Spy Hunt

The story begins in some country behind the Iron Curtain. Evidence that the rightful leader of the nation was murdered and was replaced by a communist stooge is being taken out of the country by some spies. However, the secret police are right behind and they apprehend most of the conspirators...but don't manage to get the microfilm with the evidence. Soon, one of the spies comes up with an insane solution for how to get the information out to the Free World...she sticks it in the collar of a nasty black panther headed to Paris on a train. The secret police learn of this and derail the train...but the pair of panthers manage to make it to Switzerland...along with the man who was paid to escort them to Paris and then the States, Steve Quain (Howard Duff). Can the good guys manage to get their hands on the collar before the forces of evil do?

While the story was mostly interesting, there was one HUGE problem with the plot. In the story, the pair of panthers (also called pumas or mountain lions) are supposedly black. There is no such thing as an animal called a black panther and the species has never had a documented case of a dark or melanistic big cat...NONE. The writer obviously confused this with black jaguars or black leopards...which do actually exist. So, to make the story work, you need to ignore this as well as that the filmmakers actually painted a pair of pumas for the film! Poor animals...especially since something similar was done while making the film "The Beast Master"...and the paint ended up killing the tiger they painted black for the movie!

Overall, a decent time-passer...nothing more.

Howard Duff has picked up a couple of black panthers -- the animal kind -- which he is delivering by train to a circus in Germany. Little does he know that spy Märta Torén has hidden important microfilm in one of their collars. Other spies have gotten wind of this, so they derail the railroad car he is traveling in with the beasts, sending him tumbling down a Swiss mountain. When he awakes, he is in a hotel being tended by the owner, Doctor Walter Slezak, and various characters, all made suspicious by their non-American accents are showing up. Are they there for a newspaper story, or to sketch the beasts, hunt them, or to get the microfilm?

The story of how the term 'maguffin' came to mean something in a film that everyone wants, but it doesn't really matter what it is, is an joke. Two men are traveling in a railroad car. One points to a device the other has. "What's that?" "That's a maguffin." "What's a maguffin." "It's a device for hunting tigers in the Scottish highlands." "There are no tigers in the Scottish highlands." "Then that's never a maguffin."

I'm pretty sure that's the impetus behind the Victor Canning novel this movie is based on. Making them panthers in Switzerland was just intended to obscure the origins. Director George Sherman continues the joke by using he opening music from the Universal Sherlock Holmes series as the opening music to this one, but mostly he handles the story in a straightforward fashion. It's moderately suspenseful. With Philip Friend, Robert Douglas, Philip Dorn, and Kurt Kreuger.

Universal-International's grade B suspense film is built around an outre gimmick MacGuffin: incriminating microfilm is smuggled out of Italy on a train in the collar of a male black panther, which Howard Duff has been hired to transport along with its female mate to America. The rest of the show is the hunt for the deadly escaped panthers, with a group of unsavory spies also on their trail.

This movie desperately needed some star power to punch it up. Since Robert Mitchum starred in "The Night of the Hunter" and "Track of the Cat", two classics shot several years later, he would have been perfect as the lead, and throw in his famous co-star of the '40s, Jane Greer, and wow! But instead we have Duff and Marta Toren, plus a colorless supporting cast.

Lousy script gives zero sympathy to the beautiful panthers -instead they're described as symbolizing pure evil. Not for me, I was rooting for them from the git go.

I guess we'll have to wait for Ryan Coogler to direct a big-budget remake! At least he'll know who the true hero and heroine of this story are.

The story is very predictable but everything is well done so 74 minutes pass very quickly. Especially since there are some very good actors, all of them, Märta Torén, Howard Duff, Philip Friend, Robert Douglas, Philip Dorn, Walter Slezak, Otto Waldis, etc. Plus, no joke, there are also two dogs that play the role of followers very well. And, even better, two black panthers (if they really exist...), who actually perfectly play their roles to be hunted by everyone, people, all the characters, and the two dogs. I don't know how they managed to film those scenes with the panthers. And, all in the picturesque setting of the mountains of Switzerland.

This is a very good spy film with an astonishingly novel story element. Amongst the 'actors' are two ferocious black panthers. They get loose from their cages in a train and spies from both sides are hunting them because of some microfilm concealed in the collar of one of them. Howard Duff plays the stalwart good guy American who was supposed to be transporting the panthers to a zoo. He is not a spy for either side. He meets the alluring Märta Torén amd falls for her. She is the one who concealed the mircrofilm in the panther's collar after drugging the panther. There are various mysterious men who may be goodies or may be baddies, and most of them have hunting rifles. George Sherman directs this caper and makes the most of it. The entire adventure takes place in the Swiss Alps. How many dogs and men will be killed by the panthers? How many will be killed by spies of the other side? This one is certainly different. The acting and production are good, but one may well be a bit more nervous the next time one visits the big cat section of a zoo.