Passkey to Danger

Kane Richmond is selling Three Springs.... and no one knows what it is. It's a clever advertising campaign to drive up interest in it. Of course, you could buy it all right now for a set price, as he tells Jay Mohr, but who wants to buy a pig in a poke. So he thinks, until Adele Mara tries to steal the information.... and offers come from Mohr and Gregory Gaye.... and a woman is murdered.

It's a clever variation on the Maguffin. In your typical thriller, like THE MALTESE FALCON or NOTORIOUS, the Maguffin is the thing everyone wants, and is well defined, and it couldn't matter less. What matters is that everyone wants it. In this movie, the Maguffin is completely undefined; it's never revealed, but everyone wants it because they think they know what it is, and don't want anyone else to have it.

Other than that, it's the usual back-and-forth with silky-voiced villains, corpses turning up, thugs beating Our Hero, and the cops getting in the way. But for someone who has seen a thousand Maguffins, it's a pleasant switch.