D.O.A. (1950)

Directed by Rudolph Maté. Starring Edmond O’Brien, William Ching, Luther Adler, Pamela Britton, Lynn Baggett, Henry Hart, Neville Brand, Beverly Garland, Laurette Luez, George Lynn, Roy Engel, Virginia Lee.

Ominous potboiler told through flashback of a notary public (O’Brien) who’s been given a fatal dose of a slow-acting “luminous toxin,” leaving him only a few days to untangle the truth behind who did it and why. Pretty good cynical B-noir contains the requisite volumes of style and irony, a few pieces of edgy suspense and aberrant supporting player color to cut through the sometimes overbearing fatalism. Brooding photography from Ernest Laszlo, his innovative camera movements deserving of acclaim during a tense, starkly shadowed chase and the lengthy tracking sequence that opens the picture; Dimitri Tiomkin’s music contributes to the bleak atmosphere. Character actor O’Brien is rather flat in one of his few lead roles of note, and lady friend Britton is a routine addition designed only to amplify pathos within the strange, harrowing situation, but Adler excels as a thickly-accented mobster, and Brand is giddily arresting as his psychopathic stooge. Remade twice, first in 1969 (as Color Me Dead), then in 1988.

70/100