Before its announcement for DVD release as part of the fourth installment of Warners’ “The Film Noir Collection”, where it was greeted with cheers of anticipation, I have to admit that I wasn’t aware this particular title had that much of a reputation – despite the director and star (Sterling Hayden) involved. Having watched it for myself, I was duly impressed though I wouldn’t quite place it in the genre’s top ranks…but that’s because the standards set by the invigorating noir style during its heyday were so high.<br /><br />Incidentally, despite the title (which would seem to be hinting at a broader scale) and its being produced by one of the Hollywood majors (Warner Bros.), the modest 74-minute duration pretty much relegated the piece to B-movie status; furthermore, the filming was reportedly completed in a mere fortnight! Interestingly, it was the follow-up effort (for the same studio) by the team behind the gimmicky horror classic HOUSE OF WAX (1953) – namely De Toth, producer Bryan Foy, scriptwriter Crane Wilbur, and co-stars Phyllis Kirk and Charles Bronson.<br /><br />The plot followed a much-used noir formula: the man whose past comes back to haunt him – as an ex-con (Gene Nelson) is forced by three fugitives (including Bronson and Ted de Corsia), after deliberately compromising his parole and threatening his wife, into first harboring them and then take part in their proposed bank robbery (by which time they’ve enrolled other dangerous elements to their fold, notably a typically-nutty Timothy Carey). The narrative, then, tries to cram in as many recognizably noir elements as it possibly can: suspense, violence, romance, location shooting, documentary approach (via a systematic police procedural), etc.<br /><br />For once, too, Hayden is on the side of the law – CRIME WAVE actually came roughly in between his two most famous noir roles in John Huston’s THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950) and Stanley Kubrick’s THE KILLING (1956), both of them classic heist films in which he had played the fated leader of a criminal gang – though his character is just as cynical, tough and uncompromising as ever. In fact, for the longest time, he seemed merely a toothpick-chewing, thick-headed bully here but, eventually, he gets to show his essential softness in the film’s beautifully-handled (unusually hopeful for the genre) finale.<br /><br />De Toth operated in most genres (albeit tending towards action-oriented fare, despite his being blind in one eye!) and, whether adopting monochrome or color stock, the full-frame ratio or the Widescreen, he could always be depended upon to deliver an efficient, unpretentious, stylish and entertaining product.