Murphy's Law (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie:J. Lee Thompson and Charles Bronson made a lot of movies together and if Murphy's Law isn't the best of their many collaborations, a lot of them produced by the mighty Cannon Films, it's a damn fine cop thriller regardless.Joan Freeman (Carrie Snodgress) has just been released from a mental hospital after spending years away from society, locked away for a murder she committed some time ago. Now that she's a free woman, her first order is business is payback. Before you know it, Ben Wilcove (Bill Henderson), an ex-cop who helped to bring her in, and a man named Kellerman (Jerome Thor), the judge who locked her away are dead. That leaves one of the other cops who had a hand in her conviction, a tough guy named Jack Murphy (Charles Bronson). She murders his ex-wife Jan (Angel Tompkins) and her current flame and makes him look like the culprit for her death...Read the entire review »

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema V (Because of You / Outside the Law / The Midnight Story) (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume V is the latest set of three 1950s Universal-International titles. Though the labeling of some of these titles "noir" is highly debatable, and the majority of films in this series are mostly just average, it's still enormous fun to catch up with these largely forgotten, generally lesser films. Because of You (1952), starring Loretta Young, is about 95% woman's "weepie," a female-targeted romantic melodrama, and only about 5% anything close to noir, certainly no more than 5 or 10 minutes of its 95-minute runn...Read the entire review »