The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Featuring Dashiell Hammett's gumshoe Sam Spade - a character played in film twice before but immortalised here by Humphrey Bogart - this noir classic gives Sam Spade plenty of opportunity to stand up to big 'fat men' crime bosses, deflate femme fatale molls, and talk smart to cops-on-the-beat while being hired and rehired to chase an invaluable jewel-encrusted bird statue.

★★★★☆

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Suspicion (1941)

By modern standards, the relationship between Cary Grant's Johnny and Joan Fontaine's "Monkeyface" - that's what he calls her - is chilling, not romantic: a wastrel, he binds her in a vicious cycle with her one moment suspecting him of plotting murder and the next feeling floods of relief and love once it's turned out he simply stole from her and lied about it - and Hitchcock plays similar games with his audience, combining moments of comedy (Nigel Bruce's duck calls and Grant's facial expressions and tickles) with murderous chills, referencing the real-life poisoning case of William Palmer as poor Monkeyface traverses that rollercoaster of love and giggles during the highs, and, during the dips, the fear her new husband is going to kill her for her money!

★★★★★

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The Ghost of St. Michael's (1941)

The comedy is of a bawdy music hall variety and a young Charles Hawtrey appears, so this 1941 comedy thriller feels like an early entry in the Carry On series with the students and staff, including bumbling science teacher Will Lamb, relocated to a haunted church in Scotland during World War II where a plot involving a ghost and murder plays out in mildly entertaining fashion.

★★★☆☆

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The Black Cat (1941)

The not very funny jokes come thick and fast in this madcapped romp - a The Cat And The Canary variation more CarryOn comedy than Hammer horror - starring Basil "He thinks he's Sherlock Holmes" Rathbone, Hugh Herbert and Bela Lugosi as just some of the beneficiaries of widow Henrietta Winslow's will, gathered in her gothic mansion full of cats, antiques, secret passages and a growing number of dead bodies (murders committed by a shadowy someone whose identity you don't really have a chance of guessing given everyone appears to be making the plot up as they go).

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW