TCM is Showing a Bracing Film Noir Early Friday Morning at 4:15 a.m. ET (i.e., Red Eddie Muller Has Nothing to Do with It!), Andrew L. Stone’s Cry Terror (1958) with James Mason, Rod Steiger, Inger Stevens, Neville Brand, Angie Dickinson, Jack Klugman and Kenneth Tobey

By David in TN
thursday, november 10, 2022 at 1:15:00 a.m. est
Updated at 12:09 a.m., on friday, november 11, 2022

TCM Has a Film Noir Early Friday Morning at 4:15 a.m. ET, Andrew L. Stone’s Cry Terror (1958) with James Mason, Rod Steiger, Inger Stevens, Neville Brand, Angie Dickinson, Jack Klugman and Kenneth Tobey.

Film Noir Guide: “Ex-Army demolition expert Steiger and his gang (Brand, Dickinson, and Klugman) try to extort half a million dollars from a large airline, claiming that they have planted several bombs aboard one of its planes.

“The terrorists kidnap Mason, his wife (Stevens), and their little girl as extra insurance. Brand gives a first-rate performance as a psychopathic bennie-popping rapist. (Guess who Steiger puts in charge of watching the nervous Stevens.)”

“Dickinson (TV’s Police Woman) is terrific as the sexy moll, who wouldn’t think twice about sticking Mason’s four-year old daughter with a shiv if push came to shove. Tobey plays the F.B.I. agent in charge of the investigation.

“The plot is implausible and Stevens gives a whiny performance, but the suspense never lets up and there’s an exciting climax in the foreboding tunnels of New York City’s subway system. Stevens starred in the TV comedy series The Farmer’s Daughter from 1963 to 1966 and committed suicide in 1970.”

David in TN: Cry Terror is a late film noir, better than what Red Eddie Muller has been showing lately on Noir Alley. Angie Dickinson is cast somewhat against type. She usually wasn’t a Bad Girl, though she’s sexy as usual.

James Mason is TCM’s Star of the Month.

N.S.: I saw this picture, over 50 years ago on afternoon TV! All I remember was that the bad guys were in the vic family’s house, and this one baddie was popping pills. It may have been the first time I heard the word, “barbiturates.”

My late mom used to tell a story about when she was very young (six, I guess, as this would have been circa 1936). Her mother would send Mom and her older brother and sister to the theater “to see James Mason movies.”

Apparently, early in his career, Mason acted in a bunch of B-movies, the phrase became, for a time, synonymous for bad pictures, and movie tickets cost at most a quarter, with an exception for Gone with the Wind (in 1939-1940), for which theaters charged a dollar, because the picture ran so long that theater owners could only present half as many A-pictures.