Actors/Artists:  Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler, Beverly Garland, Lynn Baggett, William Ching

Features:

• Introduction by Beverly Garland

Audio:

English: Mono

DC-DVD Price: £16.75

"A picture as excitingly different as its title!" posters for D.O.A. (1950) claimed. For once, the picture actually lived up to its advertising.

Edmond O'Brien discovers he's been slipped a slow-acting poison, then spends his final hours trying to find out who killed him. And, maybe more important, why. O'Brien is excellent as the corpse-to-be. So are Beverly Garland (billed here as Beverly Campbell) and Neville Brand. Dmitri Tiomkin's great score and Ernst Laszlo's moody camerawork help set the picture's cynical, sinister tone. Location shooting on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco add immeasurably to the overall effect.

Director Rudolph Mate was known as a top cinematographer (The Pride of the Yankees and Foreign Correspondent, among others) before turning to directing. And it certainly shows in D.O.A. 's striking visuals.

In lesser hands, D.O.A.'s plot could have made for a gimmicky, ridiculous film. This point was proven by the picture's two remakes, 1968's Color Me Dead (great title, though) and D.O.A. (1988). But the original, restored here from 35mm, still stands as quintessential film noir.