Dangerous Mission

Oh Gawd...... RKO in the Howard Hughes years.... terrible films with good production values.... and in 3D comes DANGEROUS MISSION.... what a terrible title... it is like calling a film SOMETHING HAPPENED. Of course it is a dangerous mission.. what would be the point of it otherwise.....In this hybrid noir and faux-Republic western, we get some terrific location forest and glacier footage mixed with shoddy studio shots, half the film is re created indoors on sound stages almost as if to give the studio staff and crew something to do. The whole film could easily have been filmed on location, but for almost this 'keep 'em busy at Gower St' reason insert shots and close ups and odd shots get a studio level makeover.. and this includes a 3D forest fire (!) a 3D whiplash loose electrical cable, a 3D avalanche.. all of which believe it or not have nothing to do with the story. If you see the trailer on the "3D trailers DVD" available in discount shops, there is a hilarious gangland assassination of some piano player in reel one (he keeps tinkling on the treble keys as he slides off the stool) some gal sees it and some guys follow her to her holiday hideout in the mountains. The second unit alpine reality is gorgeous and the Indian theme inspires 50s sets and clothes are kitsch.. and the interaction and jumbled scenes often do not make sense... in fact it is downright startling that some scenes have nothing to do with the next. One scene in the lobby early in the film has Vincent Price and Victor Mature chatting up the two female characters in the film. cut to: entry at a chalet square dance where Mature arrives with one of them... no asking her out in the last scene... just 'here they are here now:... then the roof falls in courtesy of producer Irwin Allen. The glacial scenes in the last reel make no sense as they swing between the same actors in shopping clothes in icy terrain and them them on a cardboard set shooting each other. It is just a mess...BUT and here I have to admit, it is all so entertaining. Almost no story, subplots dismissed (the Indian Dad), pointless running about and apparently witty macho banter between the guys. Some noir twists and BANG it's all over in a 3D avalanche too. What a mess. How enjoyable!

A slightly different RKO Pictures movie to the normal - this one's in colour, with a bigger budget, and produced by disaster maestro Irwin Allen, no less. The story mixes in a little film noir with an outdoor action adventure template, and you can tell Allen's influence by the way an action scene has been shoehorned into the narrative at regular intervals. Avalanches, forest fires, you name it - they're here, although they have zero to do with the main storyline.

Said storyline sees a woman (Piper Laurie, decades before she became the domineering mother in CARRIE) witnessing a murder in New York, and fleeing the murderer by escaping to a national park in Montana. There, she meets up with various characters, including the butch and heroic Victor Mature, a mild-mannered photographer (Vincent Price, no less), the voluptuous Betta St. John (playing an Indian!), and the thickset William Bendix.

The narrative is a kind of whodunit, with the mystery angle played up for the first half or so (when the characters aren't contending with the random natural disasters, that is). Things become more wild and adventure-style in the second half, with a suitably exciting climax to finish things off. It's not a great film - to be honest, the plot seems all over the place at times - but it is a mildly engaging one nonetheless.

The best thing about Dangerous Mission is the great location cinematography of Glacier National Park where the film was shot. It must have boosted tourism in Montana considerably after it was in theaters and later on television. No doubt this film made WOR TV in New York when RKO closed as 99.9% of that library was sold to them.

Piper Laurie witnesses a mob killing in New York, but she's afraid to testify and flees back home to Montana where she knows everybody and strangers can be spotted easily. She's a guest at the tourist lodge owned by Betta St. John and her father Steve Darrell who's also got some problems with the law. But being an Indian he's pretty good at staying outdoors and living off the land.

Two strangers take an interest in Laurie both quite charming in their own ways, Victor Mature and Vincent Price. Just the names will tell you who the good and who the bad guy is. William Bendix is also in the cast as the chief Forest Ranger in the park. I wish Bendix had been given more to do in Dangerous Mission.

With the great outdoor cinematography in color you can't really call this a noir film. Still the plot elements would be noir if it were set in the big city.

Another thing Dangerous Mission has to recommend it is a very good depiction of a landslide which wreaks havoc on a hillside house and later Victor Mature goes out and tames a downed power line. The final chase scene across the glacier is also well done.

Though the plot is routine, it's all well written and staged and Dangerous Mission is enjoyable.

Plot line for "The Old Corral, 1936": Night club singer (Hope/Irene Manning) witnesses a gangland murder and heads West and is saved by Gene Autry; Plot line for "Dangerous Mission, 1954": Night club bookkeeper (Piper Laurie) witnesses a gangland murder and heads West and is saved by Victor Mature. RKO added 3-D, Technicolor, Glacier National Parks location and still came up short of the original. Not surprising, since the original had Gene Autry, the Sons of the Pioneers (when Roy Rogers was still a member), Smiley Burnette and Champion.

And even Gene Autry was more animated than Victor Mature. Come to think of it, so was Glacier National Park.

In the 1970s Hollywood brought the world a spate of disaster pictures including EARTHQUAKE, TOWERING INFERNO, ROLLERCOASTER, AVALANCHE, METEOR, CASSANDRA CROSSING, etc. That said, by 1954 two films (DANGEROUS MISSION and NAKED JUNGLE) came out that can now be seen as blueprints for the massively cataclysmic outpourings of two decades later.

DANGEROUS MISSION is a short 75-minute film with Victor Mature an undercover cop seeking a subject on a mission to kill Piper Laurie for witnessing a murder. A lively dance is interrupted by an avalanche, followed by a forest fire (pity it did not happen in the opposite order, the avalanche would have killed the fire) in which Mature saves Price from certain death, only to lose him later to a fall in the snow... after a Glacier National Park radio station warning that a killer is on the loose and targeting lovely Laurie, who promptly jumps off a moving car to save her life. Which she does for a happy ending in Mature's arms.

I know embarrassingly little about Director Louis King, but he certainly keeps the action ticking bomb style, and cinematography shows Glacier Park to great advantage.

Excellent cinematography by William Snyder. 7/10.