A stentorian baritone tells us that what we are about to watch is based on a true story and I can believe it. Nobody would make up such a whimsical drama.
There's an amateurish quality to this movie. It's like watching a television program, a very long episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" or the early series of "Dragnet". None of the performances is notable. All are hardly believable. The direction is functional and uninspired. The photography and lighting are high key, out of "I Love Lucy." The dialog is of no help. It all sounds written and unexciting except when it stumbles, as if by accident, into something original or so corny as to be impressive. "I'd just as lief stick a knife into you as not." An upper-class house is "swank." (I can almost hear the ghost of Little Caesar marveling, "Say, ain't this a swank dump you got here!") The first-person narrative of Kelly, the kidnap victim who picks up the wrong hitch hiker, takes over the narration and tells us all about his inner feelings, as opposed to his outer feelings, when he and his family are taken into custody by four kidnappers and robbers. At first, the four miscreants take him out into the desert to simply kill him and steal his wallet and car. (The actual makes are mentioned -- "Chrysler" and "Merc.") But, as with true psychopaths, their ambitions grow waggishly to include finally two hundred grand from Kelly's well-to-do father.
Then the plot gets more complicated and begins to resemble real life in its unpredictability. The style also changes. Instead of a psychological drama involving a family held captive, the movie turns into one of those docudramas about the Los Angeles Police Force in its technical aspect, the sort that were made so popular in the post-war years by directors like Henry Hathaway -- "The House on 92nd Street" and the rest.
I found the last third more interesting. In the movies, when the police try to trace a phone call, we never learn any of the details. A cop tells the victim to keep the call going as long as possible. They usually fail to trace the call to its source or, if they succeed, they find only an empty phone booth at the other end. Here, there is a good deal of mechanical and electronic stuff that was over my head, involving "bays" and "relays" and "routers." But at least we learn how complex a process a trace is. And I never knew that a simple procedure by a telephone operator could keep a connection traceable even after the caller had hung up. Now I'm beginning to worry about all those marketeers that call me at dinner time. I can do without the free dancing lessons at Arthur Murray's.
But hardly anything can save the film from being routine. The actors walk through the fully lighted stage sets, hit their marks, make a face resembling an expression, recite their lines, and walk away -- except for Vince Edwards. He does all the other things but he doesn't make a face resembling an expression. His features remain placid and neutral, no matter the situation. He was perfect as Ben Casey.
There's an amateurish quality to this movie. It's like watching a television program, a very long episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" or the early series of "Dragnet". None of the performances is notable. All are hardly believable. The direction is functional and uninspired. The photography and lighting are high key, out of "I Love Lucy." The dialog is of no help. It all sounds written and unexciting except when it stumbles, as if by accident, into something original or so corny as to be impressive. "I'd just as lief stick a knife into you as not." An upper-class house is "swank." (I can almost hear the ghost of Little Caesar marveling, "Say, ain't this a swank dump you got here!") The first-person narrative of Kelly, the kidnap victim who picks up the wrong hitch hiker, takes over the narration and tells us all about his inner feelings, as opposed to his outer feelings, when he and his family are taken into custody by four kidnappers and robbers. At first, the four miscreants take him out into the desert to simply kill him and steal his wallet and car. (The actual makes are mentioned -- "Chrysler" and "Merc.") But, as with true psychopaths, their ambitions grow waggishly to include finally two hundred grand from Kelly's well-to-do father.
Then the plot gets more complicated and begins to resemble real life in its unpredictability. The style also changes. Instead of a psychological drama involving a family held captive, the movie turns into one of those docudramas about the Los Angeles Police Force in its technical aspect, the sort that were made so popular in the post-war years by directors like Henry Hathaway -- "The House on 92nd Street" and the rest.
I found the last third more interesting. In the movies, when the police try to trace a phone call, we never learn any of the details. A cop tells the victim to keep the call going as long as possible. They usually fail to trace the call to its source or, if they succeed, they find only an empty phone booth at the other end. Here, there is a good deal of mechanical and electronic stuff that was over my head, involving "bays" and "relays" and "routers." But at least we learn how complex a process a trace is. And I never knew that a simple procedure by a telephone operator could keep a connection traceable even after the caller had hung up. Now I'm beginning to worry about all those marketeers that call me at dinner time. I can do without the free dancing lessons at Arthur Murray's.
But hardly anything can save the film from being routine. The actors walk through the fully lighted stage sets, hit their marks, make a face resembling an expression, recite their lines, and walk away -- except for Vince Edwards. He does all the other things but he doesn't make a face resembling an expression. His features remain placid and neutral, no matter the situation. He was perfect as Ben Casey.