The British cinema was saturated with American actors in both A and B films in the 1950's. I know there were reasons for that too tedious to relate here, and sometimes the actors were good and sometimes downright bad in bad films. This film in a version called ' The Way Out ' was for me barely watchable. I did learn about how you got on and paid when you caught a bus and there was a freedom somehow in doing so which became more complicated over time. This is trivia, but then the film was the usual murder story and I knew at once who the killer was. No spoilers but a man has been killed in a bar called the Zanzibar and again trivia but the same sort of ridiculous names are given to such places in 2022. I really did learn a lot and the photography was passably good in showing me all these details in black and white ( most B films were made in black and white. ) A glimpse of the story. A wasted Gene Nelson ( remember the glorious musicals he danced his way through back then ? ) and once again he was dancing ( that was his natural movement ) away from the law. His wife played by Mona Freeman helps him and I really could not really work out why, and the the heat as they say was on. But sadly not in the acting which was pedestrian to say the least, and not a single role had any sort of character background. I may of course have gone to sleep through that if of course it was there. Now a note of irritation comes into this review. Why did the Americans have to nearly always change the titles of foreign films ( I class the UK as being foreign to the USA ) and I could make a list of them. Do the Americans not know or guess that ' Dial 999 ' means dialling an emergency number ? To sum up. I liked the photography and the scenes set outside the studio, but the rest I was totally bored with and the sadness of poor Gene Nelson having to act in this upset me. I consider him one of the greats but dragged down from his pedestal here.
