Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Powerful

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This movie was a major find for me - the fifties ushered in a more realistic noir genre (thanks to "He Walks By Night", "Dragnet" etc) zeroing in on loners, killers whose motivations were never fully explained, helped enormously by outside location shootings and casting unknown actors. Adam Williams is perfect casting as the fresh faced boyish loner, he is just appealing enough for it to be understandable why lonely women were taken with his charms.Carl Martin is a gardener whose creepy personality was enough for his blonde wife to look elsewhere. Toward the end he tries to justify his behaviour on his wife's abandonment but from the start, with his barely concealed gun it is so obvious that he enjoys killing. As the film opens, the police are baffled by yet another "blonde killing" but this time they have a clue - the killer left a calling card in a piece from a blue coat and as the forensics guy says, an expensive one!! Martin is always one jump ahead of the police - they have been combing men's clothing repair shops but Martin realises this is just what they expect him to do and burns it!!The pacing and editing keep you on the edge of your seat - usually with the expectation of violence that is always implied but never seen. As when a beautiful blonde gives him the "come on" in the bar, they get to talking in her car, the next scene shows her obviously dead. What follows is a really cracker of suspense - Carl and his "date" parked under a bridge are noticed by a passing policeman, he tries to drive off but the car becomes bogged in the dust - even that doesn't arouse the cop's suspicions. When the policeman wants to take a closer look at the girl who Carl says is just drunk, that precipitates a mammoth chase on foot along with gun play through unfinished freeways, zig zagging around the Produce Market where the killer thinks that by his fancy footwork with changing taxis, he has given them the slip!!As well as trying to track through a murderer's mind there is also a routine police investigation going on - from the discovery of the murder weapon being a pair of secateurs, it is concluded that they are looking for a gardener. Carl has already lined up his next victim - she is the daughter of the man where Carl buys his gardening supplies. Initially turned off because she is married, he can't resist his compulsions which end in a shoot out, outside Martin's ramshackle house amidst a poor Mexican hillside settlement, soon to be demolished for Dodgers Stadium.This definitely should be ranked along with "The Sniper" as one of the early 1950s best "unknown noirs"!!Very Recommended!!

I became aware of this film years ago from a passing reference to it in Carlos Clarens' 'Horror Movies', which had led me to assume that it was better known than it actually is.The maiden production of the company Levy-Gardner-Laven (later to become very active in TV), and the directorial debut of Arnold Laven, 'Without Warning!' isn't particularly original - following as it does in the well-worn footsteps of flavourful location-shot police procedurals like 'The Naked City'; and the ending wraps things up a little too abruptly. But as photographed by the veteran Joseph Biroc it treats us to a magnificent tour of some of the seamier parts of Los Angeles as they looked in 1951 (no crime film set in Los Angeles at this time, for example, became complete without a visit to its storm drains, which duly put in an appearance). One of many memorable images the film provides is the all-blonde police decoy squad who resemble something out of 'The Man from UNCLE'; and despite the ultra-noirish title sequence and the occasional night scene, much of the action actually takes place bathed in glorious Californian sunlight for a change.There are hints that the grip of the Breen Office was beginning to weaken (the wedding ring visibly worn by the blonde that Martin picks up in a bar, for example, would have been vetoed a few years earlier for depicting adultery), and the killer in this film is obviously motivated by sex; although the fact that we later learn that he's bearing a grudge at the blonde wife who left him makes him more of a sore loser than the all-out sadistic sex fiend the film initially promises (and doesn't really square with the glee he takes in reading about the case in the papers).Edward Binns, who plays the police lieutenant, will be most familiar to viewers as Juror 6 in '12 Angry Men', and both he and killer Adam Williams were in 'North by Northwest'; the former again playing a detective and the latter again playing a gardener.

This story of a serial killer came out 55 years ago. It's dated primarily in that it isn't gory and graphic. At moments, it feels as if it's about to go that way. But of course the censors wouldn't have allowed it.The director, though not in anyone's pantheon, has great noir cred. "Down Three Dark Streets" alone is something to be very proud of.The pace is just right. The acting, by people wholly unknown to me, is professional and convincing.We know almost from the start who the killer is. It's a matter of whether and when he will be caught. The film languishes more on his bland good looks than on the appearance of any of his victims. He's nice enough looking: rather baby-faced. We see him without his shirt in a long, not extraneous, scene.The attention paid to the killer reminded me of "The Sniper," which came out at the same time. "The Sniper" is better known and was done on a higher budget. But I wouldn't say it's better. This is a very good, scary movie.

This is a virtually spotless transfer and for Film Noir fans who have to put up with beaten up prints of unjustly forgotten films that alone I think perhaps has lead other writers here to rate the movie a bit too highly. It is a police procedure picture (with a surprising amount of forensics used for the time) that unfortunately comes to an obvious ending that reduces what came before it. It is especially well scored and photographed on real(and unique) locations that make it seem very fresh.It is like THE SNIPER, though that film deals with wider issues and has a harder edge and most distinct style, where this plays out like a really good episode of something like THE NAKED CITY, or DRAGNET. The ending is safe and small. The characters although well acted are really stock "types" and don't really become three dimensional.That said the first half of the film is very good and all the positives other writers on IMDb have said are true. But this doesn't ever become a drama, staying safely in melodrama land and that keeps it as mostly by the numbers B picture. Everybody does their job well but also safely within the confines of a programmer. The script just can't let them break out into a real classic noir.