"Royal Hunt of the Sun" director Irving Lerner's panic-stricken thriller "City of Fear," with Vince Edwards and Lyle Talbot, conjures up minimal paranoia. This black & white chiller about an impending apocalypse has an interesting premise. A desperate San Quentin inmate, Vince Ryker (Vince Edwards of "Murder by Contract"), has broken out of prison with a compatriot. Vince stabbed a guard to death in the process of breaking out. These two steal an ambulance and tear off down the highway. The inmate riding with Vince dies not long after their escape. Vince has grand plans once he reaches Los Angeles. He has to steal another car after he stops a motorist. He kills the car owner and burns the victim's body in the ambulance along with his inmate pal. Indeed, he believes that he has taken a cannister of heroin from the prison infirmary. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As it turns out, ignorant Vince has pinched a cannister of a dangerous isotope: cobalt-60, in powdered form, that is extremely lethal, lethal enough to throw a city into a panic. The authorities learn about the cannister, but they do a sloppy job of catching Vince. Of course, our misguided moron dies trying to open the cannister. He suffers horribly from exposure to the stuff and kills two accomplices along the way. Vince meets briefly with his old girlfriend, June Marlowe (Patricia Blair of "Jump into Hell"), and she doesn't inform on him because she is in love with the lug. Everybody that he encounters develops flu-like symptoms and sweats profusely. The pollution patrol cops cruiser around in cars with Geiger counters dangling out the windows to locate the stuff. Police Chief Jenson (Lyle Talbot of "Calling Homicide"), Lieutenant Mark Richards (John Archer of "White Heat"), and Doctor John Wallace (Steven Ritch of "Plunder Road") stand around at police headquarters and sweat a lot as things get out of hand, until they converge on Vince. Actually, the authorities blunder no sooner than they release the citizens that Ryker knew and would probably contact. Furthermore, they screw up badly because they fail to maintain surveillance on these individuals. Lerner alternates exterior location lensing of Los Angeles with stage-bound scenes at police headquarters. Unfortunately, Lerner doesn't have audiences sweating about the outcome as much as they grow restless waiting the inevitable. Vince Edwards delivers a hard-hitting performance, but everybody else is way too laid back. Some of the on-location camera work is evocative. Ultimately, "City of Fear" ranks a poor, second-rate imitation of earlier epics, including Eli Kazan's "Panic in the Streets and Robert Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly."
Review of City of Fear
