Experiment Perilous (Jacques Tourneur, 1944). Director Jacques Tourneur puts a veneer of film noir over this turn-of-the-century melodrama. This is especially true in the early scenes, as Tourneur gives extra richness to the exposition-heavy set-up with visuals that are rich, evocative, and creative. Shots of a train racing through a pouring rainstorm are mini-masterpieces of moody intensity. Based on a 1943 novel by Margaret Carpenter, Experiment Perilous follows a psychiatrist (George Brent) who investigates the suspicious death of a fellow train passenger (Olive Blakeney). In the process, he becomes enmeshed in the troubling relationship between husband and wife Nick (Paul Lukas) and Allida (Hedy Lamarr). Although Brent is stiff as uncooked pasta in the lead role, the psychological richness that runs throughs Warren Duff’s twisty screenplay is consistently compelling. Tourneur’s storytelling is artful and shrewd.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (Carl Reiner, 1982). In their second screen collaboration director Carl Reiner and star Steve Martin spoof Hollywood film noirs in by part by borrowing scenes from those classic features of a few decades earlier. The story of private eye Rigby Reardon (Martin) and the case he takes at the behest of comely client Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) is told in part through footage borrowed directly from the likes of Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. It’s a nifty trick to stitch the old film noir movie clips together with freshly filmed material to comes up with a semi-coherent plot (it’s no more muddled than The Big Sleep), but the comedy Reiner, Martin, and their co-credited screenwriter, George Gipe, bring to the Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is too often dopey and sophomoric. It’s a carryover of the romping silliness of the previous Reiner and Martin collaboration, The Jerk, without the same anarchic glee that elevated the earlier comedy. The film is a novelty that goes flat.

9 to 5 (Colin Higgins, 1980). If not for the overlong sequence centered on fantasies of retribution that are segued into through a haze of pot smoke, this comedy would be just about perfect. 9 to 5 is brightly feminist, fiercely attuned to the indignities of the American workplace, and generally alert to how people rely on camaraderie to move through a perilous modern existence. Director Colin Higgins, who is co-credited on the screenplay with Patricia Resnick, keeps the proceedings frothy and energetic, instilling a lightness to a story that’s fairly dark on the page, and it’s testimony to effectiveness of Dabney Coleman’s snarly condescension in playing the office boss that his kidnapping and false imprisonment come across as a acts of empowerment rather than dreadful crimes. Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton have grand chemistry as the workers who unite. Unsurprisingly, it’s Fonda who creates the fullest character with Judy Bernly, a woman forced by circumstances to gradually come into her own.