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The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935)

Charlotte Movies — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:15:01 +0000

1h 15min. // The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) is a British mystery film directed by Leslie S. Hiscott, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Valley of Fear. This early screen adaptation features Arthur Wontner in one of his most acclaimed performances as the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes, alongside Ian Fleming (not to be confused with the James Bond author) as Dr. Watson.

The story begins as Holmes contemplates retirement, having grown weary of the endless parade of criminal minds. However, he is soon drawn back into action when a mysterious murder involving coded messages and a secretive American society comes to light. The victim, Douglas, is found dead in his English country estate under suspicious circumstances. As Holmes investigates, he uncovers a complex web of deceit that ties the case to the Scowrers, a dangerous secret society with roots in the American coal-mining underworld.

The narrative unfolds in two parts: the present-day mystery and an extended flashback to the United States, revealing the dark history that led to the crime. Through meticulous deduction, Holmes pieces together the clues, exposing the hidden identities and motives behind the murder. His intellect and sharp observations once again prove indispensable in the pursuit of justice.

Praised for its faithful depiction of Conan Doyle’s characters, The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes stands out for its atmospheric settings, clever plot, and strong performances—particularly Wontner’s portrayal of Holmes, which many fans consider among the most authentic. The film captures the essence of the classic detective tale, blending suspense, drama, and deductive brilliance.

A standout among 1930s Sherlock Holmes adaptations, the film remains a must-watch for fans of vintage mysteries and admirers of the world’s most famous consulting detective.

Directed by: Leslie S. Hiscott

Writing Credits: Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Fowler Mear, Cyril Twyford

Starring: Arthur Wontner (as Sherlock Holmes), Lyn Harding (as Professor Moriarty) and Leslie Perrins (as John Douglas)

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The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Charlotte Movies — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:54:56 +0000

1h 59min. // Fresh out of prison and clutching a set of drummer’s sticks like a lifeline, a recovering addict returns to his Chicago neighborhood determined to trade card-dealing and narcotics for a clean shot at a music career. The streets he left behind haven’t changed, though, and neither have the people who once profited from his weakness. His fragile optimism collides with the smoky back rooms of the local gambling joints, where old debts and old habits lurk in every shadow.

At home, he’s tethered to a domineering, manipulative wife who claims to be physically disabled and uses guilt as her sharpest weapon. She clings to the security his crooked dealing once provided, sabotaging his plans for an honest life. Across the alley stands a gentler possibility: a sympathetic bar hostess who believes in his talent and offers the kind of support he’s never known. Between them, he’s pulled in opposite directions, torn between duty, desire, and the hope of redemption.

As the pressure mounts—money running short, the lure of the card table growing stronger, and the old pusher circling like a vulture—his resolve begins to crack. Each setback nudges him closer to the needle he’s sworn to avoid, and the city’s neon nights become a gauntlet of temptation. When a desperate crime entangles him in a murder investigation, he’s forced into a brutal reckoning with his addiction, his loyalties, and the brutal machinery of the underworld that refuses to let him go.

The story builds to a harrowing portrait of withdrawal and moral crisis, shot through with the jagged rhythms of jazz and the stark contrasts of film noir lighting. In the end, the question is not only whether he can stay clean, but whether a man so deeply enmeshed in vice and dependency can ever truly escape the past that defines him.

Directed by: Otto Preminger

Writing Credits: Walter Newman, Ben Hecht, Lewis Meltzer

Starring: Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Eleanor Parker, Robert Strauss, Snub Pollard

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Little Caesar (1931)

Charlotte Movies — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:10:07 +0000

1h 19min. // A small-time hood with big ambitions blows into the city determined to claw his way to the top of the underworld. Caesar Enrico “Rico” Bandello has no patience for petty stickups or backroom card games; he wants power, territory, and the fear that comes with a gunman’s reputation. Alongside his old pal Joe Massara, who dreams of leaving the rackets for a life on the stage, Rico muscles his way into a powerful gang, proving himself with a cold-blooded efficiency that quickly catches the eye of the city’s crime bosses.

As Rico’s star rises, his world grows more dangerous. A brazen assassination at a high-society banquet cements his status as a man to be reckoned with, but it also puts him squarely in the sights of the law and rival mobsters. While Joe tries to distance himself from the violence and build a future with his dancing partner Olga, Rico tightens his grip on the streets, pushing aside anyone who shows weakness or disloyalty.

The higher Rico climbs, the more isolated he becomes, trapped by his own legend and the brutal code he lives by. Police pressure mounts, alliances crumble, and the city that once trembled at his name begins to close in around him. The film tracks his rise and inevitable fall with a stark, unsentimental eye, capturing the moment when swagger and bravado can no longer shield a gangster from the consequences of his own ruthless ambition.

In the end, the story becomes less about crime than about character: a portrait of a man who mistakes fear for respect and power for security. As the lights of the city flicker around him, Rico’s desperate struggle to hold onto his fading glory turns this lean crime tale into a haunting study of pride, loyalty, and the steep price of living by the gun.

Directed by: Mervyn LeRoy

Writing Credits: Francis Edward Faragoh

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Glenda Farrell, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., George E. Stone, Sidney Blackmer

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Notorious (1946)

Charlotte Movies — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:23:56 +0000

1h 42min. // A young woman drinks away the shame of her father’s treason trial, only to find herself recruited by a cool, enigmatic U.S. intelligence agent with a tape recorder full of her most painful secrets. Alicia Huberman is asked to atone for her father’s crimes by using the very reputation that scandalized her: she is to slip into the social circle of wealthy German émigrés in postwar Rio de Janeiro and uncover what they are hiding. Her handler, T. R. Devlin, is supposed to keep things professional, but as they circle each other in hotel rooms and on sun‑drenched balconies, a wary, combustible romance begins to take shape.

Their fragile bond is tested when Alicia is ordered to seduce Alex Sebastian, a cultivated industrialist and former admirer who is now part of a clandestine Nazi network. Devlin, bound by duty and jealousy, must stand by as she marries Sebastian and moves into his imposing hilltop mansion, a house full of locked rooms, suspicious servants, and watchful eyes. The closer Alicia gets to the secret hidden in Sebastian’s wine cellar, the more her double life consumes her, turning cocktail parties and horse races into nerve‑shredding set pieces where a single wrong glance could mean exposure.

As Sebastian’s domineering mother begins to suspect the truth, Alicia’s cover story frays and her health mysteriously deteriorates. Devlin, outwardly aloof but inwardly desperate, has to decide whether he is willing to sacrifice the woman he loves for the success of the mission. The film tightens the screws with every key, coffee cup, and whispered exchange, leading to a climax where love, loyalty, and survival are all balanced on the same perilous staircase.

Hitchcock uses the trappings of espionage—spies, poisoned drinks, and postwar paranoia—not just to build suspense, but to explore the cost of emotional cowardice and the risk of genuine intimacy. Under the gloss of glamorous stars and elegant settings lies a ruthless examination of how far people will go to possess, control, or finally save the person they love.

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Writing Credits: Ben Hecht, Alfred Hitchcock, Clifford Odets, John Taintor Foote

Starring: Alfred Hitchcock, Reinhold Schünzel, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Friedrich von Ledebur

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To The Ends Of The Earth (1948)

Charlotte Movies — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:13:13 +0000

1h. 48min. // Based on the files of the United States Department of Treasury. Commissioner Michael Barrows is an American Government Agent. On board a Coast Gaurd boat off the California coast he chases a ship. The Captain of the ship, the Kira Maru, panics and ruthlessly sends 100 Chinese slaves to a watery death. Barrows recovers a live preserver that tells him the ship is out of Shanghai. He travels there to track down the ship’s captain and discovers that these deaths point to a huge drug smuggling operation. In Shanghai, while searching for the captain of the Kira Maru, he becomes suspicious of a women, Ann Grant, believing she’s Jean Hawks the narcotics ringleader. He follows the narcotics trail “to the ends of the Earth” taking him from Shanghai to Cairo, Beirut and Havana to stop the drugs and the jean Hawks ring at the US border.

Directed by: Robert Stevenson

Writing Credits: Jay Richard Kennedy (screenplay)

Starring: Dick Powell (as Commissioner Michael Barrows), Signe Hasso (as Ann Grant) and Maylia (as Shu Pan Wu)

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Awards:

NOMINATED. Venice Film Festival 1948. Grand International Award. Robert Stevenson.

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And Then There Were None (1945)

Charlotte Movies — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 13:13:02 +0000

1h. 44min. // Seven guests, a newly hired personal secretary and two staff are gathered on an isolated island by an absent host and someone begins killing them off one by one. They work together to determine who is the killer?

Directed by: René Clair

Writing Credits: Agatha Christie (novel), Dudley Nichols (screenplay)

Starring: Barry Fitzgerald (as Judge Francis J. Quincannon), Walter Huston (as Dr. Edward G. Armstrong), Louis Hayward (as Philip Lombard), Roland Young (as Detective William Henry Bloor), June Duprez (as Vera Claythorne), Mischa Auer (as Prince Nikita Starloff), C. Aubrey Smith (as Gen. Sir John Mandrake), Judith Anderson (as Emily Brent) and Richard Haydn (as Thomas Rogers).

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Awards:

WON. Locarno International Film Festival 1946. Best Film. René Clair.

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Topper Returns (1941)

Charlotte Movies — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 13:11:40 +0000

1h 28min. // A man stabbed and killed a woman by mistake, when he wanted to murder her friend. Now, her ghost seeks aid from Topper to find the murderer.

Directed by: Roy Del Ruth

Writing Credits: Jonathan Latimer (screenplay), Gordon Douglas (screenplay)

Starring: Joan Blondell (as Gail Richards), Roland Young (as Cosmo Topper), Carole Landis (as Ann Carrington) and Billie Burke (as Mrs. Clara Topper)

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Awards:

NOMINATED. Academy Awards, USA 1942. Best Sound, Recording. Elmer Raguse.

NOMINATED. Academy Awards, USA 1942. Best Effects, Special Effects. Roy Seawright (photographic) and Elmer Raguse (sound)

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Blood on the Sun (1945)

Charlotte Movies — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 13:10:52 +0000

1h 34min. // Nick Condon is an American reporter working in Tokyo who secretly seizes a Japanese military plan before World War II.

Directed by: Frank Lloyd

Writing Credits: Lester Cole (screenplay), Garrett Fort (story)

Starring: James Cagney (as Nick Condon), Sylvia Sidney (as Iris Hilliard), Porter Hall (as Arthur Bickett), John Emery (as Premier Giichi Tanaka), Robert Armstrong (as Col. Hideki Tojo), Wallace Ford (as Ollie Miller), Rosemary DeCamp (as Edith Miller), John Halloran (as Capt. Oshima)

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Awards:

WON.Academy Awards, USA 1946. Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White. Wiard Ihnen, A. Roland Fields.

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The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers (1946)

Charlotte Movies — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:10:02 +0000

1h. 56min. // A man is reunited with his childhood friend and her husband, who believe he knows the truth about the death of her rich aunt years earlier.

Directed by: Lewis Milestone

Writing Credits: Robert Rossen (screenplay), John Patrick (story)

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck (as Martha Ivers), Van Heflin (as Sam Masterson), Lizabeth Scott (as Toni Marachek), Kirk Douglas (as Walter O’Neil) and Judith Anderson (as Mrs. Ivers)

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Awards:

NOMINATED. Academy Awards, USA 1947. Best Writing, Original Story. John Patrick.

NOMINATED. Cannes Film Festival 1947. Feature films. Lewis Milestone.

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Detour (1945)

Charlotte Movies — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:08:29 +0000

1h 8min. // Chance events trap hitch-hiker Al Roberts in a tightening net of film noir trouble.

Directed by: Edgar G. Ulmer

Writing Credits: Martin Goldsmith (screenplay and story)

Starring: Tom Neal (as Al Roberts), Ann Savage (as Vera) and Claudia Drake (as Sue Harvey)