Cage of Evil

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.

Disgruntled cop Ron Foster, passed over for promotion one time too many, is seduced by B-girl Patricia Blair into a diamond theft scheme. And then things go downhill! Considering the general run of director Cahn's many B-pix of the 1950s and early 1960s, this one is rather above average. The look is more standard b/w TV of the late 50s than film noir, but the two leads are very good and put some life into it. There is more outdoor shooting than usual, and the ending adheres to the Production Code of the day.

TCM Noir Alley host Eddie Muller spent about ten minutes during his intro to "Cage of Evil" trying to convince me that I would hate it. And then he came back after the movie was over and tried some more. Seriously, why? I really liked this movie. It's certainly no worse than any number of other B noirs I've seen over the years.

This one stars a cast of people I've mostly never heard of, led by good looking Ron Foster and fetching model-turned-actress Patricia Blair. Foster, a police officer looking for a promotion, gets himself in a fix over a dame, as such men will in movies like this, and spends the movie becoming increasingly desperate for a way out. It's a cheap, raggedy film, and when it comes to B noirs, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Grade: A-

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.

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.