Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIII Blu-ray

Firstly, a massive thank you to our Patreon supporters. Your generosity touches me deeply. These supporters have become the single biggest contributing factor to the survival of DVDBeaver. Your assistance has become essential.

What do Patrons receive, that you don't?

1) Our weekly Newsletter sent to your Inbox every Monday morning!
2) Patron-only Silent Auctions - so far over 30 Out-of-Print titles have moved to deserved, appreciative, hands!
3) Access to over 50,000 unpublished screen captures in lossless high-resolution format!

Please consider keeping us in existence with a couple of dollars or more each month (your pocket change!) so we can continue to do our best in giving you timely, thorough reviews, calendar updates and detailed comparisons. Thank you very much.

Search DVDBeaver

S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIII [3 X Blu-ray]

Spy Hunt (1950) The Night Runner (1957)

Step Down to Terror (1958)

Spy Hunt (1950) – The manhunt that rocked the world! Noir great Howard Duff (Johnny Stool Pigeon, Woman in Hiding, Shakedown) stars with the beautiful Märta Torén (One Way Street, Deported, Sirocco) in this compelling Cold War thriller. Steve Quain (Duff), escorting two zoo-bound black panthers on a train from Milan to Paris, is unaware that a secret agent, Catherine Ullven (Torén), has concealed an incriminating microfilm in the collar of one of the animals. But when the train is derailed in the Swiss Alps and the panthers escape, she is forced to involve him in her mission, which now includes enemy spies hunting the microfilm, the animals, Catherine and Steve. Directed by George Sherman (Larceny, The Sleeping City, The Raging Tide) from the novel Panther’s Moon by Victor Canning (Golden Salamander, Family Plot, Masquerade).

The Night Runner (1957) – Are mental patients turned loose too soon? Ray Danton (Outside the Law, The Big Operator, The Longest Day) stars as Roy Turner, a man with a violent past who is prematurely released from an overcrowded institution. Realizing that he cannot handle the pressures of big-city life, he moves into a small-town beachside motel and falls in love with Susan Mayes, warmly played by Colleen Miller (Four Guns to the Border, Man in the Shadow, Step Down to Terror), the daughter of the motel’s owner. When her father finds out about Roy, he threatens to have him recommitted unless he leaves his daughter alone. Roy snaps, and commits a crime from which there is no turning back. Abner Biberman (The Price of Fear, Behind the High Wall, Gun for a Coward) directs this black-as-night yet sympathetic look at mental illness.

Step Down to Terror (1958) – Step by step…he made a career out of love...and murder! Based on the same source material as Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, this suspense-soaked noir stars Colleen Miller (Playgirl, The Night Runner, Hot Summer Night), Charles Drake (I Was a Shoplifter, Female on the Beach, No Name on the Bullet) and Rod Taylor (The Time Machine, The Birds, Darker Than Amber). Pursued by detectives, killer Johnny Walters (Drake) leaves the city to visit his family in a small California town. Among the household: his dead brother’s alluring widow Helen (Miller), who soon is attracted to him. But ominous events and conflicting evidence leave Helen suspicious of her beloved brother-in-law, as director Harry Keller (The Unguarded Moment, Quantez, The Female Animal) expertly ratchets the tension.

Posters

Theatrical Release: June 8th, 1950 - September 12th, 1958

Reviews More Reviews DVD Reviews

Review: Kino - Region 'A' - Blu-ray

Box Cover		CLICK to order from: Bonus Captures:
Distribution	Kino - Region 'A' - Blu-ray
Runtime	Spy Hunt (1950): 1:15:07.541 The Night Runner (1957): 1:19:07.791 Step Down to Terror (1958): 1:16:18.666
Video	Spy Hunt : 1.37:1 1080P Single-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 23,227,773,991 bytes Feature: 21,777,917,952 bytes Video Bitrate: 34.50 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video	The Night Runner: 1.85:1 1080P Single-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 22,909,941,637 bytes Feature: 21,722,474,496 bytes Video Bitrate: 32.91 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
	Step Down to Terror: 1.85:1 1080P Single-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 22,283,191,133 bytes Feature: 20,526,931,968 bytes Video Bitrate: 32.21 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate Spy Hunt Blu-ray:
Bitrate The Night Runner Blu-ray:
Bitrate Step Down to Terror Blu-ray:
Audio	DTS-HD Master Audio English 1966 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1966 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit) Commentary: Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Subtitles	English (SDH), None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Kino Edition Details: • NEW Audio Commentary for The Night Runner by Author/Film Historian Lee Gambin and Dr. Eloise Ross • NEW Audio Commentaries for Spy Hunt and Step Down to Terror by Entertainment Journalists/Authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry • Theatrical Trailers - The Night Runner (2:09) / Step Down to Terror (1:56) Blu-ray Release Date: May 2nd, 2023 Standard Blu-ray Case inside hard case Chapters 8 / 8 / 8

Comments:

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

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (June 2023): Kino have transferred three films for their thirteenth edition of Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema series to Blu-ray. This has Spy Hunt (1950), The Night Runner (1957) and Step Down to Terror (1958.) They are cited as being transferred from "Brand New 2K Masters". They are on three single-layered Blu-ray discs, in 1080P, with very high bitrates and generally look very pleasing with decent contrast balance, no speckles and consistency. There are textures visible and, once again, I really didn't have any concerns with the HD presentations.

NOTE: We have added 137 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. There is not much violence (more in Spy Hunt than the other two with rifle fire and a beating or two) - but the depth is more notable in the scores. The effective music in Spy Hunt is by Walter Scharf (Deported, Abandoned, Three Violent People, Casbah, The Glass Key, Hans Christian Andersen, The Geisha Boy, Rock-a-Bye Baby) and with a few instances of dramatic flair on The Night Runner by Heinz Roemheld (I, Jane Doe, Ruby Gentry, Dangerous, The Monster that Challenged The World, The Land Unknown, The Mole People, 1933's The Invisible Man), Frank Skinner (The Appaloosa, Madame X, Magnificent Obsession, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, All That Heaven Allows, The Naked City) and Herman Stein (Six Bridges to Cross, Son of Ali Baba, Man in the Shadow, Female on the Beach, This Island Earth, It Came From Outer Space, War Arrow, Tarantula, There's Always Tomorrow, The Incredible Shrinking Man) and Step Down to Terror has Stock Music by the likes of William Lava (Five, The Deadly Mantis, Moonrise, S.O.S. Tidal Wave, War Arrow, The Night Riders, Retreat, Hell,) Henry Mancini (Days of Wine and Roses, Oklahoma Crude, Wait Until Dark, Operation Petticoat, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, Experiment in Terror, Charade) and Hans J. Salter (The Female Animal, Naked Alibi, Pittsburgh, Man Without a Star, The Killer that Stalked New York, The Strange Door, Cover Up, Man Without a Star, Scarlet Street, The Land Unknown, The War Lord, The Mole People, The Strange Case of Doctor Rx.) I noted no dropouts or anomalies in the lossless audio transfers. Kino offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region 'A'-locked Blu-rays.

The Kino Blu-rays offer three new commentaries - one for each film. On The Night Runner by author / film historian Lee Gambin and Dr. Eloise Ross and on both Spy Hunt and Step Down to Terror by entertainment journalists / authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry. I have only sampled and they seemed informative. There are also theatrical trailers for The Night Runner and Step Down to Terror and a few other noir-related films.

Well, I don't keep Blu-rays that I probably won't re-watch, but I liked all three films (again) in Kino's 13th entry of their Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema series. This has Spy Hunt (1950), The Night Runner (1957) and Step Down to Terror (1958.) Spy Hunt was less a Noir but still had a Hitchcockian feel with adventure-intrigue-Euro-travel with echoes of The 39 Steps or The Lady Vanishes. It centers on espionage with rival spies seeking two escaped panthers in Switzerland as one has microfilm hidden in its collar. Hence the alternative name Panther's Moon from the Victor Canning novel that it is based on. George Sherman provides fine direction and it stars Howard Duff and beauty Märta Torén, plus a wonderful supporting cast; Philip Friend, Robert Douglas, Philip Dorn and Walter Slezak. The Night Runner was directed by Abner Biberman (who acted in more films than he directed) and is about a prematurely released mentally-ill patient, Ray Danton as 'Roy Turner', who falls in love with 'Susan Mayes' (played by lovely Colleen Miller) but stress gets the better of him and he cannot control himself committing a violent murder - a mystery his gal-pal is slowly solving. Step Down to Terror is a remake of the Hitchcock's 1943 masterpiece Shadow of a Doubt - 'The Master's personal favorite of his own films. It has Colleen Miller (also in The Night Runner) in the Teresa Wright 'niece' role and Charles Drake (playing Johnny) as the kindly, mysterious relation played unforgettably in 1943' by Joe Cotten. There are plenty of story similarities; small town innocence, the oblivious maternal figure warmly embracing him, he is followed by two men in the opening scene, he cuts incriminating evidence out of a newspaper, Helen (Colleen Miller) sleuths to a library that is in the process of closing etc. But there are decently propagated differences and although definitely a poorer cousin to Shadow of a Doubt, I was very much entertained. So another Noir Blu-ray Box keeper for me. One I can certainly recommend.