What would you do if you had 24 hours to live? If you were in the 1950 film noir, D.O.A., you’d get down to the business of solving your own murder.

What?

Yes, that’s the incredible can’t-miss premise: an every-man accountant stumbles into an LA police precinct to report he’s been poisoned. And there’s no antidote. That man is Bigelow. And he has roughly 24 hours to retrace his steps, and try to figure out what happened to him – a road that leads from San Fran, and then on to Los Angeles.

And like many a calamity, this one began in a bar. We all know how that happens. Bigelow has his drink swapped for another, containing a toxin.

And the one clue Bigelow has when he wakes up in a stupor, is that a distant business acquaintance had been trying to get in touch with him, desperately. Who was this guy? Bigelow needs to find out, but unfortunately, the guy dies before Bigelow can press him for details…

On the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we celebrate genre film, predominantly horror and action. However, up into this point we’ve delved into women-in-prison (WiP) flicks several times, yet not once covered that classic mid-40s-mid-50s genre, film noir.

We both came to this film through the remake starring Dennis Quaid.

On this episode:

• How we got into film noir
  
• The city of San Francisco in film
  
• Notable film noir classics
  
• Fatalism / doom in film noir
  
• Film noir sensibilities
  

Join us every week for a new discussion!

[Editors’ note: we mistake Don McKellar for Atom Egoyan. Please forgive us, we got  our Canadian directors mixed up]