the up-and-up. Dan doesn't want Fern or her upstanding family to have any reason to disapprove of his work.

Dan believes the new security company he sets up with Tim is a legal business, but unknown to him, mobsters are profiting from it behind the scenes. Dan's secretary (June Vincent, BLACK ANGEL) is informing on him to her crooked boss (Anthony Caruso), which leads to an undercover detective (Richard Travis) being killed.

Dan feels he can no longer honorably marry Fern, but a remorseful Tim is determined to unite the couple and set things right with the business and the bad guys.

The movie has a little too much McLaglen for my taste, though admittedly he's one of the better actors in the cast. Baer is bland and Grohman, playing Dan as a child, is frankly obnoxious, but I really enjoyed seeing the cute young Crowley in this.

I also really enjoyed seeing familiar character favorites like Frank Ferguson and John Maxwell in the cast. Other actors in the movie include Richard Reeves, Charles Meredith, and Kay Kuter.

The movie was written by Houston Branch and has a fairly interesting story, which helps despite the film's acting deficiencies. It was filmed in black and white by Reggie Lanning. I'm curious about where the snowy finale was filmed and hope the commentary track by Gary Gerani will shed light when I listen.

In addition to the commentary, the disc has a gallery of three trailers for other films available from Kino Lorber.

Kino Lorber's Blu-ray looks very good indeed; it's hard to imagine a relatively unknown film such as this one ever looking better. Sound quality is excellent. Kudos to Kino Lorber for making this movie available for home viewing.

I've really enjoyed the first two films in this set and plan to review CRASHOUT in the near future.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray collection.

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