Hell Bound (1957)

(On Cable TV, October 2021) Once you get past the classics of film noir, there’s an astonishing number of smaller-scale, less refined but still highly enjoyable entries in the genre. Late-period Hell Bound is one of them: a lean, sometimes mean thriller that manages to score a few minor high points while delivering an entertaining crime story against the backdrop of Los Angeles. Cheekily beginning with an idealized visual presentation of a proposed crime for its backers (with a rather wonderful transition between the fantasy and the presenter), the film focuses on a plot to steal surplus WW2 drugs from a ship for sale in the underworld. John Russell stars as a two-fisted criminal with no time for cutesy romance, while centrefold model June Blair plays the femme fatale. (I also liked Margo Woode a lot, but more for the glasses than anything else.)  Unusually enough for the genre, Hell Bound features a visually impressive finish taking place on Los Angeles’s Terminal Island, where (at the time) hundreds of trolleys had been stacked for scrap. The abrupt ending is one you may not necessarily guess either. This doesn’t make Hell Bound a terrific film—the obtuseness of the dialogue alone is often baffling—but it does make it a decent noir, and one that (by being so close to the streets) gives an interesting look at circa-1957 Los Angeles.