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

ADDITION: Warner Archive Blu-ray (November 2026): Warner Archive have transferred André De Toth's Crime Wave to Blu-ray. The 1080P image is presented in the original 1.37:1 Academy ratio. Like most Warner Archive releases of this vintage, it appears to come from a new scan of the best surviving elements, and it is a stellar upgrade over the 2007 DVD in Warner’s Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4, reviewed HERE. That DVD was very respectable for its time, but it shared a disc with Decoy and was limited by standard definition. In the comparisons, the DVD looks soft and slightly flat, with brighter, thinner blacks and a waxy quality to faces and fabrics. The Blu-ray resolves a natural, consistent grain structure and an astonishing jump in texture. The herringbone weave of Sterling Hayden’s tweed jacket, the toothpick in his mouth, the sheen of Phyllis Kirk’s robe, the leather of the young Bronson’s jacket and beads of sweat on faces are all rendered with a clarity the SD transfer couldn’t approach. Contrast is richer and more layered, with deep, solid blacks and well-defined shadow detail. This is crucial for Bert Glennon’s night-for-night photography and the shadow-laden interiors, such as the striking overhead staircase shot. Framing is nearly identical to the DVD’s, with only minor shifts at the edges. The source is clean, with no speckles or damage of note, and there is no sign of noise reduction or artificial sharpening. This is a film-like, extremely pleasing presentation that does full justice to the location shooting and the film’s gritty, nocturnal Los Angeles.

NOTE: We have added 60 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE.

On their Blu-ray, Warner Archive use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. This is a clear step up from the DVD’s lossy Dolby Digital mono. The film’s soundscape is not showy, with its police radio chatter, city ambience, gunfire and clipped dialogue, but it is crisp, clean and free of hiss or dropouts, with good depth for a 1954 track. David Buttolph’s sparse score comes through with appropriate weight in the tense moments without ever overwhelming the dialogue. There are optional English (SDH) subtitles in a white font, and the Blu-ray is region FREE.

The extras on the Warner Archive Blu-ray are carried over from the 2007 DVD and adds a couple of vintage period pieces. The highlight remains the audio commentary by Eddie Muller (Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir,) founder of the Film Noir Foundation, and author James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz.) Ellroy’s unfiltered, profane enthusiasm for Crime Wave, along with his intimate knowledge of 1950s LAPD lore and Los Angeles geography, plays off beautifully against Muller’s historical grounding and genre expertise. It is one of the most entertaining noir commentaries out there, and it is worth revisiting in HD. Crime Wave: The City is Dark is a 6-minute featurette from the DVD era offering a brief appreciation of the film, its locations and de Toth’s direction. From Warner’s vaults we get the period short Gadgets Galore, running almost 11 minutes, and the Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny cartoon Baby Buggy Bunny, running about 7 minutes. Together they recreate a bit of the 1950s theatrical program. There is also an original theatrical trailer.

André de Toth's Crime Wave is a lean, unvarnished gem of 1950s Los Angeles noir: 74 minutes of real streets, cramped apartments and all-night diners. Bert Glennon (Sergeant Rutledge, The Mad Magician, Thunder Over the Plains, House of Wax, The Man Behind the Gun, Rio Grande, Wagon Master, Red Light, Ruthless, The Red House, Juke Girl, They Died with Their Boots On, Drums Along the Mohawk, Young Mr. Lincoln, Stagecoach, The Prisoner of Shark Island, The Scarlet Empress,) photographs it with near-documentary directness and an excellent command of light and shadow. Gene Nelson, a Warner musical hoofer cast against type, is superb as the paroled ex-con whose past refuses to stay buried. He would later have a long career directing television (The Invisible Man, Starsky and Hutch, The Mod Squad, Star Trek, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan's Island,). Phyllis Kirk (House of Wax, Thunder Over the Plains, Back from Eternity,) gives the film its stakes. She had just made the first two of those for de Toth, and a young Charles Bronson, also here, appears alongside her in House of Wax. Ted de Corsia, one of the great heavies of the era (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Killing, Slightly Scarlet, Man with the Gun, The Big Combo, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Man in the Dark, The Turning Point, A Place in the Sun, The Enforcer, Three Secrets, The Naked City, The Lady from Shanghai,) is the calm, calculating Doc Penny. With Bronson, billed here as Charles Buchinsky and already showing the coiled menace of his later star career (10 to Midnight, Death Wish II, Death Hunt, Telefon, The White Buffalo, From Noon Till Three, Breakheart Pass, Hard Times, Breakout, Death Wish, Mr. Majestyk, The Stone Killer, The Mechanic, The Valachi Papers, Red Sun, Rider on the Rain, Once Upon a Time in the West, Farewell, Friend, Villa Rides, The Dirty Dozen, This Property Is Condemned, Battle of the Bulge, The Great Escape, Master of the World, The Magnificent Seven, Machine-Gun Kelly, Run of the Arrow, Jubal, Vera Cruz, Hondo, Miss Sadie Thompson, House of Wax, Diplomatic Courier, The Mob,) and a leering Timothy Carey, he makes up an unforgettable gallery of criminals. De Toth's work, recognized today as one of the more distinctive careers of the era, includes (Monkey on My Back, Pitfall, Hidden Fear, Ramrod, The Indian Fighter, Day of the Outlaw, Dark Waters, House of Wax, Slattery's Hurricane, Thunder Over the Plains, Riding Shotgun,) and Crime Wave stands comfortably among his best. But the film belongs to Sterling Hayden, whose toothpick-chewing, utterly unsentimental Lieutenant Sims is one of the great hard-nosed cops of the noir cycle, a towering presence he brought to so many memorable films (The Killing, The Asphalt Jungle, Naked Alibi, Terror in a Texas Town, Flat Top, 5 Steps to Danger, Denver and Rio Grande, The Outsider, Dr. Strangelove, Crime of Passion, The Long Goodbye, Venom.) David Buttolph's spare, effective score (The Enforcer, Rope, Secret of the Incas, Street of Chance, The Horse Soldiers, Wake Island, This Gun For Hire, Western Union, Pete Kelly's Blues, Three Secrets, Kiss of Death, Blood and Sand, I Died a Thousand Times,) used sparingly against the police radio chatter and city ambience, rounds out a superb ensemble effort. Warner Archive's Blu-ray is a stellar upgrade over the 2007 DVD, with a dual-layered, very high-bitrate 1080P transfer that brings out the texture, grain and deep, layered contrast of Glennon's night photography. It adds a clean 24-bit lossless mono track and carries over the wonderfully entertaining Ellroy/Muller commentary, plus vintage period extras. This is one of the best-looking noir releases of the year on Blu-ray and gets a strong recommendation to lovers of the dark cinema.

Gary Tooze