John Gilling’s The Challenge (US: It Takes a Thief) features one of the most perfect noir openings: a breathy female voice off-camera pleads sexily with a half-naked man, who rises from a bed in a dingy, smoke-clouded hotel room and ponders her proposition by the window, a train rumbling and a neon light flashing right outside, her naked leg finally extending upward from the camera as if excited to get what she wants. It could almost be noir parody. The woman is Billy, played as a brunette for the first act by blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield, who leads a gang of thieves and wants to bring her lover Jim (Anthony Quayle) into a gold bullion job, for which he’s ultimately sent to prison; as Jim’s the only one who knows where the loot is hidden, Billie and the gang are ready for a reunion when he gets out. Gilling sustains the noir palette throughout, rain-slicked streets reflecting streetlamp light in all directions, and Mansfield seems to be enjoying her role as a decadent villainess who still carries a torch for the man she framed (in a montage of armed robberies by her gang, Billie grins in ecstasy as she watches from the getaway car). A final sequence involving a child and a speeding train strains credulity, but it’s a lot of fun to watch.