Mission périlleuse

This is a good movie.

It's the story of a good guy cop going West to find a killer. Mature is the good guy, and Price is the killer. The killer is also trying to execute a witness to a murder (Piper Laurie). Any male watching will be sure to notice the heroine's perfect looking girl friend, played by Betta St John. One watches this film and wonders how this eye popper didn't become the centerfold girl of all time.

But enough about going gaga over Betta. This is a good old fashioned, rootin tootin film. There's a lot we'd probably all like to change. For instance, I notice many say Bendix as the park ranger should have had more to do, and I certainly agree with that. It looks like maybe some of his lines were cut, or perhaps it was just a hastily put together job. Price, as the killer, probably wasn't the best choice, but as an icon, it's good to see Price in the role.

The action sequences and adventure are well thought out, and it has a little something for everybody. It just seems like a lot was cut out. Still, the cinema scenery is excellent, and it is a great popcorn and soda film.

Dangerous Mission has some great strengths and some very noticeable shortcomings.

Originally filmed and released in 3-D, to keep up with the 3-D craze in the early 50s, Dangerous Mission had some great strengths: Irwin Allen's hand as Producer, a great cast, plot twists, a rousing music score, gorgeous location Technicolor photography.

The serious flaws are the disjointed story line: episodes that have virtually nothing to do with the plot: landslide during a party, forest fire, Indian ceremony and stupid subplot of an indian falsely accused of murder. Add some silly dubbed dialogue during noisy scenes and the usually great William Bendix given some incredibly stupid lines.

All in all, great fun despite typical 1950s stereotypes--especially to see Victor Mature as a moody tough guy, Vincent Price as a somewhat effeminate photographer, and the gorgeous Piper Laurie.

When "Dangerous Mission" was made as a another "B" color feature in 1954, it was probably considered by its producers to be a a routine action script. The film did have lovely young Piper Laurie, Betta St. John, Harry Cheshire. plus Vincent Price, William Bendix and as star handsome Victor Mature. But I assert that it had some hidden assets as well: very intelligent direction, unusually lovely Glacier National Park scenery, a logical storyline and first-rate production values from Roy Webb's music to costumes by Michael Wulfe and sets to art direction and second-unit work by Asst. Director James Lane. Also, the script was what I term a "sense-of-life film", of the same sort as "Bend of the River", "Smoke Signal" and "The Miracle Worker". We as viewers in other words only learn about a charismatic but suspect hero gradually, by experiencing his actions which are set against his negative reputation. Price steals the film as a complex character out of place among straightforward personalities; Mature lacks the speech for a senior detective but Bendix, St. John and Laurie and Cheshire are all very good in their roles. Make no mistake; this is an inexpensive film, with the outdoor actions using rear- projection to include most of the Glacier Park locales. But the film looks colorful and very spacious for a "B". It presents a square dance interrupted by an avalanche, a battle with a live-wire, a first-rate forest fire, a stirring chase and climactic battle on the glacier, plus intelligent dialogue and character-revelation scenes. The makers have put together I suggest a first-rate romance, an interesting mystery noir, and a very entertaining adventure. I never miss this one, having discovered it fifty years ago and championed its values for years. With a Keith Andes as its star, it might have become famous.

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.