Crime scenes revisited

Fox Film Noir

(Fox, $15 each)

THE latest installment in Fox’s DVD franchise includes two crackerjack films directed by Henry Hathaway, 1946’s “The Dark Corner” and 1947’s “Kiss of Death,” and a gritty thriller from Otto Preminger, 1950’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

The Dark Corner

This taut little thriller features a nifty pre-”I Love Lucy” performance from Lucille Ball -- she even gets top billing -- as the bright, sassy secretary and girlfriend to a New York shamus-with-a-past decently played by Mark Stevens.

As enjoyable as Ball is in “Dark Corner,” film noir experts Alain Silver and James Ursini point out in their commentary that she hated the film and her performance. Ball was upset that her studio, MGM, had lent her to Fox to make the relatively low-budget film, and then she suffered a breakdown during production because she had such a difficult time coping with director Hathaway, who had a reputation for being a tyrant on the set.

The always-dependable William Bendix also stars as a clumsy private detective with a penchant for white suits. Suave, acerbic Clifton Webb steals the movie as a wealthy art dealer who learns that his trophy wife is having an affair.

Joseph McDonald supplied the atmospheric black-and-white cinematography.

Extras: The trailer and commentary.

Kiss of Death

Richard Widmark’s chilling performance in this enthralling crime thriller as psychopathic gangster Tommy Udo garnered him a best supporting actor Oscar nomination and movie stardom.

In Widmark’s most memorable moment, Tommy ties up a hood’s wheelchair-bound mother and pushes her down the stairs.

“Kiss of Death” also marks one of the best performances by Victor Mature, who was best known for his beefcake roles in such films as “Samson and Delilah.” He plays a small-time New York hood sent to jail on a robbery charge who decides to cooperate with the district attorney (Brian Donlevy) after he learns his wife committed suicide and his two young daughters were sent to a Catholic orphanage.

Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer supplied the tough-nosed script.

As with his previous post-World War II films, such as “The House on 92nd Street,” Hathaway shot “Kiss of Death” in a semi-documentary style on location in New York and environs and featured such landmarks as the Chrysler Building, Sing Sing Correctional Facility and the Tombs prison.

Extras: The trailer and commentary.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Six years after making the landmark film noir-romance classic “Laura,” Preminger reunited with that film’s stars, Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, for this hard-hitting 1950 crime melodrama.

Andrews plays a much tougher version of his “Laura” police detective in “Sidewalk,” the complex, troubled New York cop Mark Dixon, who has gotten into hot water more than once because of his brutal treatment of criminals. He obsessively hates crime and criminals because his father was a high-powered hood.

But when he accidentally kills a murder suspect (Craig Stevens), Dixon covers up his crime and fingers an odious racketeer (Gary Merrill) for the murder. Tierney plays the estranged wife of the murdered man who ends up falling for Andrews.

Extras: Stills photo gallery, trailer and rapid-fire commentary from film noir historian Eddie Muller.