Home invasion, secret weapons, blackmail, kidnapping, and possible airline catastrophe. James Mason, Rod Steiner, Angie Dickinson, Neville Brand, Jack Klugman, and Inger Stevens fill out the slots in this interesting crime drama
We start with an extortion call to an airline: give me $500,000 or flight X will explode. The bomb aboard the plane is a sort of synthetic weapon. Jim Molner (Mason) one of the airline's execs, is particularly panicky; clearly he knows something. Or someone--that is, Paul Hoplin (Steiger), Jim's wartime demolitions buddy, who has gone rogue. The explosive device, which they tried to sell to the military, is now used as a terror device.
It's not just that Jim knows Paul, Jim originally made the device. When he gets home, he spills the beans to his wife, Joan (Stevens). Guess who comes calling just now? Paul. He's got a gun on them "I'm the man that duped your husband into making the bomb. That makes him the patsy." He's got some good points there. If Jim calls the cops, what does he say? 'you see, I made this bomb, and...' Meanwhile, at the airport, officials suspect a woman passenger (probably Dickinson's character, Eileen). Apparently, there's a bomb on another aircraft; the first plane landed safely, and that bomb's found and disarmed.
Paul considers his options: "some people gamble with their lives everyday." So, no big deal. Joan waits as her daughter Patty (Terry Anne Ross) come home from school. Paul hustles them all out in their car; it's become a kidnapping. When they leave, we see Vince (Klugman), Steve (Brand), and Eileen at a swanky hide-out. Gee, they've got a pool, and a bar. Jim and Joan whisper their fears. All of the physical evidence of the bomb can be traced back to Jim. What's worse, Joan is to collect the random/extortionist money. "How am I going to collect the money if we're dead?" As if to demonstrate their determination, they start to walk out...Paul fires a warning shot.
So, a bit of negotiation ensues. Jim and Patty are taken to another location, leaving Joan with Steve, aka, The Creep. Across town, the airline folks huddle up; Paul gives them directions for the drop off. Steve, meanwhile, is popping 'bennies', and telling Joan how he got hooked on drugs in prison. Vince and Eileen take Jim and Patty to the second hideout, a soundproof apartment. Meanwhile, Steve fills in Joan about the "sex and dames" he got mixed up with. "I was just fooling around..." and magically got arrested too.
The two hide-outs call each other; Joan gets to talk to Patty, but Steve starts feeling up Joan. Paul intervenes, and somewhat unexpectedly, slaps Steve around. This is a civilized kidnapping, I suppose. The authorities are convinced that the bad guys are going "to pull something from left field." The money exchange is coming up. Anyway, Joan is dropped off downtown to complete the transaction. She walks right into the command center at the bank. She lets them in on her dilemma: her family (including her 'duped' husband) will be killed if they don't cooperate.
Plus, she has a timing device: if they don't cough up the dough, another bomb will go off in a bit. She explains about who the criminals are, etc. When she gets out to the street, she considers fleeing. But it's too risky. Paul waits in an adjacent building. This is a great scene; both Paul and Joan have to wait, and both are very antsy, obviously for opposing reasons. She's supposed to leave by taking a handy car in an alleyway. Paul uses a weird code to guide her over the police radio band. She's gets tied up in traffic, and has to hustle. "She ain't here yet" says Steve, as Paul shows up at the hide-out.
This is another tense sequence: she's hurrying, Paul, Steve and Jim are anxiously waiting. Vince and Eileen fill Jim in on the details. Paul has to deal with Steve's restlessness. Joan pulls up just in the nick of time. The money's good. And, there was no bomb; no explosion anyway. So, now what? Joan isn't a happy camper, telling Psul as he pulls out "Don't leave me here with this...degenerate!" I missed the means by which the authorities Identified Eileen from dental records--but they did. Anyway, Jim has escape plans; are Eileen and Vince going to leave him to his own devices?
Meanwhile, Joan has to hear more sob stories from Steve. Once again, there's the split focus between locations. One set of characters builds tension, then we flip to the other; like a two stage rocket. Joan picks up a dagger-like shard of glass from a broken vase. But Steve comes at her with a switchblade. He starts to sexually assault her--but she stabs him fatally. Her problems aren't over; Paul pulls up. She grabs Steve's switchblade, and quickly tries to hide the body. Paul, after popping into a nearby store for smokes, finally enters.
She comes up with a plausible reason why Steve isn't available: he needed drugs. He turns his back, but she doesn't attack him. Somehow, Paul knows that Steve's dead. They leave. At hide-out number two, Jim puts his plan in motion. He's going to escape down the elevator shaft. I don't understand why Eileen and Vince don't watch him. She's split to get groceries. Incredibly, she gets in the elevator car just as he lands on top of it. He has to get through a door on one of the landings to escape. This is just too drawn out; ultimately, he escapes by going through the car's roof. Why didn't he do that before?
He gets into another apartment and calls the cops. Finally, the two dumb crooks realize that Jim's gone. I forgot about Patty; so did everyone else. Oh well, the cops find Jim and then burst in on the bad guys. They're both captured. Back to Joan and Paul--then Jim and the rest of the good guys. Paul's safe as long as no one knows where they are. So, the problem is breaking down Vince: "what are they going to do for me...put an feather pillow on the electric chair?" Ok, probably that's apt. We can expect that, unwittingly, Paul will ring up Vince. Here's the call: "How's everything?" Joan, Pat, and Jim talk.
Now Paul unfolds the new paper; dang, it's a set-up--the cops rescued dad and the kid. He lets Joan see the headlines. Paul's trump card is, of course, Joan. She throws boiling water in his eyes, and escapes. But he manages to pursue. Meanwhile, Jim jumps Vince (Jim has a knife). He gets Vince to give up the hide-out location. The cops converge there. But, Joan, trying to elude Paul, runs through the subway labyrinth, and collapses on the tracks. So does Paul, who's electrocuted into the bargain. Joan's recused, all's well--the end.
This started out great. We jumped right into the plot with no flashbacks, and just enough background in the dialogue (with some narration) to keep things straight. The home invasion stuff--in particular cutting between locations--worked to keep us teetering on the edges on our seats. Not to mention the intriguing sci-fi music sprinkled in at key points. The subway chase at the very end was unexpected and thrilling. But it took forever to get from the payoff sequence to the end. The elevator scene was far too involved; likewise the extended face-off at the apartment once Vince is apprehended.
On the other hand, the cast was excellent. Stevens, notably, did so much with her role. Not only was she the convincing and caring wife and mother, but the surprisingly resourceful savior as well. She took out one guy, and neatly crippled another. Steiger does his patented laid-back creepy guy thing nicely. Klugman and Brand make suitable accomplices. Mason was steady when he had to be, and rattled when we would expect it.
Some reviewers note that the premise has some flaky aspects. I agree that splitting up the family doesn't make much sense. But I don't think that Joan could've just split when she was out in the streets (to do the money grab). She had to think of the consequences for her family. Near the end, when she knows that they're safe, she escapes at the first opportunity. It's way too easy for Jim to engineer his (admittedly) cunning escape, though. Physically demanding, yes; but no one missed him until after he has pulled it off.
The main premise is a little shaky too. Why bother with kidnapping a family when Paul can endanger an airliner or building having many more potential victims? He'll get the money just the same. If he wants to involve Jim, it should only be to implicate him. As we see, his hands are all over the evidence. After Joan successfully pleads her husband's case to the authorities (she has to do almost everything in this movie), however, nobody seems to care what sort of bomb he made. The script takes away with one hand what it held out with the other.
Still, Cry Terror is an involving crime thriller; the acting and cinematography hold things together pretty well. 7/10.
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