The Blue Gardenia [VHS]
With its title inspired by the notorious Black Dahlia murder case,The Blue Gardeniathrows a twist into the story by making the mystery woman not the victim but the suspect in a lurid murder case. Anne Baxter, playing a virginal blonde with almost breathless innocence, impulsively accepts a blind date after receiving a "Dear Jane" letter from her boyfriend in Korea. Raymond Burr oozes slime as the lothario who plots his seduction with cynical calculation ("For drinks, Polynesian Pearl Divers, and don't spare the rum!") and the naive Baxter is easy prey, until she fights back against his advances with a fireplace poker and stumbles home. Waking up the  next morning with the past evening a veritable blank, she discovers herself the prime suspect in a murder case trumpeted into a sensationalistic headline story by calculating columnist Richard Conte. Fritz Lang transforms the rather conventional low-budget thriller into a paranoid nightmare, his cheap sets and flat backdrops creating a tawdry world peopled by cynics and opportunists preying on the guileless, and Baxter makes every guilt-ridden moment palpable. Like in many film noir thrillers, the pat conclusion seems wholly arbitrary, the product of the Hollywood  happy-ending machine. However, Lang's film isn't about the mystery, but the experience of an innocent whose single, desperate transgression turns her world upside down.--Sean Axmaker