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City of Fear

Screening on Film
Directed by Irving Lerner.
With Vince Edwards, Lyle Talbot, John Archer.
US, 1959, 35mm, black & white, 75 min.

A radioactive criminal on the lam threatens to contaminate Los Angeles! A little known cult classic, City of Fear is a wonderfully subversive Cold War thriller whose sharp political edge was carefully honed by director Irving Lerner, best known for his work during the Depression years with the legendary Film and Photo League and Frontier Films. While powerfully evoking the anxiety of urban destruction palpable during the 1950s, City of Fear also reveals the culture of surveillance that was a signature feature of the Cold War era. Vince Edwards (The Killing, Ben Casey, M.D.) stars as the suave crook whose theft of an atomic capsule sets in motion a Geiger counter dragnet through the L.A. underworld.

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