hyped garbage

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

"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."

It's not a classic by any means. But it has its virtues - the black and white cinematography, the great jazzy soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith, and particularly the extensive on-location shooting in and around Los Angeles. There are lots of scenes of 1950s cars cruising the street, store fronts and interiors - more than average, because they're looking for the protagonist. Living in LA, I especially enjoyed that. As for the plot, I've seen three or four similar plotted stories the last year - someone is contagious and threatens the city, or is carrying something radioactive, etc. This one had a slightly less plausible plot line, since the police weren't particularly protective. But I soaked up the ancillary elements - the acting was passable, the camera-work and lighting were above average - and I'm a sucker for the '50s.

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.

This is a gritty low-budget thriller that reminded me of Panic In The Streets but with a faster pace and a no-frills b-movie tone. I'd consider it a lost classic in that I saw it once on a local TV station about 30 years ago and have been looking for it on TV or video ever since to no avail. The basic premise of a deadly little canister of radiological waste deserves another look in this day of weapons of mass destruction (another case of science fiction predicting the future). The deterioration of the unwitting thief as the radiation poisoning consumes him is macabre and compelling.