Storm Warning (1951)

Storm Warning (1951) is an effective but odd hybrid: part film noir, part socially conscious picture. Ginger Rogers witnesses a Ku Klux Klan killing as she’s stopping off in a small town to visit younger sis Doris Day; Day’s hubby Steve Cochran is one of the killers. In one of his best roles, a laid-back Reagan plays the uncompromising local district attorney. The film has some superb noir shots in it, but the expose of the KKK is truly tame: although the word "lynching" is used, there’s no racial angle to the movie at all. It’s more like the Klan is a crime syndicate that needs to be cleaned up.