I Wake Up Screaming / Hot Spot (1941 H. Bruce Humberstone)

Before you ask, HBC is not really known as a director of distinction. This by default is his best film. Steve Fisher's source novel looks interesting too.

Early and less well known film noir in which characters amusingly keep breaking into each others' apartments, in story of guy (Victor Mature, an acquired taste) who is suspected of murdering good time gal Carole Landis but who has fallen for her sister Betty Grable, whilst being obsessively hounded by maverick cop Laird Cregar. Flashback tells of Landis' arrival on the scene, and her manipulation of agent Alan Mowbray and newspaperman Allyn Joslin and involvement of hotel clerk Elisha Cook Jr. and cop William Gargan.

Grable, Mature, Joslin, Landis, Mowbray

Features some lovely noiry photography (Edward Cronjager) and an interesting soundtrack that riffs on the 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' melody.

Film is haunted by tragedy - Landis killed herself seven years later, aged 29, and Cregar died of a heart attack three years later aged 31.