"WHEN THE MONSTER'S DEAD..."

The team of good guys is headed by genre stalwart Kenneth Tobey. He's aided by Jack Kruschen, Barney Phillips and William Schallert and others in their battle against the bad guys.

The bad guys are led by the bow tied, glasses wearing (and scenery chewing) Rod Steiger. The members of his team include the beautiful but deadly Angie Dickinson, Jack Klugman and the benny popping rapist Neville Brand.

In the middle are the innocent pawns James Mason and Inger Stevens.

With a cast like that, CRY TERROR! (1958), has to be good.

And it is.

Directed in a matter-of-fact, semi-documentary style in various New York area locations by Andrew Stone (who co-wrote the screenplay along with his wife, Virginia), CRY is a suspenseful crime thriller in which criminal mastermind Steiger plots to extort half a million dollars from an airline by threatening the use of explosive devices. Those devices were manufactured by Mason, who was duped by Steiger into believing they were for military use. 

  Once Steiger makes his initial demands, various law enforcement agencies spring into action in a race against time to find the gang without endangering the lives of Mason and Stevens (and their young daughter), who are being held hostage and forced to participate in the extortion scene.

Highlights of the film include a nail-biting sequence in a for real elevator shaft and a dangerous climax in a likewise real subway tunnel.

The cast is uniformly excellent but I couldn't help but laugh at Steiger a couple of times. What a ham he was! Mason is one of my favorite actors, Stevens and Dickinson are both lovely, Klugman is good as a bad guy and was there ever a better psycho thug (Stevens calls him a "degenerate") than Brand?

CRY TERROR! is a first rate albeit not widely know little thriller that is well worth seeing.

Thumbs up.