Thursday, March 4, 2021

The Hostage (1956)

A very uneven, and often quite amateurish, film though ultimately worthwhile. In London a group of terrorists kidnap Rosa (Mary Parker), the daughter of the President (Carl Jaffe) of a South American country. The terrorists led by Main (John Bailey) want to try and stop the execution of one of their faction, they warn the President that unless the execution is stopped his own daughter will also die...

Meanwhile an American pilot called Trailer (Ron Randall), who seems to dislike opening his mouth that wide when he speaks, is used by the terrorists to gain some publicity (and enters the suspicion of the police). They also kidnap him to try and persuade Rosa to talk to her father. As time runs out Special Branch try and discover where Rosa is by sending radio detection vans around London...

The film starts off rather slow though the last act is action packed. The police seem rather clueless, they know the terrorists plan to hang Rosa publicly in London somewhere and yet just put a single PC outside the embassy (after all, publicity hungry terrorists would never choose there!) The action scenes are rather cheap, the film suffers from a low budget throughout and the acting often rather stiff and strange. Despite all of that (or maybe because of it), the film is enjoyable and, once it picks up the pace, resembles a movie serial at times.