The Money Trap *** (1965, Glenn Ford, Elke Sommer, Rita Hayworth, Ricardo Montalban, Joseph Cotten) – Classic Movie Review 10,934

Director Burt Kennedy’s 1966 watchable but strained Macbeth-style neo noir police crime thriller The Money Trap is a reunion of the great Gilda co-stars (20 years on), Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth, but by now, alas, well past their prime.

Glenn Ford struggles with the cheese-paring production values as Joe Baron, a poorly paid cop driven to temptation and dirty deeds by his lovely, spendthrift and insatiable young wife Lisa (Elke Sommer). He finds that rich doctor Dr Horace Van Tilden (Joseph Cotten) is a drugs kingpin while he is on a case probing the doctor’s shooting of a crook.

Joe Baron (Ford) picks up a former affair with tempting old flame, drunken waitress Rosalie Kenny (Rita Hayworth), widow of the crook killed by Cotten, whose safe Joe Baron (Ford) and fellow cop Pete Delanos (Ricardo Montalban) decide to rob.

The complex film noir plot is adequate, but the all-bad characters are alienating, and the film is not performed or directed with quite sufficient zest or relish, but it still has its moments and appeal. It is quite brisk and short at 91 minutes. And it is good that Paul C Vogel shoots it in stark-looking Panavision and black and white, and Hal Schaefer’s jazzy score is another asset.

Walter Bernstein’s screenplay is based on Lionel White’s novel. Between them, they manage some good scenes and good dialogue

Also in the cast are Tom Reese, James Mitchum, Ted de Corsia, Argentina Brunetti, Fred Essler, Eugene Iglesias, Teri Lynn Sandoval, William Campbell, Walter Reed, Herman Boden, George Sawaya, Harry Wilson, Than Wyenn, Bill McLean (scenes deleted), Parley Baer (scenes deleted), and Stacy Harris (scenes deleted).

Ford and Hayworth appeared together in five films: The Lady In Question (1940), Gilda (1946), The Loves of Carmen (1948), Affair in Trinidad (1952) and The Money Trap (1965).

Walter Bernstein (1919–2021): blacklisted writer in the 1950s, a victim of the HUAC.

RIP Walter Bernstein, blacklisted writer and Oscar nominee for The Front, who died at 101 on 23 January 2021.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,934

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com