Appointment with Danger (1951)

Directed by Lewis Allen (The Uninvited, Suddenly), Appointment with Danger was Alan Ladd's final film noir. He plays Al Goddard, a postal inspector sent to Gary, Indiana to solve the murder of a fellow officer. The only witness to the murder is a scrappy nun, Sister Augustine (Phyllis Calvert), to whom Al feels especially protective. Unfortunately, he must go undercover to catch the bad guys, and finds himself going along with a plan to rob a million bucks from post office; each time he manages to risk his life to pass on any information to his colleagues, the bad guys change their plans again. Finally, of course, Sister Augustine comes into play for a tense showdown.

British-born director Allen will never achieve the ranks of the great directors, but he was pretty good at these sporadic genre films; they were sharp and fast, economic and entertaining. Perhaps Ladd is the real selling point here. He was a fairly big star at the time, and he seems to have been forgotten in recent years. It's good to see him in action here, playing a tough guy without trying too hard; he has a hint of a soft underbelly, as shown in the scenes with the nun.

Trivia nuts will notice that Jack Webb and Harry Morgan are both here as criminals, and they would both go on to fame as partner cops on the TV series "Dragnet."

Olive Films has also released Rudolph Mate's Union Station (1950), William Dieterle's Dark City (1950), and Burt Kennedy's revenge Western Hannie Caulder (1971).