Main Cast: James Mason, Rod Steiger, Inger Stevens, Neville Brand, Angie Dickinson
Release Year: 1958
Country: US
Run Time: 96 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
On a perfectly ordinary day, the management of an airline receives a note demanding a half-million dollars from someone who claims to have put a bomb aboard one of their planes. When the device, a tiny but dead electronically-triggered explosive, is found, they're told that there's another -- the FBI and the news media are all present as it is retrieved. One of those who sees the drama unfold on the news is Paul Molnar (James Mason), an electronics expert, who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a nightmare along with the rest of his family-- he and his wife (Inger Stevens) and their young daughter are kidnapped by Paul Hoplin (Rod Steiger), a former army buddy of Paul's, who duped him into designing the devices, and now wants Molnar's wife to act a courier for the money. With her husband and daughter in the hands of two of the gang (Angie Dickinson, Jack Klugman), she is made to pick up the money and make her way across New York while a clock is ticking on their lives -- and she must survive being left guarded by Steve (Neville Brand), an ex-con, murderer, and sexual predator, and the least-tightly-wrapped of all Hoplin's gang. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Andrew L. Stone outdid himself in his quest for realism in shooting Cry Terror!, for which he filmed entirely in New York City, from the Bronx to Greenwich Village. In addition to successfully building much of his success on the city's unique geography and traffic patterns, he also benefitted from the unique street lay-out of Greenwich Village, and the PATH train tunnels at Christopher and Ninth Streets, As a thriller, the movie holds up well across 50 years, with tense, split-second suspense and pacing, and totally convincing performances by the leads -- only Klugman's overacting spoils one scene, whereas Steiger manages to hold most of his tendencies in that direction in check, and seems all the scarier for it, while Neville Brand's under-acting makes his character believably harrowing and slimy (it's no wonder, after roles like this and his work in pictures such as D.O.A., that he relished the comic relief role of Reese in the series Laredo). One questions today whether corporate leaders would behave as upright -- or could be depicted as behaving as upright -- as those we see here, and the narration is a little too involved; editing out a line or two, and having Stevens dial back the intensity, might have allowed it to work better in an otherwise beautifully suspenseful race against time by car across the city ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Bernard - Costume Designer, Andrew L. Stone - Director, Virginia Stone - Editor, Howard Jackson - Composer (Music Score), Walter Strenge - Cinematographer, Andrew L. Stone - Producer, Virginia Stone - Producer, Francis J. Scheid - Sound/Sound Designer, Andrew L. Stone - Screenwriter
