Film Noir Baby

I'd never heard of Joe MacBeth until TCM aired it during their Star of the Month series with Ruth Roman in November. It apparently bombed on release in 1955. Maybe it was too dark and intense for the audiences back then. It is a very violent, gritty story with some unlikable characters. But, it IS based on the Shakespeare play MacBeth, so what did they expect? Paul Douglas is the title character, a gangster with a mean streak and an evil, ambitious wife, played by Ruth Roman. She talks him into rubbing out his boss while the man is staying at their house. The scenes of his death, and the wife's retrieval of the murder weapon are chilling, and not because they take place in a lake. There's also a scene, thankfully not shown, of a double murder of innocents that drives MacBeth's wife insane. Both she and Joe are deranged, no doubt. And their end is deserved. But in this story, there are very few actual sympathetic souls. You wind up kind of worn out by the finale, but it...