Half good half weak

comment by ruby red jewel Jul 3 2007 needs a Spoiler alert. This movie plot has a lot in common with "Dr. Strangelove" ... someone has a dangerous weapon that will hurt mankind, and they must stop him before the deadline is up. No big names in City of Fear, though..too bad.

I saw it on TCM the same night and liked it. I thought it was a tightly written, acted and directed little noir. It kept me well entertained; so much so that the more unrealistic elements were out-mounted and eclipsed in the entertaining moment (at least for me). If one wanted to start picking at the plotting, the first thing you’d have to say is that no one would probably not open a stolen canister to verify their assumptions about what it contained before they went to the extremes Vince did to try and keep it/sell it. If you go along with that you might as well go along with the rest. The only other major thing for me was that they should have used a Geiger counter on the clothes and effects of his girlfriend and then convinced her to tell them where he was a lot sooner than they did. They were running around sweeping the city for pockets of radiation, but they didn't think to scan the clothes or houses of the people they knew had the best chance of already coming in contact with him until the end. Maybe that would have ended the movie too soon, but they could have gotten around it by having Vince already relocated to a different motel/hold-up. As for the Vince name thing; I like it! It's just plain bizarre why they would choose do that. Maybe they had their obvious/practical reasons; or maybe Vince just wasn't a very imaginative guy. I mean he didn't even bother opening the canister to verify what he had. Overall though, I don’t think this movie deserves to be nit-picked more than most. I have to say that I really enjoyed it and have wanted to see if for some time.

its more good than weak imo

7/10

When there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...

Well, I think you have to partly chalk it up to being a product of its time and also acknowledge the fact that this was a low-budget feature.

At least this was way better and nowhere near the embarrassing cheese-fest that was "Kiss Me Deadly", another nuclear doom pic.

It is, of course, laughable to us now to see them get all worked up over Cobalt 60. If her were carrying some other type of radio-active nuclear material such as could have the potential of harming millions maybe we could go along with it?

There were many holes in the story, that's for sure. They didn't research this one very well and I'm going to have to say that the writing, at least in terms of story structure, is not what we're here for. The scripted dialogue wasn't bad at all and the acting is pretty good. If they'd tidied up some of the loose story ends and found a different pandora's box for him, besides a can of Cobalt 60, maybe we'd have had a better picture.

Some of the photography was very good. The night scenes were nice.

For a late-era film noir, it's okay. I'm glad I saw it. Not one of the greats but not one of the worst either.

I thought it was a really good little B picture. Very enjoyable.