Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Film Noirs set over the Holidays (for a Shadowy Winter Watch)
18
items It's the most wonderful time of the year: the halls are decked, the tree is trimmed, and sinister forces lurk somewhere in the shadows. These are film noirs set over the holidays, relishing in the contrast between the cheerful joy of the season and t...
Possibly the darkest Christmas movie of all time, this classic film noir — about a fake 30s preacher who tries to swindle a widow and her kids out of their father's stolen loot — culminates on Christmas Day, when a kindly old woman shows the children...
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Too early to be considered “true” film noir, this fun, sexy crime classic, set over the holidays, has a lot of motifs that would later be associated with the genre: chiaroscuro lighting, intrigue, double crossing dames, and a morally compromised male...
The Thin Man (1934)
Set at Christmas, this twisty, stylish adaptation of the classic Raymond Chandler detective novel is best remembered for its innovative use of POV shot, showing the entire film through the perspective of the main character's field of vision.
Lady in the Lake (1947)
"Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it. But a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it." One of the Best Christmas Films of all Time, this snowy Batman sequel from Tim Burton adds elements of film noir for a dark (but playful) vision of Gotham during...
Batman Returns (1992)
This stylish neo-noir parodies film noir tropes and motifs, making it a playful, dark spin on the holiday. As one of the few Christmas films set in Los Angeles, it thrives on the contrast between the hot environs and seasonal cheer.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Is it noir? Is it melodrama? Maybe a little bit of both: odd and melancholy, the film opens at Christmastime and stars the always-fantastic Ida Lupino as a free spirited nightclub singer who falls in love with a depressed piano player struggling to g...
The Man I Love (1947)
This 70s neo-noir holiday film is truly outrageous: Elliot Gould is a corrupt bank teller at a mall who steals from a stick-up by a psychopathic Mall Santa, played by Christopher Plummer (!), who doesn't take kindly to the theft.
The Silent Partner (1978)
This cult classic neo-noir, set at Christmastime and shot in a neorealist style on the streets of New York, has to be one of the bleakest Christmas movies ever: a mob hitman travels to New York to kill a mid-tier gangster, only to find himself haunte...
Blast of Silence (1961)
This lesser-known noir, about a GI and a nurse who search for the former's war buddy who has been falsely accused of murder, unfurls over Christmas and into the New Year. It was made by features several of the creative forces who would go on to make ...
Backfire (1950)
Apparently the studio (Warner Bros.) had concerns about setting such a gruesome story at Christmastime, but those contradictions make for the best kind movies! In this one, Christmas musical motifs and decor regularly punctuate a pretty dark (!) stor...
Cover Up (1949)
This is basically a film noir version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with Peter Cushing playing the Ebenezer Scrooge character: a bank manager content to abuse and belittle his employees, despite the Christmas holidays. He's taught a lesson i...
Cash on Demand (1961)
Another neo-noir set at Christmas, this black comedy from Harold Ramis stars John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton as laymen who rip off a local mobster and try to hightail it out of town, only to be waylaid by icy roads… a travel delay that makes their...
The Ice Harvest (2005)
Just how dark can a Christmas movie made under the Hays Code get? Pretty dark, it turns out! This one certainly is. Noir luminaries Glenn Ford and Evelyn Keyes front this odd hybrid noir / romantic comedy about a WWII soldier who hatches a plan to st...
Mr. Soft Touch (1949)
"This might become a new Christmas favorite for some of you, if your taste in holiday stories leans toward and unhealthy mix of misery, cruelty, and perversion," Eddie Muller stated when he introduced this super-rare film noir on TCM's Noir Alley. A ...
I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (1948)
Noir heavy Elisha Cook, Jr. plays a double-crossing Santa Claus in this murder mystery, set at Christmas, in which a PI tries to solve the mystery of his war buddy's murder. Instead, he's meet (and drawn to) a beautiful siren!
I, the Jury (1953)
Bad winter weather waylays an army lieutenant in New Orleans in this cheapie noir, told in flashback from Christmas Eve. A bar maid (classic Good Girl Deanna Durbin, cast against type) recounts her treacherous life story taking up with a Creole booki...
Christmas Holiday (1944)
Maybe not a “true” film noir, but it does seem to infuse something of a noir sensibility in this pseudo-home-invasion classic: Ethel Barrymore is a kindly elderly woman who invites an impoverished painter and his wife to stay with her over Christmas,...
Kind Lady (1951)
This anthology film—which branches out into different stories—includes noir-flavored sections. In the framing story, three adopted, estranged sons of an eccentric Wall Street heiress are her last surviving hope against the sinister machinations of a ...
Christmas Eve (1947)