A good friend of mine lost a considerable amount of weight by reducing their sodium intake. That is difficult to do in the present age, where there is so much of the mineral in every product. Before seeing 1954’s Bait, I never considered a complete lack of it could possibly be detrimental to one’s health. Supposedly, that can impact nerve and muscle function, possibly resulting in coma or even death.
In the movie, the trio of Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas and John Agar find themselves without salt as they are snowbound in a very remote cabin. Never before has the screen seen to much hysteria over the absence of the mineral. I wonder if there was a Salt Council back then that paid to have characters says things like “too much of it is bad for you, but too little is even worse” and “sometimes I wish some of the gold would turn into salt.” It is actually a key factor in the plot: Chekhov’s sodium chloride.
And they do have plenty of gold. Agar had accompanied Haas to a very remote location in order to find the gold mine the latter had discovered and lost two years earlier. He supposedly tried to find it the previous summer, but said poison oak drove him away. I’d love to know how that was growing in an environment that looks as desolate as the moon. Then again, there is a huge shrub Agar has to cut through to get to the boarded-up entrance of the mine, so I guess nature, as always, prevails.
Haas’s partner with whom he discovered gold died before returning, and the surviving man is widely suspected of having committed murder. It doesn’t help that he does things such as pointing out to Agar where the partner had died, supposedly collapsing in the snowstorm that trapped them in.
I found it odd Agar is willing to accompany this suspicious man. He is even pretty blasé about finding gold, saying that, if they don’t find it, he was taking the summer off, regardless. As for Haas’s initial inability to find the mine, “at least we know a lot of places it ain’t”. Funny enough but, when the mine is found, I wondered how anybody before the days of GPS provided the exact location when making a claim.
But finding that mine will give Agar the gold fever that seems to bedevil so many men before and after him. And the devil is literally part of the plot, shoehorned in through an odd device. At the start of the film, Sir Cedric Hardwicke will walk though a door and into a spotlight which follows the well-dressed, old man as he ascends a long flight of stairs. Neat intro, but it seems to just burn up a minute or so of screen time. At the top, he is accosted by fans begging for autographs. Hardwicke proceeds to tell the audience directly that he doesn’t normally take corporeal form, instead appearing “only in your thoughts, as a little germ inside your brain…infiltrating your ideas.”
And this is what he does to Haas in voiceover, convincing him to seduce and wed local shop worker Cleo Moore, so as to create tension with Agar and possibly even give him just cause to kill his partner. This is an odd development, as Haas had been openly berating her as a “bad” woman apparently the entire time he had known her. I would have thought this was the result of him suppressing desire towards her (especially since he reads his Bible so much). Instead, he truly seems to have no prurient interest in her, and their kiss at the wedding is the last physical contact he has with her. Consider this exchange between Moore and Agar: “I like him. He’s the only man who leaves me alone” “That’s a fine recommendation for a husband.” In other movies of the era, this might code his as gay, but I suspect he’s asexual. Another element of the marriage which is telling is she always refers to Haas as “Mr. Marko”. Actually, everybody keeps calling Haas by that name, so I recommend making I game of it, and yelling “Polo” every time someone yells “Marko”.
Moore is an interesting character, even if she only exists so the plot can force a love triangle into the mix. She apparently has had a baby out of wedlock, and I’m shocked the Production Code allowed that. The script even has her defending herself and her chosen life, with dialogue such as this which also surprised me by getting a pass from the censors: “I’ve had enough trouble in the past and I won’t let anyone push me around anymore. I know I’ve got a bad reputation but it’s just because people won’t ask questions. They just condemn you.”
Aside from Moore, the rest of the cast is serviceable. There are only eight speaking roles, and that includes George Keymas as a delivery guy who is only on screen long enough to attempt to rape Moore. Similarly skeezy, but in a more substantial part is Emmett Lynn, as the guy who owns the shop in which Moore is employed and who likes to spy on her painting her toenails. Agar is, as always, not that good of an actor, though I disagree with some especially harsh assessments I’ve read regarding him. I think Haas’s performance is the worst in the picture–odd, since he also directed and co-wrote this.
The opening segment of Bait, where the devil makes his only on-camera appearance, is unusual enough to make what follows a bit of a letdown—a bit of bait and switch, if you will. Even so, there is a kernel of an interesting idea in the main plot, though it is muddled in its presentation. Maybe the filmmakers thought they had a hit here and came down with gold fever. More likely, they were experiencing severe sodium deprivation.
Dir: Hugo Haas
Starring Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, John Agar
Watched as part of Mill Creek blu-ray set Noir Archive Vol. 2