1961’s Man-Trap is later than what is what is usually regarded as the prime era of film noir. Something else which distinguishes it from most is it was made by one of the most major of the major studios.
When you have a noir made by Paramount, you know you’re going to have a bigger budget than most of the genre’s entries. And you can see that money on the screen, especially in the crisp photography, as presented in widescreen.
The picture begins in Korea in 1952. David Janssen is pinned to his current position by enemy sharpshooters. Jeffrey Hunter takes out the gunmen and gets Janssen to safety. Alas, he takes a non-fatal bullet wound to the head in the process. Janssen makes the unconscious Hunter a promise that, if he ever comes into a huge amount of money, he’s going to give half of it to his rescuer.
Jump to civilian life after the war. Hunter is in a car at night, putting the moves on a woman. She kills the mood when she turns conversation around to discussion of his wife.
We’ll soon see why he wants to get away from his wife, a voracious drunk who cuckolds him. He’ll go home to find her hiding behind her bedroom dresser. From that vantage point, she blasts him with a stream from her water pistol…which she filled with martini mix.
Stella Stevens is cast against type in this role. It’s good to see her having fun with this while broadening her range, but I wish she had reined it in some. I wasn’t sure if she was more fake drunk or fake crazy in most scenes.
Janssen soon enters the picture, and it is immediately obvious he’s going to be trouble. It’s also no surprise Stevens starts putting the moves on him when he visits their house. He asks if they have a guest room and she nods towards her husband and says, “Do you think he’ll be happy in it?”
When the guys are finally on their own, Janssen presents his opportunity via a slide show. I found it very weird he brought a slide show. Just think, if he was doing this today, he would have brought a PowerPoint. I have often wondered if nefarious schemes of our present age are frequently presented as PowerPoint presentations.
As Janssen explains it, he and Hunter will ferry a metal suitcase containing $3.5 million that is on its way to close an arms deal. Here’s the thing: I never understood how these two would make a vast amount of money from simply being the transportation. When it is later revealed the plan was always to simply steal the loot, I wasn’t surprised, as I had already assumed that.
The theft of the suitcase at the airport is an exceptionally tense scene. Hunter, dressed to look like a chauffeur, is sweating bullets outside the airport. First, he thinks there’s gunfire inside but it turns out to be a car repeatedly backfiring nearby. Then there’s a mob of people fleeing the airport, but it turns out it is a crowd in hot pursuit of a young guitarist.
In addition to the usual noir trappings, the film takes a cynical view to the drunken revelry of the suburbs. There’s strong suggestions of extramarital mischief, and I wasn’t surprised to see Bob Crane loudly regaling everybody at a backyard barbeque. Having seen Autofocus, I bet the man was in his element. There’s even a game everybody keeps talking about called “Braille” that I hadn’t heard of before, so I made an off-hand remark wondering if it is played by women covering themselves up and the guys then trying to figure out which is which by feeling their lumps. To my considerable surprise, that is what it is!
Man-Trap was directed by Edmond O’Brien, who had acted in a great many noirs before going behind the camera. For somebody with that acting experience, I wish he would have brought Stevens down closer to earth. On the other hand, I can see where others may derive significant camp value from her performance. Either way, this is an average noir that I recommend for genre fans.
Dir: Edmund O’Brien
Starring Jeffrey Hunter, Dennis Janssen, Stella Stevens
Watched on Olive Films blu-ray