Journey Into Fear

Top-notch cast, nice scenery (in Turkey, Greece and Italy), a dazzling car stunt at the very start and a memorable dispatching of the final villain are the main virtues of this otherwise pedestrian chase yarn which plays like an elongated episode of a TV series of its time. There is very little story - just the pretext of a McGuffin (everybody is after Sam Waterston for some "information" he has - which we never learn what it is). Vincent Price and Ian McShane fare best in the name-packed cast; Waterston is a rather bland lead, Zero Mostel is annoying as a "Turkish" agent, and Yvette Mimieux gets to show us her washboard abs, which are a definite plus, but has little else to do. *1/2 out of 4.

The main interest of the plot here is that you never really are informed of what it is all about. Sam Waterston as Howard Graham gets into deep trouble from the beginning and is persecuted hard throughout the film, without his ever understanding why everyone wants to kill him. As the audience you are as bewildered and confused as he, you eagerly wait for some explanation which never comes, and like Howard Graham you just learn to think the worst of everyone, as even the one murderer who appears visible never says anything but only waits for him everywhere. This was according to Hitchcock a capital sin in a thriller movie, who was always meticulous about keeping the audience in the clear about everything. Here you are kept confused even beyond the end. It's an efficient thriller though, there are many moments of truth of sustained suspense, and all kinds of great actors walk by as in a parade, like even Shelley Winters and Stanley Holloway as a displaced American couple. Zero Mostel in the beginning makes a wonderful impression, and so does Joseph Wiseman as a very strict and correct Turkish officer. Yvette Mimieux is a relief between all the manhunts and massacres, and fortunately she at least is innocent. The film ends abruptly in Genoa with the story unfinished, and we shall never learn what it really was all about.

Swap a train for a boat, oil for some bullets and we have a rehash of the 1943 Orson Welles version of this story - only this is nowhere near as good. It doesn't really help that the casting lacks for any great clout. Sam Waterston is weak in the lead as "Graham" - the scientist who gets caught up in a Turkish conspiracy after he discovers that there might just be oil in them thar desert. This information is proving quite dangerous for the man and he needs to get out before he succumbs to one of the plentiful - but not very efficient - assassins out to kill him. He manages to make it onto a train on which he hopes to escape - but are the passengers all they seem to be? We know from fairly early on that "Banat" (Ian McShane) is his biggest danger and therein lay my first problem. He has all the menace of a cucumber sandwich. Zero Mostel's duplicitous "Kopelkin" fares little better and though the supporting cast boasts some A-list names, they feature too sparingly to make much difference with this rather far-fetched and procedural attempt at a thriller that's just, well, very light on thrills. I did quite like the last few scenes as things flare up, but otherwise this is a pretty unremarkable television movie that you'll very readily forget.

This is one of those thrillers from back in the day which tried to incorporate various European locales into the plotline to inject a bit of colour and variety. To that end, the story of this one begins in Turkey, fires over to Greece and then takes a boat to Genoa. Its constantly on the move, as we progress from car to train to boat to running around. This may sound pretty fluid stuff but, unfortunately, in practice it's really none-too-thrilling. The basic storyline is one of the issues - a petroleum geologist discovers a major oil field in Turkey leading to rival oil people hiring assassins to silence him, so they can move in and get the black gold themselves. Oil deals are not the most interesting ideas to base a thriller around to be perfectly honest, so the filmmakers had their work cut out right from the start to make this one involving. But to make matters worse, the direction is flat as a pancake as well, meaning that the whole enterprise never really gets out of third gear at any point. The best thing about this one is its cast. I am a big fan of Vincent Price and Donald Pleasence, who appear here improbably as respectively a Turk and an Arab! But even the best efforts of those two stalwarts can only do so much with the material and it did seem like they were going through the motions in this one.

Quite a lot of movies on my wish-list are merely just there because of the impressive ensemble cast they have. "Journey into Fear", for example, has an amazing cast but I guess the lack of availability and solid fan base already suggests that the film isn't a hidden cult treasure. The plot is promising enough, adapted from an early 40's novel by Eric Ambler, and that same novel already got turned into a long-feature film in 1943. That film also has a terrific cast (like Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles and Agnes Moorehead) and presumably it's a lot better than this version, which suffers tremendously from lousy editing and an overall lack of tension and credibility. The opening minutes are downright terrific, with no less than two imaginative assassination attempts in a car and in a train. They're aimed at Howard Graham (Sam Waterston), an American engineer in Turkey who just made an important oil discovery in the mountains. Because of the information in his head, he becomes a walking bullseye, so the Turkish government subtly escorts him out of the country by boat. On board, he encounters a variety of individuals that might be allies, secret agents or hired killers. Once Sam Waterston board the ship, the excitement is exchanged for a dull and needlessly talkative middle-section and the only aspect to enjoy are the veteran actors in supportive roles. Appearing as the passengers are Shelley Winters, Yvette Mimieux, Ian McShane, Donald Pleasance and Vincent Price. Especially the last two names convinced me to obsessively track this film down, simply because you know one of them (or maybe even both) will depict a formidable villain. The opening and finale are more than entertaining, but the rest of "Journey into Fear" lacks pace, suspense and integrity. The main issue is that few of the characters appear to believe the roles they play. The hero, for instance, never truly seems to have the titular "fear" for his life. He remains rather calm even though murderers may lure behind every corner and he joyously socializes with everyone on board. This is definitely a disappointment, partially also because the copy I own has bad picture quality and the sound is nearly inaudible, but hey… I can scrap another Vincent & Donald movie off my list!