Cri de terreur

"Cry Terror," from 1958 is not a big-budget film, but it holds the viewer throughout. It's the story of a man, James Mason, who is duped into making small bombs which he believes are for government use.

Only later does he realize that he made them for a criminal who intends to extort money by placing them on airlines and threatening to detonate them if the money is not paid.

He and his family are kidnapped, and his wife (Inger Stevens) is used to collect the money so it seems as if he is the actual guilty party.

Rod Steiger is the bad guy, and Jack Klugman, Neville Brand, and the nearly unrecognizable Angie Dickinson make up his gang, each with their own part to play.

Without giving anything away, the story is preposterous at times but always suspenseful and effective. Steiger is terrific as a dangerous man whose quiet orders belie a violent temperament.

Dickinson is only 26 here and brunette but her sultry voice and gorgeous figure are the same. Brand does well as a scary psychotic, and Klugman is good as a man under Steiger's domination. Mason is appropriately harried.

The workhorse role belongs to Inger Stevens, a natural beauty who rose to fame in the TV series "The Farmer's Daughter" and who took her own life, after several unsuccessful attempts, in 1970.

In a way, one of her tries at suicide occurred during the filming of "Cry Terror" when she and Rod Steiger suffered carbon monoxide poisoning during a tunnel scene at the end of the film. She refused medical treatment, stating that she wanted to die.

Stevens gives an excellent performance in this movie, that of an hysterical, panicked, and ultimately nearly catatonic mother who fears for her husband and young daughter and her own assault by Brand.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that Steiger and Mason are so underplayed, she comes off at times as overacting. She was, however, a wonderful and appealing actress who might have gone on to a much bigger career had she lived. She had it all - or so it seemed.

This is a good movie loaded with the New York City atmosphere of the '50s, though in one scene, it looked as if Stevens was headed for Brooklyn using the Holland Tunnel. You'll never get there that way.

Although this is one improbable story a great cast moves Cry Terror along. In watching this I suggest you do not take a bathroom break as you'll miss some kind of thrilling moment.

James Mason is a TV repairman with wife Inger Stevens and little daughter Terry Ann Ross and during the late war he was in underwater demolition with Rod Steiger. Steiger comes to Mason with a proposition that he build some kind of triggering device that they can sell to the Navy. Only Steiger puts it on some bombs and is making extortion threats against an airline run by Carlton Young.

Now that he's got Mason implicated in his extortion scheme Steiger takes Mason and family hostage and he has Stevens go to collect the payoff. She gives as much information as she can to FBI agent Kenneth Tobey and without following her, the FBI races against time to catch Steiger and his gang before they do some grievous harm to the airlines and Mason's family.

Mason and Steiger are a great pair of leads and a contrasting study in acting styles just like Steiger and Humphrey Bogart were in The Harder They Fall. Stevens gives one of her best performances on the big screen as the frightened wife.

Steiger's accomplices are quite a study in low lives. Jack Klugman as a punk, Neville Brand as drug addicted sex criminal, and psycho nymphomaniac Angie Dickinson are some real criminal specimens. They give good competition to the leads.

It's an improbable story, but the tension never lets up the second that Steiger takes the hostages. Those last three minutes or so will stay with you forever as they did with me when I first saw Cry Terror several decades ago.

The plot is REALLY dumb, with a back story that writer/director Andrew Stone wisely soft peddles, since it makes James Mason's character look like a complete dope. Also, it is not very suspenseful. Basically it's a lot of Inger Stevens and Mason too easily outsmarting the bad guys and gal interspersed with some aggressively dull FBI procedural stuff. Finally, the look of it is extremely cheesy, what with Riverdale alternating with LA, often in the same scene (last time I looked the Bronx did not boast palm trees or craftsman bungalows). So, why a 6 'stead of a 5, or worse? In a word, the cast. Great assemblage of actors. How great? Well, let's just say, as a previous reviewer has noted, that the least distinguished member of it is Mason and when that happens you know there's some serious character acting going on. My fave? Angie Dickinson, of course, never better or more convincing than when playing a hot, morally challenged, moll. Also nice to see Jack Klugman, fresh from playing knife hating juror #5 in "12 Angry Men", this time lovingly nursing a shiv. Give it a C plus.

This is a really taught little thriller. I've heard it described as noir, but that isn't true. There is way too much daylight in this movie, but it doesn't in any way detract from the nail biting suspense. It's a somewhat convoluted plot about an evil psycho that lures an old army buddy into his plan to extort money from an airline by planting a bomb on one of their flights. I know that sounds like a tired plot, but this one has lots of twists. He gets the buddy to build the bomb by convincing him the Army is interested in it. He then kidnaps this guys family and forces the wife to pick up the ransom money! This is a fast paced movie and the tension just continues to build from beginning to end. There is also lots of stuff for the tech junkies.

The cast is also top notch. Rod Steiger plays the diabolical psycho, assisted by his evil henchmen played by Neville Brand (what a surprise), Jack Klugman (as a shlub), and a delicious Angie Dickenson in her most delicious prime. Inger Stevens plays the terrified wife who always seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but the big surprise is the buddy played by James Mason, of all people. Character development abounds as this story progresses. Jack Klugman begins to break down when he realizes they will have to kill the kid. Rod Steiger begins to lose his cool as the plan unravels. Neville Brand becomes crazier and more menacing by the minute. The family, on the other hand, gets stronger and more resourceful as time goes by. They seem to be able to draw on an inner strength none of them knew they had. The motive for this madness is perfectly logical. They were willing to blow up an airplane for half a million dollars. In light of 9/11 we can almost look back in nostalgia at a motive that rational.

1958 was a good year. This movie lets us look back on cars with tail fins, beer can openers, the West Side Highway, men who wore ties, and women who wore heels. It was also the tail end of an era where movies actually told a story - and this is a great one.

One look at a lustful Neville Brand (Steve) in heat darn near sent me under the bed. He's high on Bennies and it's a cowering Joan (Stevens) who's going to pay, except maybe she's got a surprise for the plug-ugly thug. In a movie filled with tense situations, this may be the scariest. Anyway, if it's not a woman menaced by a nutcase, it's Joan driving in traffic to meet a deadline, or her hubby (Mason) clambering around an elevator shaft, or both Dad and Mom keeping a nasty extortion gang from taking their toddler. If anything, there may be too many of these sweaty palms to keep up the effect. Whatever the case, this may be first film of the '50's to utter the word 'rape'.

The plot's a version of a '50's favorite, the home invasion, where an unwary American family is suddenly under attack inside the apparent safety of the home. It's also likely a reflection for the movies of a growing suburban audience. Here the invasion is part of a complex plan to extort money from an airline under threat of an airliner bomb. Of course, that brings in the feds and a lot of police procedure, while we hang in there with the little family under siege.

It's an unusually fine cast, with Brand as the standout, at least in my little book. Also, check out the fetching Angie Dickinson as a sadistic gang moll—real casting against type. There's also the tragic Inger Stevens showing her fine acting chops, along with a rather restrained Rod Steiger as the gang mastermind. It's all put together by the Stones, husband and wife, noted for their documentary style and dedication to location filming, from which the story gains helpful credibility.

All in all, the movie's a 90-minute exercise in relentless tension that seems ironically topical, given how thorough bomb detection is now fifty-years later.

(In passing—I expect the movie's premise was inspired by the real life case of John Gilbert Graham. In 1955, he blew up an airliner over Colorado for insurance money on his mother, of all people, killing 44 passengers in the process. Needless to say for the law and order 1950's, he was swiftly executed. But perhaps most interesting for our day is that there was no federal law at the time covering bombs aboard airliners—apparently the possibility seemed too remote! As a result, Graham was tried and convicted under a different statute. Yes indeed, how times have changed.)