CITY OF FEAR (1959)

This is a decent, eighty-one-minute Columbia Pictures film that hides a limited budget from a week's worth of filming. Director Irving Lerner creates a fast pace from a script that lacks total believability. A creative score by Jerry Goldsmith adds excitement, bringing the crime thriller up a notch or two. The middle of this thriller is filled with the usual angst in trying to track down an escaped convict. An eighty-four-hour search unfolds with the police, a nervous environmental authority, and a scientist working in concert to find him and his stolen canister. A suspense drama that bears a striking similarity to so many later television disaster-of-the-week movies. For the automobile historian, there are in-car cameras that put the viewer in the back seat. Several competent actors with familiar faces lend their credibility. The director brings together Vince Edwards, Cathy (aka Kathie) Browne, and screenwriter Steven Ritch from Murder by Contract, the prior year.

A night scene opens the film with a speeding ambulance driven by a known drug pusher, the aforementioned escaped convict, wanted for murder, and especially a stolen canister from the prison hospital. The driver is annoyed by the constant moaning from his mortally wounded partner, who dies in transit. Edwards actually stars as Vince, whose only interest is a sealed canister that he figures is worth a million dollars of experimental heroin. In reality, it is a radioactive synthetic, cobalt-60. Unless in a lead container, it is highly contagious. It appears in this film as aluminum. Opened, it could wipe out a city, according to the film. See my note below on cobalt-60.

Edwards’s acting solidifies the movie as he becomes completely drained from fits of coughing, sweating, and feeling stupid for not getting a seasonal flu shot. The character is as one-dimensional as can be mustered. He is despicable in every scene, trusting no one who does not appreciate the beauty of a stainless steel canister. Edwards feels rotten and wants to be left alone. With the canister. Which cannot be opened without special tools. Few things can put one in a bad mood more than not being able to open a simple jar from the supermarket.

Waiting two years for "Geigerman" is his girl, Patricia Blair, who thinks she might have better luck opening the canister. “I'm tellin' ya' honey, it can't be opened!” When later questioned by the police, she repeatedly denied any contact with Edwards amidst profuse sweating and a “smoker's" cough. We find out about a nervous shoe store owner, Joseph Mell, who has profited from Edwards’ past drug deals. Driving a 1958 Lincoln "Land Yacht" is a dead giveaway that the Buster Browns could not be moving that well.

I found the rapid ending not well thought out, but at least funny. When Edwards stumbles out of a diner and collapses, the authorities keep their distance. They fail to convince Vince that there is still a chance he could survive. Slim. At best. They actually ask for the canister. Bad idea. Though Edwards may be barely breathing, they immediately cover his body with a blanket and place a “high radiation area” sign of caution on top of it...carried in the trunk of an officer's patrol car just in case. I burst out laughing. The police captain then says to the scientist with relief, “Come on. I want to go home.” Someone will be by later to shovel him up, I guess. Dead or alive.

Note: Beginning in the 1950s, cobalt-60 was used to treat cancer and to sterilize medical equipment. It is a byproduct of nuclear reactor operations. Most exposure to cobalt-60 takes place intentionally during medical tests and treatments. Such exposures are carefully controlled to avoid adverse health impacts and to maximize the benefits of medical care. However, mishandling of a large industrial source of cobalt-60 could result in an external exposure large enough to cause skin burns, acute radiation sickness, or death. A small container would unlikely wipe out 3 million people. The bigger mystery, then, is why the drug pusher thinks heroin is kept at a hospital.