Main Cast: Dan Duryea, Gene Lockhart, Patric Knowles, Reginald Denny, Nigel Bruce
Release Year: 1954
Country: US
Run Time: 82 minutes
Plot
World for Ransom is an unofficial extension of the popular 1950s TV series China Smith. Most of the Smith personnel, including star Dan Duryea, director Robert Aldrich and cinematographer Joseph Biroc, are on hand for this inexpensive but well-mounted melodrama. Duryea plays a mercenary adventurer who gets mixed up in a scheme by foreign spies (who wear baggy suits and speak with Slavic accents) to kidnap a nuclear scientist. Actually it isn't the whole world that's held for ransom--only the city of Singapore, which the spies threaten with nuclear annihilation. World for Ransom star Dan Duryea is solidly supported by old pros Gene Lockhart, Patric Knowles, Reginald Denny and Nigel Bruce. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Marian Carr - Frennessey March; Arthur Shields - Sean O'Connor; Douglas Dumbrille - Inspector McCollum; Carmen D'Antonio - Dancer; Keye Luke - Wong; Clarence Lung - Chan; Lou Nova - Guzik
World for Ransom is a 1954 film directed by Robert Aldrich, who was uncredited for his work. Many of the actors and sets used in the film were from the Dan Duryea television show "China Smith". Aldrich and cinematographer Joseph Biroc also worked on the series.
Plot
Mike Callahan, played by Dan Duryea, is an Irish émigré and war veteran working in Singapore as a private detective. He takes on a case from a former flame, now a nightclub singer. She thinks her husband Julian March (Patric Knowles) is involved in criminal activities and asks him to help out. Callahan learns that a man named Alexis Pederas (Gene Lockhart) has involved Julian in a plot to kidnap a prominent nuclear scientist Sean O'Connor and hold him for ransom to the highest bidder. O'Connor is one of the only men in the world that knows how to detonate the H-Bomb.
The film was shot in 10 days, on a budget of $90,000, with director Aldrich halting production to shoot TV commercials in order to raise money for the film's post-production. [1]
The film is similar in story to another film noir with a nuclear theme by Aldrich, Kiss Me Deadly, the difference being that Callahan is in it to try to get an old girlfriend back while Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly was in it for the money.
