Man-Trap

This is a black and white film noir that focuses on a relationship between two wartime buddies. Matt Jameson (played by Jeffrey Hunter) is a true war hero who risked his own life to save Vince Biskay (played by David Janssen) who was lying wounded on a beachfront with his hand partially shot off. Vince promises his hero Matt that if they make it back to the U.S.A. and if he ever gets rich he will split his wealth with his savior Matt 50/50.

The two wartime buddies do make it back after the war is over and our hero Matt marries his bosses daughter Nina Jameson (played by Stella Stevens). Over the next few years Matt realizes that his wife Nina is a tramp who drinks all day long and sleeps around on him. Matt also comes to realize that his father-in-law encouraged Matt marry his daughter Nina so that he and his daughter could bask in her marrying a true war hero. Unfortunately both Nina and her father are unscrupulous users of anyone and everyone, especially when it comes to using and abusing Matt.

Now Matt has fallen for his secretary Liz Addams (played by Elaine Devry) but because his wife has put him into so much debt with her reckless spending and non-stop boozing Matt believes he is stuck in a loveless marriage with his father-in-law hanging his unpaid debt to him over his head to stay in his loveless marriage.

In walks Matt's old wartime buddy Vince Biskay with a questionable scheme that will make the two wartime buddies a half million dollars each for just a couple of hours work by picking up a diplomat at the airport who happens to be carrying a steel suitcase with $3.5 million dollars. Now Matt has his reservations about getting involved with his buddy Vince and his plan but Vince assures him it is on the up and up and there will be no gun play. Matt's girlfriend Liz Addams pleads with Matt not to proceed with the plan and just leave the city with her although Matt is broke but with his dignity still intact.

Matt decides out of desperation in Vince's plan that will see him be financially stable enough to leave his wife Nina and move on with a new life with his girlfriend Liz. The film does get very interesting in the latter half of the story and the audience will be able to guess what happens next, but it is not easy to predict what happens to the four main characters in this story. Two characters who are nothing but users and liars, Nina and Vince, and two characters with a moral compass that knows right from wrong in Matt and Liz.

There are twists and turns in this film to keep your attention in this film noir classic. I do wish it would have provided a more enticing and suspenseful musical score but sometimes we can't have it all. I give it a 7 out of 10 rating.

MAN-TRAP (1961) offers an unusual crime drama of a wounded Korean War vet who gets embroiled in a robbery caper with a war buddy whose life he'd once saved. It's got a trio of intriguing lead characters and a set of unpredictable twists and turns that never defy logic. Other than a couple of well-staged action scenes, the film avoids making concessions to genre conventions or established formula. The whole thing is character-driven and rarely do you feel the filmmakers pandering to the audiences' expectations. In fact, it plays like a faithful adaptation of a good crime novel and was indeed based on one, "Soft Touch," by John D. MacDonald ("Cape Fear").

The film opens with a Korean War scene (filmed rather cheaply on a California beach) in which Matt Jameson (Jeffrey Hunter) rescues Vince Biskay (David Janssen) from Chinese riflemen and gets shot in the head as a result. Vince promises Matt that, "If I ever make any money, a lotta money, half of it's gonna be yours." That one line handily and dramatically sets up the premise for the rest of the movie. Cut to eight years later. Matt has a silver plate in his head and is having serious marital and financial woes when Vince shows up out of the blue with a proposition. He's been working for a South American government and has been sent to the U. S. to intercept a cache of money earmarked to buy guns for rebels seeking to overthrow his employers. It's for a good cause, Vince insists, and Matt will be paid a half-million dollars if he acts as driver when Vince goes to San Francisco Airport, in disguise, to pick up the courier.

Once they get to the airport, of course, things go awry when the shooting starts, thanks to rebel representatives with ideas of their own. Matt soon finds himself caring for a seriously wounded Vince, while stashing the money, of which he now wants no part, and trying to stay one step ahead of pursuers. Things spiral from bad to worse when Matt's wife (Stella Stevens) freaks out in an alcoholic rage, with horrific results, and the rebels catch up with Matt. Matt's amnesia soon kicks in and the chance of a happy ending seems impossibly remote.

The airport confrontation is quite clever, especially since it coincides with the arrival of a teen pop star and crowds of teenage girls surrounding him. It's followed by an exciting car chase from the airport into San Francisco and through the streets of the city, a good seven years before BULLITT put San Francisco car chases on the map. (BULLITT also had a shootout at San Francisco Airport.)

It's an intricate tale of an innocent man caught up in a crime of opportunity when he's at his most financially vulnerable. Matt's an honorable man who tries to do the right thing at every stage, often at great cost to himself. But he's so uncomfortable and unhappy at all times that we kind of secretly wish he'd just lighten up, take the money and run off and start a new life. But the film doesn't make it easy for us. Janssen's Vince Biskay is quite a snaky character, charming and loquacious one moment, hard-bitten and dangerous the next. It's a side of Janssen we didn't often get to see. Nina, Matt's wife, is played by Stella Stevens as quite a wild number, given to hard drink at all hours of the day and flirtatious behavior whenever and with whomever she wants. She's so damned cute and sexy and has such an inviting smile, it's hard to dislike her, no matter how much of a lush and nymphomaniac she turns out to be. The film really perks up during her scenes, leading me to think that Stella just might outrank all her other hot kittenish blond contemporaries (Tuesday Weld, Connie Stevens, Ann-Margret). Elaine Devry co-stars as the helpful and understanding office secretary with whom Matt is having a rather chaste affair.

Matt's suburban neighbors are a noisy and intrusive bunch, given to parties and heavy drinking whenever we see them. Future "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane is one of them. They play a naughty game called "Braille," in which the wives lie on floors covered in sheets and the husbands have to use "braille" to determine which covered figure on the floor is their wife. This was pretty hot stuff for 1961.

The film was directed by actor Edmond O'Brien (D. O. A.) who does not appear in the film at all. O'Brien also co-directed SHIELD FOR MURDER (1954), a gritty thriller in which he starred as a corrupt cop. I saw both films practically back-to-back. I'm impressed. There are some scenes in MAN-TRAP that have way too much dialogue and are a bit overwrought, but, overall, I like the way the film mixes urban crime drama, caper film, international politics, marital dysfunction, suburban decadence and a lone hero's moral dilemma all in one enticing package. Now I need to track down the novel.

I like most of David's movies, but in this he was really sleazy. Very unlikeable. And Stella Stevens, always seems to be type cast as a tramp. She was really horrible, and nasty. Hell I would have killed her. Jeffery, was a wuss, no one should have put up with that. The movie was great, so many vile people, the swinging neighbors, gross. Not surprised to see Bob crane as one of them. He lived that life style. Too bad it focuses more on Stevens,. It even starts showing at the beginning, she's no good. So, letting you know I don't have 61 more things to say. And you need to go back to the original format, A review should be a damn thesis.

There are a few distinctions to this film, one being that it is the only movie ever to have been directed by Edmond O'Brien, the 1940s leading man who, a decade later, put on a great deal of weight and turned into a top character actor, even winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Once was enough as a director, though, for this crime thriller appears to be an imitation of the film noirs that O'Brien starred in (most notably, D.O.A.) earlier in his career, and that genre had all but disappeared from the screen by the early 1960s, only to be revived again toward the end of the century and at the beginning of the next, via neo-noir - which even included a disastrous remake of DOA with Dennis Quaid. But I digress . . . one of the other distinctions is the re-teaming of Jeffrey Hunter and David Janssen, who had worked together very well a year and a half earlier in a far better and more ambitious film, Hell to Eternity, a big scale WWII action flick. In between, Hunter had played the part of Jesus in King of Kings and, after that, he seemed desperate to do anything to try and distance himself from the image of purity he incarnated there. That included second rate 'programmers' (as studio B movies used to be called) in which, at the very least, he could remind audiences of the differing roles he was capable of playing. Hunter blew his last big chance for success, incidentally, when a few years later he listened to the lady in his life when she told him NOT to do Star Trek! Anyway, the third reason to take a look at this flick (don't go out of your way, mind you) is to catch Stella Stevens displaying her range of talents and reminding us that, in addition to a ditzy-glitzy blonde in comedy roles, she could do a femme fatale just fine. She may have third billing behind the boys, but this is her show all the way, and whenever she's on screen, sparks fly - as they do nowhere else in this minor movie.

Jeffrey Hunter and David Janssen give excellent performances in this crime caper. The real standout is Stella Stevens as Hunter's nagging, nymphomaniac drunk who drinks martinis out if a water pistol. She makes this movie a standout.