Haunted studio backlots! Stewardesses in peril! Mickey Rooney as “a car mechanic whose craving for fast cars and faster women steers him into a blind alley in which there are no pit stops”!!! The 12th annual Noir City film noir festival launches tonight at the Egyptian Theater, and the line up is a dream, loaded with archival prints of films that are unavailable on DVD. You'll have to wait until next weekend for that Rooney movie, Drive a Crooked Road, but this weekend's highlights include tonight's double feature of films written by William Bowers (including Cry Danger, which the poster promises is “not suitable for children,”) and Sunday's set of early B pictures by eventual gimmick-meister William Castle. For the full lineup, go to AmericanCinematheque.com.

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