City of Fear (1959)

Saturday is "Take Out the Radioactive Trash" Day.

City of Fear (Irving Lerner, 1959) An ambulance containing two escaped San Quentin convicts careers down a back-road to Los Angeles. Both men are (described in a radio bulletin) "desperate and considered extremely dangerous."

They're half-right: one of them is dead, wounded in the break-out that left one guard dead, one wounded, and the prison doctor in his own hospital. The survivor, Vince Ryker (Vince Edwards) matches the psychological description, anyway. He's desperate, but he's also got big plans once he hits L.A. He's got a steal container which he snatched from the prison medical facility. He thinks he's got a full pound of heroin with him. It's going to guarantee him a big score and an easy life. He pulls over a passing motorist, takes his car, but not before disposing of his dead pal, the unfortunate driver, and the ambulance by torching them and leaving them off to the side of the road. The bodies are starting to pile up.

But, they're potentially just the beginning. What Vince is actually carrying is a pound of cobalt-60. And as the "radiological coordinator" of the Air Pollution Control district (played by one of the screenwriters Steven Ritch) it's a bad radioactive thing "easily dissipated and spread. In a granular form, it's the most deadly thing in existence. Contamination begins almost immediately. Within 84 hours, you're dead." 

If you're going to have a McGuffin, make it a big one.

Lyle Talbot and John Archer play city officials who decide to keep the threat under wraps (in order to avoid a panic) while scouring the city (with geiger counters) for Ryker and any of his cronies before any of the stuff gets released into the water supply or worse. Meanwhile, Ryker reaches out to his girlfriend (Patricia Blair) and pals in the drug trade to set up a deal.

Trouble is, he can't get the cylinder open to look at the stash which he's convinced will net him a million dollars. It's a race against time for both parties as everyone who comes in contact with Ryker and his radioactive nest-egg starts getting sicker...but, without the canister, the city will never be safe. Face masks and social distancing are not going to help.

It's a tight little film noir, bouncing back and forth between the clueless hoodlums and the complicit authorities while the city just goes about its business without a clue that there's any danger. You'd think there might be some heat generated from the thing sitting in Ryker's pocket, but, if so, nothing is made of it.

The film is helped by some wonderfully pulpy cinematography by Lucien Ballard, some clever editing sleight of hand by Robert Lawrence, and an itchy, early score by Jerry Goldsmith, which can be summed up as "primitive." It's all a little primitive, in the same sort of modern quagmire as Kazan's Panic in the Streets, but with the added complication that the police aren't asking the public for help—they're avoiding the issue altogether and keeping it under wraps.

If that isn't noir...and reflective of our current world...nothing is.