Trapped

The U.S. Treasury Department cracks down on counterfeiting as forger Tris Stewart (Lloyd Bridges) finds himself trapped between G-men and gangsters in director Richard Fleischer's dark suspense thriller. Allowed to escape from a seven year prison stretch, Tris plots to recover near perfect currency printing plates, forge some money and escape south of the border with his sexy but loyal gal, Laurie (Barbara Payton).

One of Barbara Payton's twelve feature films, Trapped captures the starlet's striking beauty at its peak. Payton was an iconoclast Hollywood "bad girl" who dreamed of stardom and had married two husbands by the time she reached Tinseltown in 1948. Dubbed "Queen of the Nightclubs" by the tabloids, Payton was romantically linked to men like George Raft, Gary Cooper, Woody Strode, Howard Hughes, John Ireland, Bob Hope, Franchot Tone and Tom Neal. Her later years found Payton drunk, shooting heroin and prostituting herself in the back seat of her rusty red convertible for $5 a trick.

In Trapped, her first starring role, Payton teamed with Richard Fleischer, son of famed animator Max Fleischer. Fleischer helped solidify the posture of "film noir" with such crime cinema offerings as Follow Me Quietly (1949) and The Narrow Margin (1952). His output of over 50 feature films included work as diverse as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Doctor Dolittle (1967), Fantastic Voyage (1966), Soylent Green (1973) and Amityville 3-D (1983).

Lloyd Bridges' career, which began in earnest in the early 40s, continued with increasing success through the 1990s. He is best remembered for his role as the deputy in High Noon (1952) and as "Mike Nelson" in the long-running TV series "Sea Hunt."

Trapped is one of the most violent and gritty of all noirs. It crackles with suggestive dialogue as it twists along with unexpected double crosses, surrounded in a haze of deep, dark shadows.