Cry Terror! (1958)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Nice effects though.

Fresh and Exciting

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

With a ruthless if wildly implausible plot full of coincidences and catastrophes averted by just seconds, 'Cry Terror!' doesn't quite match the elegance of most of Andrew & Virginia Stone's other location-shot thrill rides, but you probably won't care too much as a superb cast, magnificent location photography and Howard Jackson's creepy 'psychological' score all do their stuff under the baton of maestro Stone.The acting as in all Stone's films is consistently good. Rod Steiger's gang are a seriously mean bunch, and it speaks volumes that even Neville Brand - explicitly identified as both a drug addict and a convicted rapist - is frightened of Steiger.

Cry Terror! is written, produced and directed by Andrew and Virginia L. Stone. It stars Rod Steiger, James Mason, Inger Stevens, Neville Brand, Angie Dickinson, Kenneth Tobey and Jack Klugman. Music is by Howard Jackson and cinematography by Walter Strenge.Once in a while there comes a time when you have to say enough is enough with your willingness to accept the fantastique with certain genre viewings. Most film noir fans and avid watchers of olde classic crime cinema will gladly, and rightly, expect and embrace contrivances and a suspension of disbelief. However, this only works if the cast are dynamite in performance and the ultimate pay off is an edge of the seat wowzer.Cry Terror! asks way too much of its viewers, even for those just passing through looking to tick off a Rod Steiger or James Mason movie from their completist lists. The Stone's, Andrew and Virginia, get pretty much everything wrong here.Potential of story is nicely set up. Mason is an inventor type dude who gets bluffed by Steiger's shifty operator into making some time bombs on promise of a government sanctioned military contract. Steiger, though, is a thief type who along with his less than brainy minions, demands ransom money or they will blow up passenger aeroplanes. Fast forward and Mason and family (wife and child) are taken hostage whilst Steiger smirks a lot and demands money with menace from the authority suits led by a square jawed Tobey.So far so possibly good, then. The FBI guys are shown debating and pontificating in true documentary style, while back at the sweaty hostage house Mason stands firm to protect his woman and child. Stevens as his wife is coerced by force into being the bag lady, so she has to go out in the car and collect the ransom money in an allotted time scale or else Jimmy and child are done for. She narrates her every thought as she comes across the everyday pains of American traffic. The suspense is marginal as we are asked to wonder if she will make the return rendezvous in time.Meanwhile, Jimmy and child are left in the company of Klugman and Dickinson up in some penthouse suite. Klugman is utterly miscast and Dickinson is utterly wasted. So as they are probably miffed at the weak script, both Jack and Angie allow Jimmy to go a wandering out on the terrace for twenty minutes, from where he turns into John McClane in a lift shaft and achieves absolutely nothing that ultimately affects the finale!It's so frustrating, that a highly impressive cast list could be so badly used, in fact a few role reversals could have made this an excellent thriller, and that is even allowing for the ridiculous plot dynamics. There's a pat on the back due for the Big Apple location photography, while Brand, although cast in type, creates the only genuine menace in the picture as a sexually aggressive ex-con dependant on "Bennies" to get him through the day. But break it down as a whole, and it's very much a case of a production team getting it badly wrong. 6/10

"Cry Terror," from 1958 is not a big-budget film, but it holds the viewer throughout. It's the story of a man, James Mason, who is duped into making small bombs which he believes are for government use. Only later does he realize that he made them for a criminal who intends to extort money by placing them on airlines and threatening to detonate them if the money is not paid. He and his family are kidnapped, and his wife (Inger Stevens) is used to collect the money so it seems as if he is the actual guilty party.Rod Steiger is the bad guy, and Jack Klugman, Neville Brand, and the nearly unrecognizable Angie Dickinson make up his gang, each with their own part to play.Without giving anything away, the story is preposterous at times but always suspenseful and effective. Steiger is terrific as a dangerous man whose quiet orders belie a violent temperament. Dickinson is only 26 here and brunette but her sultry voice and gorgeous figure are the same. Brand does well as a scary psychotic, and Klugman is good as a man under Steiger's domination. Mason is appropriately harried.The workhorse role belongs to Inger Stevens, a natural beauty who rose to fame in the TV series "The Farmer's Daughter" and who took her own life, after several unsuccessful attempts, in 1970. In a way, one of her tries at suicide occurred during the filming of "Cry Terror" when she and Rod Steiger suffered carbon monoxide poisoning during a tunnel scene at the end of the film. She refused medical treatment, stating that she wanted to die. She gives an excellent performance in this movie, that of an hysterical, panicked, and ultimately nearly catatonic mother who fears for her husband and young daughter and her own assault by Brand. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Steiger and Mason are so underplayed, she comes off at times as overacting. She was, however, a wonderful and appealing actress who might have gone on to a much bigger career had she lived. She had it all - or so it seemed.This is a good movie loaded with the New York City atmosphere of the '50s, though in one scene, it looked as if Stevens was headed for Brooklyn using the Holland Tunnel. You'll never get there that way.

This is a very short review because all that's been said about this film by others is correct and not needing further description, except there's ONE FACT not known apparently ANYWHERE on the internet, and that is that this film is available (only from CDToaster.com) in an extremely rare COLORIZED VERSION! The coloring process is done by the masters of the industry, and is a terrific added feature. One problem with this colorized version is that it was only available from a rare Television Broadcast signal, so the points where the commercials were edited out become a bit of a distraction, but the rest of the film is intact because the running time matches the official film time length.