City of Fear (1959)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Great Film overall

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

"Royal Hunt of the Sun" director Irving Lerner's panic-stricken thriller "City of Fear," with Vince Edwards and Lyle Talbot, conjures up minimal paranoia. This black & white chiller about an impending apocalypse has an interesting premise. A desperate San Quentin inmate, Vince Ryker (Vince Edwards of "Murder by Contract"), has broken out of prison with a compatriot. Vince stabbed a guard to death in the process of breaking out. These two steal an ambulance and tear off down the highway. The inmate riding with Vince dies not long after their escape. Vince has grand plans once he reaches Los Angeles. He has to steal another car after he stops a motorist. He kills the car owner and burns the victim's body in the ambulance along with his inmate pal. Indeed, he believes that he has taken a cannister of heroin from the prison infirmary. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As it turns out, ignorant Vince has pinched a cannister of a dangerous isotope: cobalt-60, in powdered form, that is extremely lethal, lethal enough to throw a city into a panic. The authorities learn about the cannister, but they do a sloppy job of catching Vince. Of course, our misguided moron dies trying to open the cannister. He suffers horribly from exposure to the stuff and kills two accomplices along the way. Vince meets briefly with his old girlfriend, June Marlowe (Patricia Blair of "Jump into Hell"), and she doesn't inform on him because she is in love with the lug. Everybody that he encounters develops flu-like symptoms and sweats profusely. The pollution patrol cops cruiser around in cars with Geiger counters dangling out the windows to locate the stuff. Police Chief Jenson (Lyle Talbot of "Calling Homicide"), Lieutenant Mark Richards (John Archer of "White Heat"), and Doctor John Wallace (Steven Ritch of "Plunder Road") stand around at police headquarters and sweat a lot as things get out of hand, until they converge on Vince. Actually, the authorities blunder no sooner than they release the citizens that Ryker knew and would probably contact. Furthermore, they screw up badly because they fail to maintain surveillance on these individuals. Lerner alternates exterior location lensing of Los Angeles with stage-bound scenes at police headquarters. Unfortunately, Lerner doesn't have audiences sweating about the outcome as much as they grow restless waiting the inevitable. Vince Edwards delivers a hard-hitting performance, but everybody else is way too laid back. Some of the on-location camera work is evocative. Ultimately, "City of Fear" ranks a poor, second-rate imitation of earlier epics, including Eli Kazan's "Panic in the Streets and Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly."

An interesting late film noir based in L.A. It has a bit of the city "documentary" type filming. It starts out with an ambulance car racing down the street. We find out one of them is bleeding and they both escaped from jail. Vince, the driver, stole a can of what he thinks is heroine on his way out of jail. He feels like he can sell the drug and live off the money with his girlfriend.The film also focuses on the police investigation which cuts into the development time of any of the characters, thus they all remain underdeveloped. The escaped criminal Vince does come of as menacing and we see him descend fast from his jail break "high." The audience finds out quickly that the canister is a radioactive powder form of Cobalt 60, while Vince thinks its full of highly price worthy drugs. The film, from Vince's perspective shows him trying to set up a sale of the drug, while from the police perspective, we see them trying to prevent a city wide panic.There were good sequences and shots, like when Vince is trying to figure things out at night along a busy road and we see cuts of the cars passing by, Vince sweating and Vince holding on to the canister. But there is not enough to lift up the film from mediocrity. Interestingly, the musical score is conducted by the prolific Jerry Goldsmith. As far as noir films, it includes an interesting depiction of paranoia, egotism, violent consequences and illusions of grandeur. It is an inferior picture of Cold War, radioactive poisoning paranoia, but it will be an interesting film for fans of film noir movies who want to see the last throes of a great psychological cinematic movement.

"City of Fear" is a 1959 B movie starring Vince Edwards, Patricia Blair, and Lyle Talbot. Directed by Irving Lerner.Vince Edwards is the imaginatively named Vince, a prison escapee who believes he's carrying a lot of heroin in a cannister. He plans to sell it and then take off with his girlfriend (Blair). There are a few people in his way, but in his drive from the person, he's able to dispatch them. One of them is his fellow escapee, who becomes very sick and dies.Vince is actually carrying a lethal cannister of cobalt-6, and it's making him ill, though he persists with his plans. Meanwhile, city officials know what he has and are desperate to find him.This script has been made I don't know how many times, most notably Panic in the Streets (1950). It's fairly well executed here by Lerner's touches, one where Vince drives away from a gas station and the cannister has rolled out of his car, and another where he's trying to open it, to no avail.I never considered the brooding Vince Edwards to be much of an actor. He's Ben Casey gone rogue here. Patricia Blair is a knockout. The actress Kathie Browne has a nice cameo - she later appeared in many television shows and was married to Darren McGavin. Finally, one of the great character actors, Lyle Talbot, enjoyed a 56-year career before dying at the age of 94. At the time of his death, he was working on his biography. A shame he didn't finish it - it would have been a great read.

***SPOILERS*** A lot like the 1955 Mike Hammer film noir classic "Kiss Me Deadly" the movie "City of Fear" has to do with a stolen cylinder of highly toxic and radioactive cobalt-60 in granular form that was histed from the San Quentin infirmary, what it was doing there is never explained, by escaped convicts Vince Ryker and his partner William Dafner. Thinking that the cylinder contains pure heroin Ryker and Dafner, who died from radiation poisoning within hours after his escape, are in for a big surprise once they open it. In not only killing each other but exposing million of people in the L.A Metropolitan area to it's deadly radioactive rays!Not daring to tell the public what their facing the police under the command of Chief Jensen try to capture Ryker before he opens and expose himself as well as the entire city of L.A to the deadly cobalt-60! Ryker not realizing what he's got on him tries to get in touch with shoe salesman Eddie Crown who uses his store as a front for drug trafficking! It's Crown that Ryker wants to fence the drugs and make a cool million from the transaction in splitting the profits with him. While all this is going on everyone that Ryker comes in contact with including his girlfriend June Marlow are exposed to the deadly cobalt-60 and like him are not long for this world.A pre Ben Casey Vince Edwards is eerily effective as escaped hood Vince Ryker who's so obsessed in what he thinks is the heroin canister he has on him that he doesn't seem to realize that it's in fact slowly killing him. On the run through the entire film Ryker starts to sweat and cough as well as suffer internal bleeding from being exposed to the cobalt-60 that he never lets leave his sight. This doesn't stop Ryker from murdering some half dozen people, including Eddie Crown, in his mad dash for freedom, to Mexico or South America, with his by now also dying from radiation poisoning girlfriend June Marlow. ***SPOILERS*** The end comes for Ryker in this greasy spoon diner in downtown L.A as he's running from the police where he staggers in and collapses in his cup of coffee barley being able to get up and stand on his feet! Finally realizing what a jerk he was in actually killing himself, with the cobalt-60, and taking a number of people along with him Ryker crumbles to the street and finally passes away. The irony to all that is that Ryker is by now so contaminated from the effects of the cobalt-60 that no one not the police or even the ambulance staff on the scene would dare lay a hand on him!