THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE

THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE Trevor Howard, Griffith Jones (Kino, 96 mins., unrated) Fast, snazzy, wryly nasty, director Alberto Cavalcanti's 1947 noir -- which only now debuts on tape -- offers a stylishly scuzzy view of the London underworld. Jones is Narcy (short for Narcissus), an explosively sadistic black marketeer. Howard -- playing it at once brittle and tender -- is demobbed, demoralized Clem, an upper-class tippler fallen in with Narcy's gang. Double-crossed, Clem is drawn into a sudden-death cat-and-mouse game that's as smartly shot as it is thrillingly paced. If ''The 39 Steps'' bore the mark of James M. Cain, the product might have been as sharply dark as this.