Dangerous Cargo

A nice little B-movie thriller from mid-'50s Britain. The star of the show is one Jack Watling, who plays a mild-mannered airport employee who hooks up with an old war buddy (Terence Alexander) and embarks on a short-lived gambling career. Unfortunately for him, before long he's in debt with a loan shark, and a gang of bullion robbers have him in their sights. How will he get out of it?

This is a short, snappy thriller, well-paced and with an interesting story and characters to propel it along. The leading characters are flawed but a little too wholesome to really get behind, but the supporting characters are really interesting. Especially Alexander, playing against type as a spiv sort of character, and he's excellent - charming, and ruthless too. Watch out for John Le Mesurier being completely unconvincing as an Italian called Luigi!

Fairly typical 50's low budget British B movie. Reasonably entertaining and at a little over an hour is not long enough to outstay it's welcome. Jack Watling is the naive airport worker set up by the obviously dodgy Terence Alexander in a gambling scam which leaves him as a blackmail victim. John Le Mesurier who is usually seen as an urbane, middle class character plays the ruthless, foreign enforcer. Yes, that's ridiculous!. Stand out for me was Susan Stephen playing the dutiful wife of Jack Watling. I enjoyed every scene she was in. Can't think why!

A very rare gem indeed, very hard to find, unfortunately it doesn't necessarily offers the expected stuff. It is lousy, talkative. Only the last ten minutes are worth the watch for heist film lovers, which I definitely belong to. It is not Peter Yate's ROBBERY nor Sidney Hayers' PAYROLL. No, even those last ten minutes don't justify this tepid piece of junk. Maybe the tiny budget explains this total mess. I usually crave for those small budget UK crime flicks. But only the bigger budgets are really interesting. Watch A PRICE OF ARMS instead, this latest is really worth. Forget this one once and for all.

The plot of DANGEROUS CARGO has most of the basic ingredients of a standard mid-fifties British B film. Tom Matthews is a trusted precious-cargo handler at a main airport. He has a chance meeting with an old wartime colleague Harry who takes Tom and his wife Janie to the dog track and they gratefully win some money. However Harry is chauffeur to a gang leader who intends to mount a raid on the airport secure vault but they need inside information about when precious cargos arrive. So Harry takes Tom to the dog track again and encourages him to bet but Tom ends up heavily in debt to a bookmaker, money that he cannot pay. This leaves him open to blackmail by Luigi, one the gang leaders, who forces Tom to reveal when the next precious cargo is due.

The film offers a fairly rare leading role for easy-going actor Jack Watling but his acting abilities are barely tested with this one. Susan Stephen who looks and sounds uncannily like Haley Mills plays Janie his wife. The villains try to be classic 1950s B film stereotypes complete with foreign accents (genuine in the case of Karel Stepanek who plays the gang leader Pliny and phoney in the case of second-in-command Luigi played by John Le Mesurier). In fact the latter's 'foreign' accent cannot be sustained and he frequently lapses into 'home counties'. Pliny preserves his anonymity from the other motley gang members by addressing them from an adjoining room with the aid of a microphone, speaker and two-way mirror. It's hilarious stuff and a novel system similar to that used by villain 'The Voice' in the early 1960s British TV serial 'Gary Halliday '. It's a bit of a shock though to see popular actor Terence Alexander playing the two-timing Harry but he is smooth and convincing.

As a British B film aficionado I found it mildly entertaining but not a lot.