Out In The Red Scare Cold War Night- Sterling Hayden’s Five Steps To Danger-A Film Review

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Five Steps to Danger, Sterling Hayden, Ruth Roman, 1957

    

Recently in reviewing a 1940s black and white melodrama, Daisy Kenyon, I noted that looking back into the film archives for such films gave us a feel for the social sensibilities of the times, in that one a glimpse at the subject of adultery and subsequent divorce proceedings in the then hard divorce state of New York. The film under review, 1957s 5 Steps To Danger, can serve the same purpose as a glimpse at the political sensibilities of the times, the high-end hard red scare Cold War night. To somebody looking at the film today who was born say in 1980, maybe a little before, and certainly after whose world view has been shaped by the demise of the Soviet Union the whole thing might seem a mystery sealed with seven seals as to what the big deal was. Yet any viewer, young Saturday matinee double-feature attendee or adult night viewer, would have immediately recognized the dreaded Soviet bad guy versus good FBI –CIA guy struggle of the titans played out in the film. That Cold War adversarial theme played pretty straight up here invaded all kinds of films from science fiction with its aliens (read “reds descending’) to, by implication, the myriad J.D. (juvenile delinquent) films put out by Hollywood when every golden age of America parent was worried to perdition about sullen uncommunicative sons and daughters being loss to freedom’s cause.      

Here is the straight up “skinny” on this one. Average citizen riding the roads home to see his folks out in the great Western night, John (naturally), played by the rugged and non-nonsense Sterling Hayden gets into some car trouble and after one thing or another ditches that car and gets a ride from Ann (naturally) played by seemingly sensible Ruth Roman who is heading his way, part way anyway, toward Santa Fe. Driving on a mission it will later turn out. Ann seems like an ordinary pretty girl and so John hops in.

Then the mysteries begin. John is stopped at truck stop diner by a woman who says she is a nurse and that the seemingly sensible Ann is really, well, off-balanced, and needs help. Then they are stopped by guys who say they are cops looking for her in a murder case. From there Ann starts to come eye-drop at a time clean with John. Tells him she is an emissary from the anti-Soviet resistance in Germany, which could mean from East Germany, trying to get top secret information to a German scientist who obviously was working at top secret atomic site Los Alamos or its environs.  

From there the chase is on as John has been enlisted by Ann in her scheme, enlisted in the fight against the red menace night, and incidentally into her charms which even in the deepest part of the red scare night Hollywood could not help throwing in as a romantic element, here including a marriage of convenience. Needless to say as the plot unfolded it turned out that the doctor who was treating Ann was actually a Soviet spy looking for that information which was to be forwarded by Ann to the so-called America friendly German scientist. Needless to say as well that the good doctor was foiled in his efforts once the American spy-catchers got to work and took him out, took him out permanently, of the equation. John, an average American citizen and Ann now also an average American citizen thereafter go off to live their happy lives after they did their bit to curb the Soviet menace. I watched this film when I was one of those Saturday afternoon matinee double-feature attendees and remember I bought into the whole good FBI-CIA guys theme. Yeah, the world was fresher then, for good or evil.