Terror Street (1953)

December 4, 1953, release date

Directed by Montgomery Tully

Screenplay by Steve Fisher

Music by Ivor Slaney

Edited by James Needs

Cinematography by Walter J. Harvey

Dan Duryea as Major Bill Rogers

Elsie Albiin as Katherine “Katie” Rogers

Gudrun Ure as Jenny Miller

Eric Pohlmann as Slauson

John Chandos as Orville Hart

Kenneth Griffith as Henry Slauson

Harold Lang as Harry Cross, doorman at West End Manor

Jane Carras as the soup kitchen supervisor

Michael Golden as the police inspector

Marianne Stone as Pam Palmer

Distributed by Lippert Pictures (United States), Exclusive Films (United Kingdom)

Produced by Hammer Film Productions

Terror Street is a low-budget B film produced in Great Britain. As long as viewers keep these facts in mind, it is much easier to overlook some of the poor production quality in the film. (See “Terror Street” in the list below about the DVD featurettes from VCI Entertainment.) Dan Duryea in the starring role certainly helps, too. He is one of my favorite film noir actors.

(I don't think this blog post about Terror Street contains more than one or two spoilers.)

Bill Rogers, a U.S. fighter pilot, goes back to London, where he lives with his wife Katie. A fellow pilot and friend helps Bill make the trip, an illegal one because Bill does not have permission from his commanding officers. He must return to the airfield within thirty-six hours to return to the United States or he will be away without leave (AWOL). (Terror Street is the title given to the film for its release in the United States; in Great Britain, it was known as 36 Hours.) He goes to his apartment in London to look for his wife Katie and learns from a neighbor that Katie took another apartment, one at the West End Manor in, you guessed it, the West End of London.

Bill cons the doorman at West End Manor into letting him into Katie’s new apartment, and he waits there for her. Unbeknownst to Bill, Orville Hart has been hiding in the apartment all along. When Katie comes home and finds Bill in her living room, Orville comes out of hiding, hits Bill over the head, and knocks him unconscious. He asks Katie about something that he says belongs to him. She says that it’s not in the apartment, and he shoots her without waiting to find out where it is. Before he leaves, Orville calls the police anonymously. His plan is to frame Bill for his wife’s death. When Bill regains consciousness, he finds Katie dead beside him, and his own gun next to Katie’s body. He escapes just in time to avoid the police.

Bill hides in a stranger’s apartment and when she finds him, he explains his situation and asks for her help. She believes him and decides to help him. Bill wants to find out for himself who killed his wife Katie and why. He feels that it’s the only way to clear his name and make it back to the United States.

From that point on, viewers follow Bill in his efforts to solve several threads of the mystery:

◊ Who killed Katie?

◊ Why was she killed?

◊ What did she store in that safe deposit box?

◊ Will the stranger, Jenny Miller, turn Bill in or will she continue to help him?

◊ Will Bill clear his name and make it back to the airfield in time?

The story includes enough suspense to hold viewers’ attention and maybe overlook a couple of clumsy fight scenes. In some ways, it is a typical mystery or adventure film, but then there’s Katie, who is shot dead near the start of the film, and there’s Bill, who must clear his name—in less than thirty-six hours—because all the evidence points to him as the logical suspect. Terror Street holds a few surprises here and there, and it is a fun way to spend about eighty-three minutes.

And if you are a Dan Duryea fan (like me), you won’t be disappointed. He doesn’t play his usual bad guy role in this film, and he doesn’t slap any of his female costars, which he usually does in his films noir. He does slap Henry Slauson, however, when Henry tries to knife Bill.

The DVD from VCI Entertainment includes three featurettes, all narrated by Alan K. Rode, a writer and film historian. These short featurettes are informative for anyone interested in film noir and classic films in general. I have included a few details that I found interesting from each featurette below.

◊ “Terror Street”: Rode focuses quite a bit on the U.S. producer, Robert L. Lippert, of Terror Street. Lippert recognized the benefits of teaming up with Hammer Films in Great Britain to take advantage of the Eady Plan. After World War II, the British film industry was bolstered by the British government via the Eady (“aid-y”) Plan. Lippert specialized in low-budget films and kept a sharp eye on the bottom line. (This is obvious in Terror Street: Listen for the sound effects added to the fight scenes in which punches are thrown.)

Click here for more information at Wikipedia about the Eady Levy. Rode calls it the Eady Plan in the DVD featurette.

◊ “Dan Duryea”: Dan Duryea’s malevolent screen image was established in two pictures directed by Fritz Lang: The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street. His nickname in Hollywood was Dangerous Dan Duryea.

◊ “Steve Fisher”: This was the featurette that I enjoyed the most because I am a big fan of Steve Fisher, the screenwriter for Terror Street. I have read his novel I Wake up Screaming and seen the film version.

Click here for my blog post about the novel and here for my post about the film.

According to Alan K. Rode, Steve Fisher is one of film noir’s most prolific screenwriters. His work spans many genres, including film noir. He wrote 500 short stories, thirty novels, twelve stage plays, and numerous teleplays. One of his contemporaries called him “the Charles Dickens of Los Angeles.” He was born in Los Angeles, and he hitchhiked to New York City during the Great Depression. He lived in New York for three years and sold stories to pulp magazines like Black Mask. In 1941, Daryl F. Zanuck bought the rights to Fisher’s new novel I Wake up Screaming. The film version of the novel catapulted Betty Grable and Victor Mature to stardom.