NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (January 2025): Kino have transferred another three films for their twenty-second edition of Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema series to three, single-layered, Blu-rays. This has 1951's The Enforcer with Humphrey Bogart, The Scarlet Hour (1956) and
Plunder Road (1957). They are cited as being from a "2021 & 2022 HD Masters by Paramount Pictures - From 4K Scans". We compared the Artisan DVD to the Olive Blu-ray of The Enforcer back in 2013, HERE - and below. We reviewed t he Imprint Blu-ray of The Scarlet Hour in 2022 HERE - with comparison captures below. We also reviewed the Olive Blu-ray of Plunder Road in 2013, HERE - and made a few comparison captures below. Short story -0 the 2022 Imprint and 2024 Kino transfers of The Scarlet Hour look the same. Both Olive 2013 1080Ps of The Enforcer and Plunder Road look vertically stretched (or maybe the Kino horizontally stretched.) It may be a bit of both but the Kino looks better to me in bother cases; contrast etc. Yes, Blu-ray transfers have definitely improved in the past 11-years. 

NOTE: We have added 106 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-rays, Kino use DTS-HD Master dual-mono tracks (24-bit) in the original English language. There is the anticipated violence and aggressive action sequences that come with the dark cinema cycle. The score for The Enforcer was by David Buttolph (Rope, Secret of the Incas, Street of Chance, The Horse Soldiers, Wake Island, This Gun For Hire, Western Union, Pete Kelly's Blues, Rope, Three Secrets, Kiss of Death, Blood and Sand and many more.) Some may notice Milton Drake's Kiss Me Sweet played over the sidewalk loudspeakers. The score for The Scarlet Hour was by Leith Stevens (Syncopation, The Gun Runners, World Without End, The Night of the Grizzly, I Married a Monster From Outer Space, Hercules and the Captive Women, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Garment Jungle) but notable in the film is Nat 'King' Cole's beautiful Never Let Me Go performed in a nightclub scene sounding magnificent in the uncompressed transfer. Audio is consistent and clean. For Plunder Road the score was by Irving Gertz (Cult of the Cobra, It Came From Outer Space, Blonde Ice, Gun For a Coward, The Leech Woman and The Deadly Mantis among others.) All clean and consistent. Kino offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-rays.

The Kino Blu-rays offer commentaries by noir expert and Film Noir Foundation board member Alan K. Rode author Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film on both The Enforcer and Scarlet Hour. The latter is a duplicate of the 2022 Imprint Blu-ray. He talks about the production frequently identifying many of the LA locations. He expands the stellar supporting cast careers, noting Elaine Stritch's debut, how Nat King Cole was quite a coup for The Scarlet Hour and paid $10,000 for his few minutes of crooning while the same amount was paid to Carol Ohmart for starring in the film. He focuses a lot of attention on Curtiz - the director's love of using reflections, mirrors etc., his 'star maker' quality and his 'Midas Touch', how hard he was on Ohmart - a Mormon who won the title of Miss Utah, and subsequently placed fourth in the Miss America pageant. She also posed for artist Milton Caniff and Rode mentions her controlling stage mother. It's at his usual excellent attention to detail filled with fascinating anecdotal stories including Bogie and Bacall.  For Plunder Road we get a commentary by film historian Jeremy Arnold (author of The Essentials Vol. 2: 52 More Must-See Movies and Why They Matter.). He's excellent - talking about the film's tense mode (lines in-motion), the rain, the trucks (almost characters themselves), the credits, the visual storytelling, the Gertz score, the director  Hubert Cornfield and much about the production. He loves the film as much as I do. He makes some keen observations. Totally worth the indulgence. There is also a trailer for The Enforcer and other genre related films.

This is probably the best Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema Blu-ray package to date for the high quality of the films. Okay, if not of all twenty-two boxsets - certainly the premium of 2024. Raoul Walsh (High Sierra, The Naked and the Dead, The Roaring Twenties) was an uncredited co-director for this police procedural. He shot most of The Enforcer's suspenseful moments, including the conclusion. The initial director Bretaigne Windust (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Leave It to Beaver), had becomes seriously ill during the beginning of shooting. Walsh refused to take credit on the film. The guts of the semi-documentary story were loosely based on the Murder, Inc. organized crime syndicates (1929 to 1941) associated with the Italian-American Mafia, the Jewish Mob, and others. This would be Humphrey Bogart's last film for Warner Bros., the studio where he had his greatest successes. The Enforcer has effective flashbacks and is tangentially-related to the dark cinema cycle. Michael Curtiz's The Scarlet Hour is a highly pleasing 'dark cinema' effort with enough noir conventions to quality for cycle inclusion - notably murder, an adulterous affair and a scheming femme fatale at its core. This was reported to be a star-launching vehicle for Carol Ohmart (House on Haunted Hill, Spider Baby) although it didn't turn out to have future studio support. She certainly has the 'it' factor to a large degree with magnetic camera appeal. Cinematographer Lionel Lindon's (A Man Alone, Conquest of Space, Jivaro) shadows drape seductively over Ohmart's alluring body and calculating eyes throughout. Sleuthing cops E.G. Marshall (12 Angry Men) and Edward Binns (also 12 Angry Men and Curse of the Undead), bad husband James Gregory (The Manchurian Candidate) and secretary-next-door Jody Lawrance (yes, it's spelled that way) are part of the stellar support. The clandestine vinyl store rendezvous scene is reminiscent of the grocer meetings in Double Indemnity. The Scarlet Hour is a big keeper for me. Ditto for Hubert Cornfield's (The Night of the Following Day, Bill Elliott Detective Mysteries) Plunder Road - a keen heist noir with five thieves stealing gold from the US Mint - even discreetly planning to melt-it-down to facilitate their escape. There are wonderful similarities evoking Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (also with Elisha Cook Jr.), John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle and even H.G. Clouzot's The Wages of Fear with explosives jolted by a truck's motion. It may be even be considered a poor-man's Ocean's Eleven. You end up rooting for the criminals to get their hard-earned booty. A wonderful seething noir with a decidedly French, or at least, Euro, sensibility.  Three great commentaries as part of Kino's Blu-ray package. Commentarist of the Year Alan Rode doing two of them and Jeremy Arnold the third! For Noir devotees this package is a must-own.

Gary Tooze