Rent City of Fear (1959)

Copycat Thriller. - City of Fear review by Steve

This is an atomic age paranoia thriller but its procedural approach recalls the documentary noirs of the postwar period. It’s a downmarket, low budget rip off of Panic in the Streets (1950). Only this time the public health hazard comes from radiation.

An escaped prisoner (Vince Edwards) steals a canister which he thinks is filled with cocaine but actually contains Cobalt-60, for use in nuclear reactors. His greed ensures he never lets it out of reach, while it gradually kills him and makes everyone he contacts dangerously sick.

Obviously this has potential as an allegory, but it’s played entirely for thrills as the police pursue the killer convict to save Los Angeles from a major catastrophe, while he tries to actually break into the cylinder to get his hands on the narcotics! And the situation is as tense as that sounds!

There’s another level of interest in the pushers and users who form the slowly dying fugitive’s’s support group, a gang of witless creeps and goofballs who just want part of the windfall for themselves. It’s a B film with a minor cast, but decent tough-guy dialogue and directed with some style.