I'm going on a 60 year old memory here, so bear with me! This was the B film that was the supporting feature in the UK next to Norman Wisdom's "The Square Peg", which is the only reason I happened to see it.
For a B movie to stick in your mind for 60 years, there has to have been something special about it. The plot is simple enough - the rat eliminator borrows an old, broken loaf pan to mix up his cyanide bait in a bakery, goes out to lunch planning to clean up his work tools when he gets back, and is involved in an accident that puts him in the hospital. In his absence, the baker runs out of loaf pans, and uses the cyanide laced broken pan. The rat catcher regains consciousness in the hospital, and goes into panic mode about the poisoned pan. The rest of the movie follows the attempts of the authorities to track down the poisoned loaf of bread, identifiable because the broken loaf tin makes it one of a handful of an unusual shape.
There are a number of candidates for the potential victim, and the suspense builds as we follow the purchasers of each deformed loaf to discover which one contains the fatal mixture.
The final dénoument is completely unexpected.
Too many dramatic movies rely on the scary music, the constantly repeated hidden menace, the shadowy glimpses of the unidentifiable villain to maintain the suspense. "Devil's Bait" carries you from fear to fear only because the scenario is so real. It could happen to you.
Why only 8 out of 10? Because I haven't seen it again since 1959 to know if it still has the same train-wreck power to simultaneously attract and repel.
