Dark Crimes Film Noir Thrillers / The Glass Key ('42) / Phantom Lady ('44) / The Blue Dahlia ('46)

I am a great fan of Ladd and Lake and they were in too few movies together.I was so glad when I found this Film Noir Album combing these movies.All three are outstanding examples of this period in Films.Anyone who like Film Noir will love these FilmsDave

A great collection all around - Ladd and Lake are sparkling together as always in The Blue Dahlia and The Glass Key - their performances have echoes of their first film together, This Gun for Hire (not included in this collection). The Phantom Lady was an unexpected pleasure - I was less familiar with this film than the Ladd/Lake entries, but it was a thoroughly engaging yarn about a man caught up in a twisty noirish conspiracy.

I had searched for Alan Ladd's Blue Dahlia for a long time, and I was happy to have found it. I was surprised that this pack had the Glass Key as well, and more surprised that it had Phantom Lady (which I had never seen before). I enjoyed all three movies very much. I will look forward to theBlue Dahlia in Blu-ray in the future. Thanks Amazon.

Was excited to hear Universal and Turner Classic Movies put this film noir set together. Have always loved the detail and clarity that Universal put in their older black and white films. They look to be from the original negatives, but this set is a big letdown from the awesome restoration Universal has done for many years (check out Universal's Sci-Fi collections volumes 1 and 2). These three films in this set (The Glass Key, The Phantom Lady, and The Blue Dahlia) the transfers seem to be struck from film prints. Scratches, arifacts and cigarette burns in upper right corner plague thse wonderful movies. On top of those problems, the prints are way too soft for DVD these days. It almost looks like these were recorded from a Laserdisc print because of the blurriness. It is sad that the best two actors (Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake) in film noir don't get the respect from Universal. Especially with Universal promoting their 100 years with great restorations of their classic films. It took forever for The Glass Key and The Blue Dahlia (my favorite) to get released on DVD. Even with the mediocre prints, its great to have these films on DVD! Each movie is on its own DVD with wonderful packaging.Also note: TCM Shop has this set for under thirty bucks (including priority shipping). I wouldn't pay more for this set. These great movies deserve better treatment. Hopefully one day the negatives will show up and we will get immaculate transfers of these great film noir classics.Would love to find all of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake film noir on DVD!!

Finally these three classic Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake fims are available on DVD! Picture remastering is crystal clear and am glad they were released. Highly recommend this 3 dvd set to all noir buffs. Price is right also.

"God Bless Mama, Papa, Captain America, Veronica Lake and the President of the United States". That line of dialogue was said by the young Ann Newton character in Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt"(1943). After watching it over the years, I've often wondered who Veronica Lake was. So I did my research and first watched "Sullivan's Travels"(1941) the Preston Sturges classic and can honestly say that I wasn't that impressed with her. I knew about the famous 'Peekaboo' hairstyle but you have to have more than that to be a good actress. Then I watched "So Proudly We Hail!"(1943) and I was hooked. She was terrific in her supporting role and probably like most of the GI's at the time I had to have more of her. Since then I've seen her in "This Gun for Hire"(her first pairing with Alan Ladd in 1942) and now thanks to TCM and Universal, two more Lake/Ladd titles: "THE GLASS KEY"(1942) and "THE BLUE DAHLIA"(1946). Between 1941 - 1946, Veronica Lake was one of the most popular box office stars in the world and after she and Ladd teamed for "This Gun for Hire" Ladd's career took off too. Most people remember him now for his performance in the George Stevens classic film "Shane"(1953). Sadly, he's been mostly forgotten today along with other capable actors of his day such as Dana Andrews, Dan Duryea and Sterling Hayden. I'm not going to comment on the sad circumstances concerning Ladd and Lake's private life except to say that they each both died at the too young age of 50. After watching their first film together, the terrific "This Gun for Hire"(part of the Universal Film Noir Series) I was hoping I'd get the chance to see some of the others. TCM and Universal have now finally released two of them, "THE GLASS KEY" and "THE BLUE DAHLIA" along with "PHANTOM LADY" in a nice three disc box set called DARK CRIMES. As far as I know, this is the first time all three have been released on DVD. I won't give away the plots except to say that all three involve a man wrongly accused of murder. The three films are very enjoyable and if you like William Bendix, he shows up in two of them. I wish I could have given the set five stars but the picture quality is not that good. It's too bad TCM or Universal couldn't have used better prints or at least restored them like they did with this year's "Universal Classic Monsters" collection. I know it's expensive but there is no reason why the DVD disc of "PHANTOM LADY" should look this bad. There are lines running through many of the scenes which makes it hard to watch. Of the three, "THE BLUE DAHLIA" fares the best video-wise and the story by screenwriter Raymond Chandler keeps you guessing right to the end. I'm recommending this set but if you're expecting the video to be nearly pristine for each of the films then you better skip it which might be hard to do if you love film noir like I do. There are many extras on each of the three discs and very informative interviews with film noir historian Eddie Muller. I would not pay the price that has been listed for this set on Amazon. I got it thru TCM directly for $23.99 plus shipping. "DARK CRIMES" is a good but not perfect film noir set from TCM and I'm looking forward to more TCM titles in the future.(note: there are no subtitles in this set)

I have wanted these DVDs for a long time & the middle one was a surprise favorite(Phantom Lady)Very pleased with my purchase:)

The repartee in these old films are a delight and refreshing when compared to today's films. This site requires too many words!