Trapped (1949)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Blistering performances.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

When counterfeit money starts turning up around Los Angeles, the Treasury Department recognizes the funny money as the work of Tris Stewart (Lloyd Bridges) who has been in prison for several years.This was directed by Richard Fleischer, h had just recently won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, for "Design for Death" (1947). Fleischer went on to make countless great films, including "Soylent Green" and "Conan the Destroyer".This film is solid as far as film noir goes, or maybe b-movie film noir. The problem is the public domain. The copy I watched looks terrible. The film was fine, but the quality was awful. If someone were to swoop in and fix it up, this might be a better-regarded film.

"Trapped" is a typical late '40s B movie. This one concerns a sting organized by the Treasury Department in order to track down some counterfeit plates.The beginning is told in documentary style, which was done quite a bit during that period. In the story, the Department enables Tris Stewart (Lloyd Bridges) to escape from prison to lead them to counterfeit plates, funny money which has again surfaced after a period of several years. They bug the apartment of his old girlfriend Meg (Barbara Payton) and ultimately send in an agent (John Hoyt) who is supposed to be one of the gang. He's established an identity in the club where Meg works. Once Stewart tracks down the plates, he learns they've been sold, and it will cost him $25,000 to buy them back.It's fun to see the actors driving around old Los Angeles, though this is a fairly routine drama with very over the top music. When Bridges makes his entrance, it's almost Superman music. He was certainly a hunky young man as well as a handsome older one.Barbara Payton, whose career at this time was actually on the way up, does a good job as Meg. A few years later, she hit the skids, due to a series of unfortunate romances. She was juggling the abusive Tom Neal and Franchot Tone at the same time; Neal and Tone got into a huge fight during which Tone was badly injured and hospitalized. This hurt her reputation, and the rest is a sad story of abuse at the hands of Neal, drunkenness, prostitution, and bad checks.Despite this being formulaic, it will hold your interest.

Lloyd Bridges had a face made for the camera, full of smooth, bony planes, a clean forehead, all dominated by a couple of deep-set eyes that seemed to glimmer in the shadows of his brows. And he had, throughout his career, the quick, nervous energy of a small predator, maybe a ferret. Even in the ripeness of his age, in the Hot Shot movies where he was a comic admiral.He made some decent movies but never achieved major stardom. Even here, in a relatively low-budget drama about counterfeiting and the Secret Service, he is a central figure but only a quasi-star.The police deliberately allow Bridges to escape from the slams in hopes that he will lead the Secret Service, personified mostly by John Hoyt, to the people who now are beginning to grind out money that is "queer" on plates that Bridges used to own. The escape was engineered because the Secret Service knows that Bridges has no place to go except to his ex girl friend in L.A. They have accordingly bugged her apartment and insinuated an undercover agent into her life. Hoyt is the undercover agent who allows himself to be sucked into funding a plan to produce the queer money. The specific idea to to capture Bridges and his accomplices the moment the money changes hands.That may be a little confusing, I know, but the plot is a little complicated. And besides, my mind couldn't quite wrap itself around John Hoyt as a serious undercover agent of social control. I kept seeing him as the three-armed Martian in a "Twilight Zone" episode. That image sometimes became a bit blurry and Hoyt would appear in a toga as one of the conspiratorial Senators from MGM's "Julius Caesar." Anyway, the plot zooms forward as if self propelled. There are fist fights, shoot outs. Before the end, Bridges is back in the slams. Hoyt tells the desk sergeant, "Let's keep this quiet. Book him under another name." Desk Sergeant: "How does 'Briggs' sound"? Hoyt: "As good as any." Desk Sergeant: "It's my mother-in-law's name. I just wanted to see what it looks like on a police blotter." That's about the only example of witty dialog in the movie. Almost all the rest is spare and functional, along the lines of Bridges', "If anybody gets hurt, it ain't gonna be me cause I got the gun. Just remember to get this heap started when you see me comin'." It's not a bad movie, just a routine one. Richard Fleischer directed a number of small-budget dramas like this before going on to bigger and better things like "Doctor Doolittle." Well -- bigger, anyway.Want to see a funny movie about counterfeiting? Try "Mister 880." A more sophisticated movie about counterfeiting? "To Live and Die in L.A."

Ordinarily you'd expect Lloyd Bridges to be tracking down perennial villain John Hoyt. But here the usual roles are reversed-- Hoyt's the government agent and Bridges the small time hood. The movie itself is pretty typical of the docu-dramas of the period. It's the Treasury Department's turn to get the Hollywood treatment with the usual glowing introduction and stentorian narration. Though, like the stellar docu-drama T-Men (1947), the docu part soon gives way to big city noir. However, this film lacks importantly the former's grotesque air of nerve-wracking suspense.Director Fleischer and the writers manage a couple of nice twists, particularly at the beginning. Nonetheless, the script makes a basic error in switching the action from Stewart (Bridges) to Sylvester (James Todd) in the climactic part. (Was Bridges taken ill or otherwise made unavailable.) Unfortunately, Todd simply lacks the screen presence to intimidate an audience or make us loathe him, whereas Bridges can snarl and menace with the best of them. Thus the last third fails to generate the kind of mounting dread required of an A-grade suspenser. Then too, Hoyt's basically cold demeanor and cruel looks don't arouse much natural sympathy that would encourage you to identify with him. Thus, the suspense is further weakened by what should be an emotional interest in the treasury agent's fate. The casting here really is a departure from the expected and to the movie's detriment.Note how the culminating shootout takes place at an industrial site-- the overnight barn for LA's late, lamented trolley system, where we get a look at what could have eased LA's horrendous traffic problem. Actually, industrial sites crop up in the climax of a number of crime dramas of the period-- White Heat (1949), 7-11 Ocean Drive (1950), Union Station (1950), et al. I guess producers of the time figured running around big machines and shooting at each other would make for colorful audience excitement. Of course, the movie's also notable for the presence of notorious Hollywood bad-girl Barbara Payton, who was involved in several tawdry Hollywood scrapes and apparently ended her brief life as something of a cut-rate call girl ("Hollywood Babylon"). Whatever the direction of her private life, she's quite good here as Bridges' shapely blonde moll.Anyway, for its type, the movie's average at best.