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DETOUR (1945) (http://imdb.com/title/tt0037638/) - Excellent film about a piano player who's girlfriend heads to Hollywood to pursue her singing career. He decides to go out and see her, but to get there he has to hitch-hike cross country. A man picks him up bearing some scars. He later dies on the trip and things really get out of hand from there. Some of the reasoning in the storyline makes the main character seem dumb, but all in all this is a great little film produced by one of the Poverty Row production companies PRC.

 :thumbup: :thumbup: (7 out of 10 Stars) I recommend this film to anyone.

(http://www.cinemacom.com/noir/detour368.jpg)

Ann Savage is fantastic in this one as a femme fatale. In fact, her character from this film should perhaps be pictured in the dictionary next to the phrase.

She definately makes the film work.

I love this film, though anyone who really digs film noir probably would.  I get together with a friend of mine once a week or so and watch movies.  We alternate between great B stuff(especially Irwin Allen and his ilk) and noir.  Numerous times we've ended up double featuring DETOUR with (of all things) KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL for some reason.  Though once we did substitute a lucky convention find of Jospeh Losey's American remake of M.

Curious, has anyone had any exposure to the DETOUR 1992 remake (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104093/) with Tom Neal, Jr?  I've tried on and off to catch it somewhere, but still havent.

A good remake of DETOUR might be interesting if they made it simple. Some of the dialogue and reasoning in the original seems weird by todays, but that is part of its charm.

Hey soylentgreen if you like film noir maybe you should see DARK PASSAGE
It's a great Bogart flick.

I've heard that DARK PASSAGE is very good. It's been on my list for a long while now.

I forgot to mention I saw this one a few weeks ago. Very good film, I've always been a sucker for this kind of noirs. I love the visuals and the stereotypes, such as "the loser", the "femme fatale" and the obligatory use of voiceover. It's been a while since I last saw one of these, but I definitely enjoyed the ride, specially because of the prime specimens of "loser" and "femme fatale". It may be hard to find better examples out there, he seems to take the wrong turn (hence the title, I guess) at every decision, and she is lots of fun too.

I'd recommend another two, "D.O.A" (the 1950 version) and another of Bogey's classics, "Dead Reckoning".

Tom Neal was married for a while to this infamous hollywood blonde of the noir era whose name esapes me.  but her story is a real classic fall from grace thing. 

What I like most about DARK PASSAGE is they show the view from the main characters eyes for the first half of the film. I really, really recomend you see it scott.

I read an analysis somewhere that suggested the film as told through the sad sack's point of view is flawed, that in reality he is not quite so blameless as he makes himself out to be.  That may or may not be the case, but it added an interesting layer to my viewing of the film.