source: Bait

Moviecut—Bait

Bait

It surprises me that this is classified as a film-noir because it is not dark. Most of it takes place in the daylight. It also happens in the wilderness (on an obvious studio sound stage). It is not lit with shadows and no venetian blinds. No femme fatale. There was very little tension and the story is corny. I cannot believe adults paid to see this as recently as 1954. I'm glad it was a short movie (79 min).

Hugo Haas' first American movie set the pattern for many of his efforts ;"bait" takes again the deadly love triangle of " pickup" and it's another variation on the theme ; the middle-age man ,who,like in the mentioned movie and in "strange fascination ",marries a pretty girl who could be his daughter out of the blue , much to the surprise of the usual handsome young lad. But here it seems that ,more than Cleo Moore's charms, it's gold which is the hero's obsession, the attractive wife playing the role of a bait (check the title) . Hugo Haas had a fancy for enclosed places : the "shacks" in "pickup" and in this movie; his character is not totally cardboard :he might be responsible for his former partner' s death he left in the cold ,but a new partner ,although helpful ,may also be a nuisance when it comes to share the gold .Note also his love for dogs :himself in "pickup ", John Agar here.

Not a terrible movie until the very end of the movie. A love triangle that really never was and an ending that left me thinking what the what. I like John Agar, but this movie just doesn't add up to be a classic.

It's typical of this film that although heroine Cleo Moore has a baby boy born out of wedlock we never see him. Like a silent film or Russ Meyer movie without the jokes (or the voluptuousness), presented by Cedric Hardwicke as the Devil, whose projectionist (in the wittiest aside in the film) is referred to as Lucifer. I guess that makes director/star Hugo Haas The Serpent, since rather surprisingly he proposes marriage to Miss Moore without showing any interest in consummating the union, and the Deadly Sin the film punishes turns about to be greed rather than lust.