City of Fear

Vince Edwards dominates the screen as Vince Ryker, a hard core criminal who makes a violent escape from prison. On his way out, he snatches a container that he mistakenly assumes to contain heroin, which he hopes to sell for a tidy profit. However, it actually contains "Cobalt 60", a dangerous radioactive substance. Cops played by the likes of Lyle Talbot, John Archer, and Kelly Thordsen have to track Ryker down before he can expose the city of L.A. to this substance. As it happens, any person who comes near the container does become seriously sick.

Movies like "City of Fear" may be what they used to call "programmers", but that doesn't mean that they're devoid of entertainment value. This one is sufficiently enjoyable, with right-to- the-point, no frills filmmaking courtesy of director Irving Lerner and company. Tight pacing results in a movie that runs barely an hour and a quarter. Ryker is definitely an anti hero, to be sure, and Edwards portrays him in an appropriately sneering, punkish manner. But the story (co-written by co-star Steven Ritch, who plays Dr. John Wallace) dares to invite a bit of sympathy for Ryker, as he gets progressively more sickly and doesn't understand why. The rest of the cast is likewise solid: stunning Patricia Blair as Rykers' girl June, Joseph Mell as shoe store owner Eddie Crown, Sherwood Price as creepy Pete Hallon, Kathie Browne as salesgirl Jeanne, and Michael Mark in a cameo as a restaurant proprietor. The viewer can also have fun with the catchy, lively score composed by a young Jerry Goldsmith (in his first feature film credit). Cinematographer Lucien Ballard does excellent work as usual.

"City of Fear" might not be anything "great", but it serves its purpose: it's good, straightforward fun, combining police procedural aspects with potential outbreak chills in a diverting way. Recommended to fans of old black & white crime flicks.

Seven out of 10.

Nice and well paced B thriller , one of those in which you enjoy the way the directors manage to overcome the obvious script and budget limitations to create a personal piece of work , as much as the film itself . It happened in the past and still happens today , what could have turned into a routine movie it's saved by an skilled director who is able to add some spark to what otherwise could be an unremarkable film

Lerner was an absolute expert on this task and It's quite appealing to see this in action and how he manages to create and maintain the tension throughout this film . Literally he builds it out from nothing , no budget and based on a script that you probably came across on a dozen of movies before . All action and trouble comes from an small cylinder allegedly containing heroine worth 1 million USD , which has been stolen by a convict during his prison break . It contains a highly radioactive material instead which causes the alarm and the relentless pursuit of the convict .

Don't get any wrong impression , this is a classic man on the run B thriller , and as such there are some incongruences but mostly it's filmed imaginatively enough to offset the lack of budget and keep the interest It can be compared to what happened with Budd Boetticher , both get some attention when they received some props from Scorssesse himself , so that shed some light to their careers which thus far have been quite neglected by the general public.

City of Fear is directed by Irving Lerner and stars Vince Edwards, Lyle Talbot, John Archer and Steven Ritch. The latter of which co-wrote the screenplay with Robert Dillon. Music is scored by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography by Lucien Ballard.

"Last night a convict by the name of Vince Ryker escaped from San Quentin. After stealing what he believed to contain a pound of pure heroin ..... does not contain heroin, it contains Cobalt-60 in granular form."

Cheap, compact but very effective "B" thriller from the tail end of the first noir cycle, City of Fear thrives on sweaty paranoia played out amongst Los Angeles locations. It's a ticking time bomb structure, convict man thinks he has a gold mine in his hands but actually holds something that is killing him by the hour. This lets in the police procedural aspects as the cops and scientists try to locate convict man and his radiation container. Urgent! Not only to save the convicts life, but also the city from probable disaster!

OK, the science does not add up, nor does the fact that convict man never once gets to open the container to inspect his supposed golden haul! But the claustrophobic feel is high and the sense of doom married up to the helplessness of the protagonist does bring it into the noir universe. Ballard photographing is always a plus, though he does not get to show his considerable talents that much here, while Goldsmith, in one of his first musical scoring assignments, couples dramatic thrusts with jazzy reflections to great effect. Edwards (Murder by Contract) makes for a good noir loser. 7/10

In 1958, director Irving Lerner scraped together enough money to make two poverty row features that Columbia released. The first, Murder By Contract, is one of the fine sleeper classics of low-budget film-making, Vince Edwards as a professional hit-man.. By virtue of that film, Andrew Sarris includes a paragraph on Lerner in his seminal book on film directors and auteur theory, American Cinema.

Unfortunately, the second film doesn't measure up to the first. Still, City of Fear has its moments, particularly in the hand-held location shots that lend some much needed pacing. And that's a key problem with this thriller-- it stalls whenever the scenes shift to the offices where Archer and Talbot as police officials add little energy needed to rev up the chase. Thus we get a kind of jerky effect that can't sustain the story momentum.

And a good story premise it is, as the authorities try to track down Edwards before he can loose a big dose of radio-active cobalt on LA. In my book, Edwards was an interesting actor at this early stage, a genuinely commanding presence in a lot of better-than-average B-films. There's also the under-rated Kathie Browne who could be a pixie one minute and a hellion the next (though her part here is small). Steven Ritch too, is an interestingly obscure figure, collaborating on a number of B-level scripts as well as acting in them. And what guy could pass up a chance at the really luscious Patricia Blair-- move over Marilyn!

Anyway, it looks like Sarris was right-- Lerner was a one-shot wonder. Nonetheless, he manages a few neat tricks on display here. All things considered, this minor thriller is still worth a look-see, even 50 years later.

This film begins with a guy breaking out of prison. This man (Vince Edwards) is incredibly ruthless--even for an escaped prisoner. He kills several folks throughout the film--such as a prison guard, an innocent guy in a car and several others. This coldness really was excellent--making the character very compelling.

There is a strange (and VERY unbelievable twist). On his way out of prison, he stole what he THOUGHT was heroin from the infirmary--and he plans on selling it and making a fortune. However, it's actually a super-radioactive substance and if it's released from its steel case, it could kill thousands. Now what would heroin or super-radioactive stuff be doing in a prison in the first place?! I have no idea and it IS a huge plot problem. However, because the rest of the film is so good, it's something you can overlook. Taut--with great music and tense moments. The DVD case says it's film noir--and it is definitely noir-ish. Worth seeing.