August is a cruel month for Sunday mornings. This is the time of the year when Turner Classic Movies runs their Summer Under the Stars special. It is cool to indulge in a day’s tribute to a major actor. However this means my beloved Noir Alley doesn’t get played. There’s no Eddie Muller introducing a crime film that has plenty of shadows on the characters. But instead of being upset, I find a few discs to watch on those Sunday mornings.
D.O.A. (1949- 84 minutes) opens with Frank Bigelow (The Wild Bunch’s Edmund O’Brien) marching into police headquarters eager to report a murder. Who is the victim? The cops are astonished to discover it’s Frank. Instead of thinking he’s nuts, the detective has an envelope with Frank’s name. He’s been expected. Someone has poisoned him, but he doesn’t know who or why. He recounts his last day to the cops to get a clue. This starts with him leaving his accounting practice in the desert and his night in San Francisco. One of his secretaries is not happy about him leaving without her. He arrives in the city eager to have fun. The hotel is one giant party with room doors opens and everyone invited inside for a drink or two. A few ladies get sick of the hotel party and want to hit the town. He joins them for a bar crawl. When his stomach is feeling bad, he goes to a doctor where he learns he has glow int the dark poison in his system that will kill him in a day or a week. There’s no cure. This is one of the classics of the film noir. If you’re curious about the genre, D.O.A is a perfect starting film. Edmund O’Brien is perfect as the carefree guy whose life gets flipped with a single toxic drink. Can he solve his own murder before he dies? The film also features The Bradbury office building as seen in Blade Runner.
Borderline (1950 – 88 minutes) takes us to the U.S. – Mexican border for a tale of drug smuggling. Pete Ritchie (Godzilla’s Raymond Burr) is the kingpin for getting narcotics into America. You know he’s wicked since he wears an all-white suit under the hot sun. The feds want to shut his operation down, but they can’t make any progress. In a desperate move, they send in Madeleine Haley (Key Largo‘s Claire Trevor) to infiltrate his business by posing as a dancer. She does have a real background being an LAPD cop and a former OSS agent. Before she can get too tight with the rough Ritchie, she gets grabbed by Johnny Macklin (Double Indemnity‘s Fred MacMurray), a rival drug smuggler. Also nobody seems to know is who is backing Mackin’s organization. She’s caught up in the middle of a gang war. Will Madeleine Haley return from Mexico in one piece? Borderline is a great little film when you have Burr and MacMurray facing off. Those of us who grew up with them on TV remember them as law and order kinda guys. Here we get to see them being evil on the South side of the border.
D.O.A. and Borderline make a proper double feature because the first film features Beverly Garland and the second has Fred MacMurray. They ended up getting married in the final seasons of My Three Sons. For fans of Perry Mason reruns on MeTV, you get to see the dark side of Raymond Burr. Film Noir Classics Volume #1 – D.O.A. & Borderline will make your Sunday mornings in August feel a bit more shadowy when Noir Alley takes a break.
The Video for both films is 1.37:1 full frame. The black and white transfers capture all the shadows around the characters. The Audio is LPCM 2.0 mono for both movies. Things are cleaned up so you can hear the shadows. Both movies are subtitled in English.
The Man Who Made Every Second Count (4:52) is about Edmond O’Brien, the star of D.O.A. He was born and raised in Brookyln. They follow his career to The Wild Bunch. He started on Broadway including John Gielgud in Hamlet. He fought in World War II. When he returned to Hollywood, the Noir was taking hold with their shadowy stories. There’s plenty of press photos from D.O.A. as part of the narrative.
The Eye Behind the Shadows (5:14) is about Rudoph Mate, the director of D.O.A. The director started as a cinematographer. There’s talk of how D.O.A. is filmed so it’s an active image on the screen.
From Noir Shadows To Disney Light (3:08) is a brief bit on Fred MacMurray. Most of us knew him as the happy day with the pipe on My Three Sons. But he could play dark Noir characters He also knew how to play the saxophone.
Hollywood’s Hidden Craftsman (4:22) is about director William A. Seiter. He did a lot of films. He got his start as an extra and stunt double for Mack Sennet. He did light comedies in the silent era. He did Wheeler and Woolsey films, a lost comic duo. However he struck gold with Lauren and Hardy directing the iconic masterpiece Sons of the Desert. He also did the Marx Brothers’ Room Service. Borderline was a bit more serious.
VCI Entertainment presents Film Noir Classics Volume #1 – D.O.A. & Borderline. Directed by Rudolph Mate & William A. Seiter. Starring Edmond O’Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler, Beverly Garland, Fred MacMurray, Claire Trevor & Raymond Burr. Boxset Contents: 2 movies on 1 Blu-ray. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: May 26, 2026.
