City of Fear (1959)

Jailbreaker Vince Edwards steals a canister of radioactive Cobalt 60 from prison that he mistakenly thinks is several pounds of heroin. He makes his way to LA to meet up with his old contacts to move the stuff. The police bring in all of the known parties that were formerly connected to Edwards for questioning but then fail to put tails on these people to see if he contacts them, which he does. Edwards gets progressively sicker from the radiation throughout the movie but always finds enough strength to keep moving and killing. There isn't enough movie to fill even the short 75 minutes of the film. However, there is some terrific cinematography of late 50's LA and many vintage cars from that era. There is also a good Jerry Goldsmith musical score throughout that helps to make up for the lack of plot. Archer and Talbot make good cops and Patricia Blair is attractive as the loyal girlfriend. Barely okay.

Vince Edwards, two years before captivating female TV viewers as Dr. Ben Casey, plays an escaped con named Vince, who is unaware he has stolen a canister of radioactive powder known as Cobalt 60 instead of heroin. He is allusive outrunning police Chief Jensen(Lyle Talbot)and Lt. Richards(John Archer). The substance starts playing havoc on Vince's body and the police go into hyper mode to find him before he contaminates the entire wild eyed and terrorized citizens of Los Angeles. Vince convinces his girlfriend(Patrica Blair)that they have a worry free future if he can get out of the city. Filmed mostly on Melrose Avenue in L.A. and features an experimental jazz score by Jerry Goldsmith. Also in the cast: Steven Ritch, Kelly Thordsen and Sherwood Price.

City of Fear (1959),directed by Irving Lerner,is a representative of a presumably lost science or knowledge--that of making suspenseful thrillers.Todat, this science seems to have been lost.City of Fear (1959) is as straightforward as it is naive--and notice how its simplicity can be delighting and fit.Kathie Browne,a splendid blonde a la Kim Novak, very '50s in her dress and moves, is especially fine to watch.The film is very well paced, enviably well scored, and immensely suspenseful. It is naive and simple, yet not at all crap or stupid.It is a tale, effectually written, of the bomb threat,in the duck and cover era.It's one of the movies I wish I had seen as a boy.The _toxically murderous substance hovers above these people that hide or search it--striving to endure and prevail; the lead, a superior bum, is doomed. The toxic death lurks, looms. The looming, lurking, almost hidden danger. The atomic threat; the duck and cover naive slogans and fear.Irving Lerner was the director of only a few films, between '43 and '69 .Vince Edwards is the lead of City of Fear (1959),and fit for an action drama like this one.Because it is so tense and fast--paced and interesting and dynamic, the movie seems very short.

In 1958, director Irving Lerner scraped together enough money to make two poverty row features that Columbia released. The first, Murder By Contract, is one of the fine sleeper classics of low-budget film-making, Vince Edwards as a professional hit-man.. By virtue of that film, Andrew Sarris includes a paragraph on Lerner in his seminal book on film directors and auteur theory, American Cinema.Unfortunately, the second film doesn't measure up to the first. Still, City of Fear has its moments, particularly in the hand-held location shots that lend some much needed pacing. 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. Thus we get a kind of jerky effect that can't sustain the story momentum.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. 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. 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). Steven Ritch too, is an interestingly obscure figure, collaborating on a number of B-level scripts as well as acting in them. 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. Nonetheless, he manages a few neat tricks on display here. All things considered, this minor thriller is still worth a look-see, even 50 years later.