User Reviews

A blind woman witnesses a yacht club robbery. and her father is abducted. The Harbor Command tries to work on the leads she can give them.

Starring Wendell Corey. For me, this immediately places it in the lowest league-division. How this cut-price Ronald Reagan stayed in work for so long is a mystery. Here he is a harbour police captain, just about able to bark out "Take a plate-check on the car", but quite unable to carry any line requiring subtlety or emotional depth.

We are also reminded that audiences of 1957 were still programmed to respond to wartime triggers. So this one starts all very solemn and churchy: 'We gratefully dedicate this program to the men who constantly risk their lives fighting every danger to protect our harbour areas', with recognisable war-film music to match. Actually we're talking about a couple of petty crooks breaking into a club-house to steal the weekend's takings. But they're seen by an elderly yachtsman walking with his blind daughter and they abduct him - though with what plan we can't really fathom.

Presently it turns out that the old man is a diabetic needing his insulin, and suddenly the two thieves are at risk of facing a life sentence for homicide. This time-bomb storyline is echoed in a contemporary British film, Strongroom (about a bank manager and secretary tied up and locked in an airtight safe), also very low-budget, but vastly better written and directed.

There is one vaguely original touch, when the daughter is able to identify the sound of a particular outboard motor, having developed specially keen hearing to compensate for her blindness. But generally it's a plodding production with a notably weak script, unconvincing overall, and lacking any of the tautness or suspense we expect in a police procedural.