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

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (March 2024): Kino have transferred three more films for their seventeenth edition of Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema series to three Blu-rays. They are cited as being from a "Brand New HD Masters - From 2K Scans of the 35mm Fine Grains". All three 50's films, Vice Squad, Black Tuesday and Nightmare, star Edward G. Robinson and all are on their own single-layered Blu-ray discs with high bitrates. Gregory reviewed 2012 DVDs of Vice Squad HERE and 2009 Spanish PAL DVD of Nightmare HERE. We've compared screen captures below - and Nightmare is remarkable for the unusual framing with much more shown in the bottom of the 1.85:1 frame but frequent chopped heads in the top (?!?) The 1080P all look very good with occasional speckles but decent contrast and surprising detail - notable on close-ups in Black Tuesday. These are bright and consistent with pleasing shadow detail. All good on the image-front with one brief sequences in Nightmare at 1-hour 6-minutes that is inordinately soft. 

NOTE: We have added 150 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. Effects exist - mostly cars and guns with occasionally bombastic scores, by Herschel Burke Gilbert (The Thief, While the City Sleeps, Witness to Murder, Riot in Cell Block 11) on Vice Squad and Nightmare and by Paul Dunlap (How to Make a Monster, The Angry Red Planet, Shack Out on 101, Portland Expose, Big House U.S.A., Target Earth, Park Row, Cry Vengeance) on Black Tuesday. Nightmare also has Connie Russell belting out What's Your Sad Story and The Last I Ever Saw Of My Man. Billy May and His Orchestra also perform in the film as themselves and provide the theme song, "Nightmare in New Orleans". The audio comes through authentically flat for all three, plus consistent and clean with clearly audible dialogue. Kino offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-rays.  

The Kino Blu-rays offer new commentaries by film historian / screenwriter Gary Gerani (Fantastic Television) on the first two films; Vice Squad and Black Tuesday discussing the intricacies of the production, Edward G. and rest of the cast and crew. There is also a commentary by Professor and film scholar Jason A. Ney on Nightmare. He talks about this late entry into the noir cycle, the 'dark cinema' elements, the era's vision of masculinity, how this version of the story deviates from both the novella from Cornell Woolrich that it is adapting and the 1947 film Fear in the Night that it was remade from - as well as what makes Woolrich such an influential inspiration for film noir, the production background including its shooting locations, where the film fits into the lives and careers of the actors - especially Edward G. Robinson, and he touches on the Freudian elements as well. The commentaries are highly informative - and well-researched. Bravo. There is also a German trailer for Vice Squad and a title-less trailer for Black Tuesday.

Unlike a few of the less-noir clunkers in some of the later Dark Side Blu-ray series, I really enjoyed all three here; Vice Squad (1953) is also known as The Girl in Room 17, Girl in Room 13 or Harness Bull. Along with Edward G. this police-procedural has, brief, Paulette Goddard (Modern Times), K.T. Stevens (Missile to the Moon, and daughter of Sam Wood appearing in his Kitty Foyle), noir mainstay Edward Binns (The Scarlet Hour), and western stalwart Lee Van Cleef. This 'Dark Side #17' package also has a 1954 prison-break thriller, Black Tuesday with Edward G. playing violent con, Vincent Canelli, sharing Death Row with inmate Peter Graves (Mission Impossible.) It's an effective gangster melodrama. Lastly, is my favorite of the three - the  adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's (using his pseudonym 'William Irish') psychological thriller novella Nightmare from 1956 starring Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) with support from Edward G. Robinson, shapely singer Connie Russell (in her last film role) and recognizable Virginia Christine who had 174 acting credits including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Woman They Almost Lynched, The Killer Is Loose and Billy the Kid Versus Dracula among many TV roles from the 60s and 70s. Nightmare was promoted in posters with Edward G. portraying the hypnotist evoking Night Has a Thousand Eyes, but he was a police detective - brother-in-law to Kevin McCarthy's Stan Grayson tying to solve the mystery and save his wife's brother. The film has a wonderful arty dreamlike opening and surreal flashbacks throughout. Delightful. Highly acclaimed Edward G. Robinson never gave an insincere performance and appeared in more than 100 films, during a 50-year career. The last scene that Robinson filmed was a euthanasia sequence, with his friend and co-star Charlton Heston, in the science fiction film Soylent Green (1973); he died 84 days later. What a legacy. So another Kino Noir Blu-ray Box with value including three strong films each with excellent commentaries. Certainly recommended for the noir, or noir-leaning, devotee. This is a good one, folks - get it.

Gary Tooze