City of Fear (1965 film)

City of Fear
Directed byPeter Bezencenet
Written byMax Bourne
Harry Alan Towers
Produced bySandy Howard
Arthur Steloff
Harry Alan Towers
StarringPaul Maxwell
Terry Moore
Marisa Mell
CinematographyMartin Curtis
Edited byPeter Boita
Music byJohnny Douglas
Production
company
Production Companies
Distributed byAllied Artists Pictures
Schneider-Filmverleih
Release dates
  • 8 September 1965 (1965-09-08) (US)
  • 28 October 1966 (1966-10-28) (UK)
Running time
90 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom
West Germany
LanguageEnglish

City of Fear (German: Scharfe Küsse für Mike Forster) is a 1965 spy thriller film directed by Peter Bezencenet and starring Paul Maxwell, Terry Moore and Marisa Mell.[1][2] It was written by Max Bourne and Harry Alan Towers.

Cast

Production

The film was a co-production between the United Kingdom and West Germany. Location shooting took place in Austria where the film is partly set.[3]

Reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Conventional escape thriller, with a more than usually implausible plot. But it is quite crisply done in its own way, and if the final escape is somewhat fortuitous, the film at least emerges as more agreeable than many of its genre."[4]

Kine Weekly wrote: "Like nearly all the films produced by Harry Alan Towers, this story has the attraction of interesting foreign backgrounds, and these lend credibility to a plot that packs only one unexpected twist and contains a number of loose ends and the premise that a journalist on duty would be such a fool as to smuggle through the Iron Curtain a package given to him by a shifty-eyed stranger with a typical hard-luck story. ... Main burden of carrying the business through rests on Paul Maxwell as Mike. He has a pleasing personality and a quietly convincing way of acting the improbable. Marisa Mell as the double-dealing Tlona rather gives the game away bv looking too beautifully trustworthy, while Terry Moore has little to do except to be bright and anxious by turns as Suzan. Albert Lieven has only a small and shadowy role as the professor."[5]

References

  1. ^ "City of Fear". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 15 September 2025.
  2. ^ Mann p.69
  3. ^ Mann p.45
  4. ^ "City of Fear". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 33 (384): 169. 1 January 1966. ProQuest 1305825526.
  5. ^ "City of Fear". Kine Weekly. 592 (3079): 10. 6 October 1966.

Bibliography

  • Mann, Dave. Harry Alan Towers: The Transnational Career of a Cinematic Contrarian. McFarland, 2014.