The Threat
was a routine "B" picture cranked out on the
soundstages of RKO (with exteriors grabbed on the grounds of the Iverson
Movie Ranch outside of Chatsworth) and intended as nothing more than a
co-feature for a bigger budgeted film. The production began life under
the title Terror and was assigned to Felix E. Feist,
who had helmed the effective The Devil Thumbs a Ride
(1947) with Lawrence Tierney. The plot, courtesy of scenarist
Hugh King (Dial 1119) and screenwriter Dick Irving
Hyland (The Price of Fear) is no great shakes and plays
out in its first scenes like a old Batman comic or an
Edgar Wallace mystery, with condemned killer Arnold "Red"
Kluger (Charles McGraw) busting out of Folsom Prison and declaring his
intention to seek revenge on both the District Attorney (Frank Conroy)
and the detective (Michael O'Shea) who had brought him to justice.

The Threat divides
its brisk 66-minute running time between the tense scenes of Kluger
(whose face is obscured by shadows for a good deal of the first act)
capturing and, yes, threatening his prisoners, whose number includes
dancer Virginia Grey (The Naked Kiss), a former flame
who may have dropped dime on Kluger, and a moving van driver
(Don McGuire, McGraw's young partner in
Richard Fleischer's Armored Car Robbery) who
unwittingly provides the criminals with their means of slipping out of
the hands of the police. The scenes set within an
old prospector's shack-cum-hideout, as criminals and captives alike
sweat bullets and get on one another's nerves, are classic. Standout
moments include Kluger's surprise gut-shooting of one captive and
dancer Carol's repeated attempts to curry favor with her
ex-boyfriend… pathetic attempts at seduction which invariably end with
her face kissed by Kluger's gun hand.

Red Kluger is
one of those titanic movie villains about whom everyone seems to have
heard in infamous and gory detail, from the suits up in the District
Attorney's office to lowly gas pump jockeys and street corner
newsies. His distinctive, cruelly Germanic surname elicits instant
recognition ("Kluger!") and inspires cautious folk wisdom
("With Kluger you can't be too careful!"). McGraw was
making a return to RKO after performing in pictures for other studios,
including MGM's Border Incident (1949) and the
"histo-noir" Reign of Terror (1949), both
directed by Anthony Mann. The actor received $1,000 a week for
The Threat's two-week shoot, an investment of time
repaid with the best notices of his career.
Variety heralded "a humdinger (of a
performance) etched in uncompromising cruelty while biographer Alan K.
Rode,writing in Charles
McGraw: Portrait of a Film Noir Tough Guy, likened the
actor's work to "a virtuoso performance by a spitting cobra…
a hail of venomous insults, coercion and actual bullets in a portrayal
of unabashed ruthlessness."

The problem with The
Threat is that Charles McGraw isn't in every scene.
Although the cast is an agreeable one, Michael O'Shea is a dull
lead, a poor man's Spencer Tracy with a treacly backstory that has
him awaiting the imminent birth of his first child with onscreen wife
Julie Bishop (The High and the Mighty). Anthony Caruso
(The Asphalt Jungle) and Frank Richards (I, the
Jury) are appropriately thick-headed as Kluger's henchmen
but neither gets a chance to shine and the cops on the case (led by
Robert Shayne) are nonentities. (My kingdom for a Fred Clark!)
Scenes of the police hunt for Kluger seem to have been
included in deference to the vogue for procedural reality sparked by
Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948) and Alfred
Werker and Anthony Mann's He Walked By Night (1948)
but Feist never finds the right shade of verisimilitude for these
interludes and the film as a whole suffers from McGraw's absence. On
the plus side, Virginia Grey is an inspired choice as Kluger's
one-time paramour. Looking considerably older than her 32 years, Grey
has an unusual, almost cruel mouth (accentuated by her habit of talking
out of the corner of it) and really sells Carol's desperation and
her climactic triumph in being able, in the final frames, to turn the
tables on her brooding tormentor.

A minor
noir with a major performance by rising star Charles McGraw, The
Threat is certainly worth seeking out for both fans of the
crime genre and those who simply enjoy seeing a man who loves what he
does.