With Return of the Frontiersman, Warner Bros. continued to test the acting abilities of their singing star Gordon MacRae. While he does get to sing two songs, MacRae plays it straight for the most part in his role as Logan Barrett, the son of hard-bitten sheriff Sam Barrett (Jack Holt). Villain Larrabee (Rory Calhoun) frames Logan for a series of robberies, forcing the sheriff to lead a posse after his own son. Our Hero is aided and abetted by the daughter (Julie London, who surprisingly doesn't get to sing) of the town sawbones.

The Glass Key is an early example of film noir and a remarkably successful Dashiell Hammett adaptation. The best sequence by far is the marathon beating-up sustained by Alan Ladd in a bout of sado-masochism as William Bendix coyly begs his 'little rubber ball' to bounce back for more. Shot and played with deceptive casualness, the sequence is central to the film, flaunting an erotic undertow that sows continuing doubts throughout. Playing with his usual deadpan as he weaves warily through a maze of political machinations and underworld snares in the service of his boss, Ladd remains equally frozen whether expressing his love for Lake or his loyalty to Brian Donlevy.

One of the neatest thrillers to come out of RKO in the late '40s, Richard Fleischer's 59-minute Follow Me Quietly was the kind of box office success that made a rare bright spot on the studio's ledger books, at a time when they were losing money by the bushel on productions such as Mourning Becomes Electra and Androcles and the Lion. Fleischer, working with a generally excellent cast and a nice, twist-laden script, keeps things moving so fast, and with such a veneer of eeriness about it, that not only does Follow Me Quietly overcome some moments of wildly illogical action, but positively revels in that action.

Jack Lemmon and Robert Mitchum star as Tony and Felix, co-owners of a tramp-steamer service in the West Indies. Threatening their friendship is itinerant trollop Irena (Rita Hayworth). Tony seethes with jealousy as Irena gravitates towards Felix, leading to a heated confrontation. Felix retaliates by blowing the whistle on Tony's under-the-counter smuggling activities. Tony in turns plots to kill his former partner, but changes his mind when Felix saves his life during a shipwreck.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as the lady of the title, a woman forced to keep her recent nuptials to the local district attorney (Warren William) quiet to avoid scandal in the possible dismissal of her father (Arthur Byron), who happens to be the governor. The happiness of the young couple is put on hold after a story breaks that $10,000 was deposited in the Governor’s bank account on behalf of a man he recently pardoned. Her father swears he knows nothing about the transaction, but there’s no way he can prove his claims of innocence since the man behind “the gift” supposedly committed suicide moments after the news hit the street.

Truer to its Ernest Hemingway source than the previous film version, The Breaking Point is a sadly neglected little gem that deserves to be wider known. It's an effecting and often powerful piece of cinema that benefits greatly from both John Garfield's sterling lead performance and Michael Curtiz's assured and imaginative direction. Not that the screenplay isn't worth mentioning, for it does a fine job of getting to the essence of the Hemingway story and transferring one of his flawed, haunted heroes quite effectively to the screen.

The Thin Man works because of the chemistry between stars William Powell and Myrna Loy, and because screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich had the good sense to transfer Dashiell Hammett's source novel to the screen without substantial alterations to the story. Planned by MGM as a lower-profile release, the film nonetheless featured first-rate talent in front of and behind the camera, including director W.S. Van Dyke, cinematographer James Wong Howe, art director Cedric Gibbons, and sound engineer Douglas Shearer.

Don Siegel took over the directing chores from Peter Hyams on this taut cold war action film, based on the novel by Walter Wager. With the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union thawing, old KGB hard-liner Nicolai Dalchimsky (Donald Pleasence) activates a group of Americans who were brainwashed twenty years earlier to blow up United States defenses when a passage from a Robert Frost poem is recited to them. When bombs go off at an abandoned United States defense installation, the Kremlin realizes that they have a rogue KGB agent on their hands who is trying to re-ignite the cold war. To stop him, the Russians send out KGB agent Grigori Borzov (Charles Bronson). Accompanying him is KGB double agent Barbara (Lee Remick).

Peter Sellers stars, as the tagline states, "as that cunning matador who flees from the bulls so that he may chase the chicks!" Juan Bautista (Peter Sellers) is an inept matador who wants to be a singer. Francisco Carbonell (Adolfo Celi), the owner of a local Barcelona night spot, offers Juan a singing contract for a week --the only stipulation being that he has three days to seduce Olimpia Segura (Britt Ekland), the "most desirable woman in Barcelona." The bumbling matador tries a series of half-baked lovemaking techniques that, amazingly, get Olimpia to come around.

The Good Die Young is a psychological crime yarn, exploring the motivations of four participants in an armed robbery. American ex-GI Joe (Richard Basehart) hopes to use his share of the haul to bring his British wife to the US. Professional boxer Mike (Stanley Baker) finds himself unable to work in his chosen profession when his hand is broken, while his life savings are stolen by his disreputable brother-in-law. American airman Eddie (John Ireland) has deserted upon discovering that his wife (Gloria Grahame) is unfaithful. And shabby aristocrat Rave (Laurence Harvey) needs to pay off his wife's gambling debts.