This lets in the police procedural aspects as the cops and scientists try to locate convict man and his radiation container. It's a ticking time bomb structure, convict man thinks he has a gold mine in his hands but actually holds something that is killing him by the hour. does not contain heroin, it contains Cobalt-60 in granular form." Cheap, compact but very effective "B" thriller from the tail end of the first noir cycle, City of Fear thrives on sweaty paranoia played out amongst Los Angeles locations. After stealing what he believed to contain a pound of pure heroin. "Last night a convict by the name of Vince Ryker escaped from San Quentin. Music is scored by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography by Lucien Ballard. The latter of which co-wrote the screenplay with Robert Dillon. The last shot of the movie is quite a hoot! Fine, jazzy musical score by a then-very young Jerry Goldsmith.Ĭity of Fear is directed by Irving Lerner and stars Vince Edwards, Lyle Talbot, John Archer and Steven Ritch. It really wouldn't have taken much to raise this from a guilty pleasure and enjoyable cautionary tale to something along the lines of KISS ME DEADLY, but it's almost more quaint to see this mostly forgotten and obscure b-movie in its under-appreciated present form, if you can find it. Some of the discussion of radioactivity is dated, but the cannister makes a great macguffin for the gruff talking' square-jawed Men of Law to pursue. Lots of seedy low lives generally keep up the off color flavor and the suspense builds nicely over the course of time. A lot of the charm comes in watching this police procedural unfold. I know Edwards is probably most famous for his heroic Ben Casey role, but he sure chewed up a lot of upholstery in movies like this one and MURDER BY CONTRACT the year before. **1/2 from ****Ī tawdry low budget pot boiler featuring dynamite performances by Vince Edwards and a similarly game supporting cast. Photographed by Lucien Ballard, the movie has a great, gritty look full of L.A.'s neighborhoods and back streets, and the tension does manage to build successfully even though just about everything in the picture is second-rate. The other actors in the cast aren't as versatile, and the mechanical writing and directing certainly doesn't liven them up (they're all stock figures, though Vince's girlfriend does get in a few funny wisecracks down at the police station). Edwards smolders like a reckless mad-dog stud, yet when he's required to disguise himself as a businessman with glasses, he's adept and convincing at this transition. Not a compact thriller (even at 75 minutes!), this suspense film is full of behind-the-wheel montages and bits of generic police business. Pulpy, wildly overwrought, but entertaining co-feature from Columbia has a pre-"Ben Casey" Vince Edwards starring as a convict who breaks out of San Quentin with a container he thinks is "a pound of 100% snow", but instead of heroin it's actually radioactive Cobalt 60 and any exposure could decimate Los Angeles. All things considered, this minor thriller is still worth a look-see, even 50 years later. Nonetheless, he manages a few neat tricks on display here. And what guy could pass up a chance at the really luscious Patricia Blair- move over Marilyn! Anyway, it looks like Sarris was right- Lerner was a one-shot wonder. Steven Ritch too, is an interestingly obscure figure, collaborating on a number of B-level scripts as well as acting in them. There's also the under-rated Kathie Browne who could be a pixie one minute and a hellion the next (though her part here is small). In my book, Edwards was an interesting actor at this early stage, a genuinely commanding presence in a lot of better-than-average B-films. And a good story premise it is, as the authorities try to track down Edwards before he can loose a big dose of radio-active cobalt on LA. Thus we get a kind of jerky effect that can't sustain the story momentum. And that's a key problem with this thriller- it stalls whenever the scenes shift to the offices where Archer and Talbot as police officials add little energy needed to rev up the chase. Still, City of Fear has its moments, particularly in the hand-held location shots that lend some much needed pacing. Unfortunately, the second film doesn't measure up to the first. By virtue of that film, Andrew Sarris includes a paragraph on Lerner in his seminal book on film directors and auteur theory, American Cinema. The first, Murder By Contract, is one of the fine sleeper classics of low-budget film-making, Vince Edwards as a professional hit-man. In 1958, director Irving Lerner scraped together enough money to make two poverty row features that Columbia released.
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