The film noir cycle features plenty of “one hit wonder” directors who made fine films in other genres but only lent their skills to noir for a single film: Roy William Neill (Black Angel, 1946), Mitchell Liesen (No Man of Her Own, 1950), and Bruce Humberstone, whose name would be entirely forgotten today if not for I Wake Up Screaming. In this outstanding noir mystery, Victor Mature plays show business promoter Frankie Christopher, prime suspect in the murder of Vicki Lynn (Carole Landis), his new client and love interest, based on circumstantial evidence. Betty Grable plays the victim’s “less glamorous” sister Jill who develops feelings for Christopher as they collaborate to find the real killer, while the inimitable Laird Cregor plays shady police inspector Ed Cornell, who is determined to nab Frankie even if it means framing him. Launching right into a smoky, spotlit police interrogation scene, the film offers a feast of noir tropes and visual elements, the cinematography often intimate and breathtaking, such as Cornell’s interrogation of Frankie with the light facing the camera, Frankie’s spying on the switchboard boy (Elisha Cook, Jr.) against wrought-iron lattice, and an unusual slow zoom from the busy street through a flower shop’s picture window and arriving at a conversation in progress. If there’s a weakness, it might be Mockridge’s repetitive score which punctuates the drama a bit too liberally with  Alfred Newman’s “Street Scene” theme and later, somewhat inexplicably, “Over the Rainbow.”