City of Fear

Nice and well paced B thriller , one of those in which you enjoy the way the directors manage to overcome the obvious script and budget limitations to create a personal piece of work , as much as the film itself . It happened in the past and still happens today , what could have turned into a routine movie it's saved by an skilled director who is able to add some spark to what otherwise could be an unremarkable film

Lerner was an absolute expert on this task and It's quite appealing to see this in action and how he manages to create and maintain the tension throughout this film . Literally he builds it out from nothing , no budget and based on a script that you probably came across on a dozen of movies before . All action and trouble comes from an small cylinder allegedly containing heroine worth 1 million USD , which has been stolen by a convict during his prison break . It contains a highly radioactive material instead which causes the alarm and the relentless pursuit of the convict .

Don't get any wrong impression , this is a classic man on the run B thriller , and as such there are some incongruences but mostly it's filmed imaginatively enough to offset the lack of budget and keep the interest It can be compared to what happened with Budd Boetticher , both get some attention when they received some props from Scorssesse himself , so that shed some light to their careers which thus far have been quite neglected by the general public.