Tonight's Movie: Dark City (1950) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

Tonight I revisited DARK CITY (1950), a serviceable if not especially scintillating crime film.

I first saw DARK CITY in 2018 at the Noir City Hollywood Festival; it's now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber in the Dark Side of Cinema XIX collection.

DARK CITY starts off "Introducing Charlton Heston," starring in his first feature film. He plays Danny Haley, a bitter war veteran mixed up in a bookie racket.

Danny fleeces businessman Arthur Winant (Don DeFore) out of $5000 in a poker game, leading Winant to kill himself, as the money had belonged to his employer. Very quickly thereafter, the men involved in the fateful poker game begin dying, to the consternation of Captain Garvey (Dean Jagger) of the police department.

DARK CITY is a fairly involving film, but although I generally like Heston he's the least interesting aspect of the movie; his character is unpleasant and one-dimensional. He's simply an unpleasant guy to be around, so rude to his nightclub singer girlfriend Fran (Lizabeth Scott) that you really wonder what she sees in him.

I'd note it's the type of role which could easily have been played by Burt Lancaster, Scott's leading man in I WALK ALONE (1947) and DESERT FURY (1947).

While Heston's Danny becomes a bit tedious, between his performance and a script which doesn't offer much in the way of character shadings, the movie succeeds to the extent it does thanks to an interesting mystery and a good cast. Scott is appealing performing several nightclub numbers, dubbed by Trudy Stevens, gowned in a fabulous wardrobe by Edith Head.  Her Fran probably could have done much better for herself than sullen Danny.

Jagger manages to be much more interesting than Heston, even though he's often stuck laying out exposition to move the mystery along. Jagger reminds me of Lloyd Nolan in his ability to making something watchable out of pretty basic dialogue.

It's also fun to see Jack Webb and Harry Morgan teamed up in this as Danny's confederates, many years before DRAGNET. Webb and Morgan also appeared together the following year in APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER (1951) which is also available from Kino Lorber; I'll be reviewing that disc soon.  (Update: Here is the review!)

The solid supporting cast also includes Walter Sande, Mike Mazurki, Viveca Lindfors, and Ed Begley.

This 98-minute film was directed by William Dieterle and filmed in black and white by Victor Milner. The score was by Franz Waxman.

A bit of trivia: This is a rare movie which is set at Easter; the film opens with Danny buying Fran a gift for the holiday.

The Blu-ray print is from a new HD Master from a 4K scan. It looks terrific and sounds great too.

Disc extras consist of the trailer; a gallery of four additional trailers; and a commentary track by Alan K. Rode.

The other films in this set are the excellent NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950) and BEWARE, MY LOVELY (1952), which I'll be reviewing at a future date.

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

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