Friday, March 2, 2012

Appointment with Danger

Appointment with Danger (1951) is an American crime film noir starring Alan Ladd as a U.S. Postal Inspector investigating the murder of another Postal Inspector in Gary, Indiana and bust up a mail robbery.The film has a good deal of footage of a large metropolitan post office including vintage mail trucks which makes it a lot of fun to watch..

According to a write-up about the film on the Greenbriar Pictures website,"It was part of a noir cycle where enforcement agencies were methodically glorified badge by badge. T-Men, C-Men, and immigration watchdogs had been celebrated. Now it was the post office's moment. That institution could use a back-pat right now for all I'm hearing about them going broke, but we're too cynical to extend plaudits for fed employees on any job, so Appointment won't likely get remade, but 1951 being that simpler time we keep hearing about, Paramount sent out bands blaring for the USPS and put flyers into (wow!) 21,000 post offices tieing-in across the land."

And there's even a letter endorsing the film from the Postmaster General!

The film also features both Jack Webb and Harry Morgan as villains. Both would later work on the Dragnet television show as fictional police detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department.

For more background on the film, click here.

Click here to watch Appointment With Danger.

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