Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema X Blu-ray Review

THE MOVIES

Flesh and Fury (1952) — Gold-digging blonde Sonya Bartow (JAN STERLING) and retired fight manager Pop Richardson (Wallace Ford, He Ran All the Way) take deaf-mute boxer Paul Callan (TONY CURTIS) under their wing. Now Paul is all but unstoppable…until reporter Ann Hollis (MONA FREEMAN) appears and falls for the handsome prizefighter. With a three-way bout under way for influence over Paul, he takes matters into his own hands, but learns the hard way that getting what he wants isn’t necessarily a happy ending.

The Square Jungle (1955) — Eddie Quaid (TONY CURTIS), in danger of losing his father to alcoholism and his girl Julie (PAT CROWLEY) through lack of career prospects, goes into boxing. His cop friend McBride (PAUL KELLY) finances him; ex-con Bernie Browne (ERNEST BORGNINE) trains him. Three years later, he’s a challenger for the championship, and Julie re-enters his life. Can she win him back from a predatory blonde? And why does the prospect of Eddie’s winning worry Bernie more than his losing?

World in My Corner (1956) — Tommy Shea (AUDIE MURPHY) up-and-coming boxer catches the eye of the wealthy Robert Mallison (JEFF MORROW), who allows him to train at his Long Island estate. Shea soon falls for Mallison’s daughter, Dorothy (BARBARA RUSH), but fears he doesn’t have the money to support her in proper style. To get this money, he decides to work for crooked promoter Harry Crom (HOWARD ST. JOHN), even though this means dropping his honest manager, Dave Bernstein (JOHN MCINTIRE).

SPECIAL FEATURES – 2/5

The tenth volume of the Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema has three cases for each movie and they all come with Audio Commentaries and the respective Trailers.

VIDEO – 4¾/5, AUDIO – 4/5

Flesh and Fury is presented in Full Frame 1.37, The Square Jungle in 1.78 widescreen and World in My Corner in 1.85 widescreen, all three films have been given new 2K masters and each do look incredible, and they all still showcase the natural film grain and they’re mostly clean although I did notice some specs in World in My Corner but nothing that I’d consider overly distracting.

All three films come with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks. For the most part these sounds pretty good, though there was some notable hissing for World in My Corner but otherwise everything was crisp and clear when it came to dialogue and depth was decent enough.