Cage of Evil

Los Angeles police detective Ron Foster is assigned to a diamond heist. He falls in love with the heister's girl friend, Patricia Blair, who helped set up the job. Never mind, she's a perfectly nice girl, and there are also the diamonds, as Foster finds himself trapped in this brightly-lit noir.

It's one of almost thirty films directed by Edward L. Cahn over a three-year period, so if you're looking for a masterpiece, this ain't it. What you have is the bones of a good story, some performers who do their best with nonsense, and a behind-the-screen crew that could have managed something pretty good, were they given time and money: camera man Maury Gertsman, Grant Whytock supervising the editing. But with the studio system collapsing, people needed work, and when B-producer Robert Kent came a-calling, a man without a job could hardly say no. So everyone worked for a couple of weeks, and then went scrounging for the next dead-end job.

In CAGE OF EVIL, police detective Scott Harper (Ron Foster) investigates a big diamond heist that also includes a murder. As Harper delves deeper into the case, he becomes romantically involved with Holly Taylor (Patricia Blair) the girlfriend of one of the thieves.

Meanwhile, Harper is passed over for a promotion causing him to rethink his career path. He's ultimately presented with a choice that could hurl him headlong into darkness.

This is a solid crime drama with a noir-ish edge. For lovers of hard-boiled detective stories...

"Cage of Evil" is a B-movie from United Artists. And, like a typical B, the story lasts around an hour and the cast is filled with mostly unknowns.

Scott is a detective sergeant with ambitions of becoming a lieutenant. However, his focus completely changes when he's working an undercover case involving some stolen diamonds. He is supposed to woo the prime suspect's girlfriend...in the hopes that he can get her to divulge where the diamonds and her boyfriend are. However, the ruse goes over too well, as she soon falls for him and they both decide to kill the boyfriend, keep the diamonds and end up spending the rest of their lives on a tropical beach somewhere. Unfortunately for them, their plans don't go exactly as they hoped.

Despite no-name actors and a quick shooting pace, the film is very well told and exciting. My only small gripe is the narration. First, it isn't necessary. Second, it really wasn't written all that well and often didn't add anything to the story. Still, this IS a minor quibble in an otherwise enjoyable movie.

Ten years earlier this programmer would likely have been a noir. As is, it's a pretty good little crime drama. Detective Harper is a violence prone cop, probably why he doesn't get promoted. And being a cop appears his whole life; that is, until he meets spider woman Holly who's connected to a jewel heist that Harper's investigating. Well, one thing leads to another, and soon he's caring more about her than solving the crime. Still, he's a sharp cookie in covering his tracks, especially now that he's got Holly and a bead on the jewels, and maybe a new carefree life away from an unappreciative detective bureau.

The principals do pretty well in their roles, while I couldn't help noticing a resemblance between actor Foster and the better known Tony Curtis. The screenplay does a pretty good job tracking Harper's absorption into the cage of evil. However, veteran budget director Cahn adds little to the filming. One story change I think would have deepened things is that of giving Harper a home life, maybe a wife. That way his down-spiral would have had a tragic dimension as well as being an unfortunate tale of woe.

Anyway, the flick's better than I expected without being anything special.

Cage of Evil (1960)

** (out of 4)

Routine and rather lifeless crime picture has Detective Scott Harper (Ben Foster) getting assigned to a diamond heist, which left one man dead. The detective starts to investigate showgirl Holly Taylor (Patricia Blair) who has a connection the big crime boss but soon the two fall in love and the detective decides to go bad and get the diamonds for himself. CAGE OF EVIL features just about every cliché you can imagine from the crime genre and by the time it's over you'll be slightly entertained but there's still no question that you've seen this type of thing so many times before and this here doesn't add anything new. I mentioned being slightly entertained and the main reason for this is that the detective is simply so stupid and makes so many stupid mistakes that you really can't help but be entertained by how many dumb things he does. I mean, it's easy to believe that he'd turn bad after being passed over on a promotion but at the same time he just makes one mistake after another. A detective should know how to work around the system but this guy makes such boneheaded mistakes that even a newborn baby wouldn't do something of the things he does. Another problem is that director Edward L. Cahn really doesn't bother building up any real drama or suspense. The entire film comes off rather flat and it appears that the director was just wanting to get everything on film, on budget and he didn't stretch to try and do anything special. The story itself is pretty familiar stuff but the final ten minutes do start to pick up and lead to a nice ending. CAGE OF EVIL really isn't recommended to anyone except for those who must see every crime pic from this era.