Victor Mature

Kiss of Death

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Victor Mature cradles Coleen Gray's head

Fans of Richard Widmark who can’t get enough of his giggling psychopath routine, Kiss of Death is for you. This is where it all started, in 1947, a crime drama notable not only for being Widmark’s screen debut but also for delivering a really good performance by Victor Mature. Having grown up in a household where Mature’s presence on the small screen was usually greeted by titters, I personally wasn’t quite ready for this. But good he really is. He plays Nick Bianco, a smalltime crook who gets caught doing a jewellery heist but refuses to name his accomplices when taken in by the police. All this changes some way down the road … Read more

Cry of the City

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Debra Paget, Richard Conte and Victor Mature

Threaded with religious sentiment like a 1970s Martin Scorsese or Abel Ferrara movie, 1948’s Cry of the City stars Richard Conte and Victor Mature as two Italian-Americans who knew each other as kids. Now grown up they’ve wound up on opposite sides of the law – Martin Rome (Conte) is a criminal languishing in a prison hospital after a heist gone wrong. Vittorio Candella (Mature) is the cop trying to chase down what happened. A cop also died at the scene of the heist so Martin Rome is heading for Death Row, if he survives. Aiming to use this to his shadowy client’s advantage, slippery lawyer WA Niles (Berry Kroeger) is also buzzing about … Read more

I Wake Up Screaming

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Victor Mature shot in stark direct lighting with shadows

Twentieth Century-Fox didn’t do much in the way of noir. Betty Grable wasn’t much of a one for straight roles. So 1941’s I Wake Up Screaming is unusual for two reasons, not to mention a title making no sense at all. It’s a whodunit about people who are off their turf, so those deviations from the norm chime with what’s happening on screen, a murder mystery with a few wayward contenders for the killer of Vicky Lyn (Carole Landis), a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. The man who obviously didn’t do it is Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature), who we meet being sweated by the cops for the young woman’s murder. … Read more