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Third Party Risk (The Deadly Game) (1954)
Topic Started: Apr 12 2012, 08:29 AM (554 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Lloyd Bridges runs into an old Air Force buddy in Spain; the friend asks Bridges, who's on his way to London, to run some stuff back for him, including a mysterious sealed envelope, to be retrieved when the two men meet up in a week. Bridges, mistaken for his friend, is jumped and brutally beaten, and when he gets to England discovers that his pal is dead. Luckily, he still has that envelope, and it turns out his friend was involved in a shady deal involving smuggling medicine to somewhere or other. A mysterious fat man who looks like but isn’t Sidney Greenstreet but might as well be figures into this, as does a pair of beautiful women, one good and one bad, but which is which? Lloyd’ll figure it out, somehow.

63 solid minutes of respectable drama; Spain is portrayed by the Bray Studio of Hammer, in case you’re wondering. Bridges turns in his usual solid job, and inasmuch as I’m reading the history of Hammer and watching these things in order, it’s interesting to know that the studio had recently opened its first-ever actual soundstage, which was fireproof, and in this film for the first time we see not only the set (clear from familiarity with later Hammer horrors) but sure enough this movie’s got a fiery climax, also for the first time in a Hammer film.

The Deadly Game is matched with Black Glove on Vol. 6 of VCI’s Hammer noir series.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Laughing Gravy
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...and if it makes anybody feel any better, I only have two more o' these Hammer noirs to go, one with John Ireland and one with Richard Conte.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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I sure feel better. 1.) Jimmy Sangster is the least original scriptwriter of all time. 2.) Noir just seems silly with English actors.

On the other hand, the lighting and photography are remarkable for such cheaply-made pics.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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