Pretty Good Thriller with the Great Talents of Sam Waterston and Vincent Price
The 1975 thriller Journey Into Fear was based on the 1940 novel of the same name by Eric Ambler which was also the basis of a 1943 film also of the same name. It is fast-paced and has some film noir type elements, including intrigue, assassins, foreign locations, and a beautiful young French lounge singer. It is nicely shot in a number of exotic locations.
Right away the film can’t be a total loss as it stars Sam Waterston, who makes a very appealing and engaging main character enjoyable to watch. It isn’t quite right to say hero as this story doesn’t necessarily have a hero as such but he’s not an antihero either. Sam Waterston plays Graham, the target of a number of assassination attempts by bad guys trying to stop him from revealing some information. Apparently he is a U. S. geologist who discovered a rich oil deposit in the mountains of Turkey which upset certain Arab oil interests but this wasn’t terribly clear, just that the bad guys are trying to delay or stop him from revealing something and a couple of other guys are trying to keep him alive.
The movie is rated R for violence and partial nudity. Rather surprisingly, no foul language, only one off-color remark. Quite a bit of smoking and some drinking. In the attempts to kill Graham and his attempts to escape there is collateral damage, the most horrific being inadvertently caused by Graham himself in creating a diversion. The movie is definitely disturbing in places, with impaling, shooting, and burning among the methods that various people meet their demise.
The movie starts out with Graham in a car whose brakes have been disabled. He manages to bail out while the driver crashes and burns along with all of Graham’s valuable papers. He then boards a train. Assassins line up his seat, but he trades seats with an old lady who is uncomfortable and she is impaled. Graham is not terribly observant. He fails to notice this and doesn’t react much when informed. He tries to board a plane but there is a massive shooting at the airport in which a flight attendant and possibly others are hit, so accompanied by Kupelkin, played by Zero Mostel, who has been looking out for his interests, he has to make a hasty escape and board a boat. Beautiful singer Josette, played by Yvette Mimieux, provides a distraction while a couple named Mathews, played by Stanley Holloway and Shelley Winters, provide comic relief.
On board the boat, he meets a man played by Vincent Price who introduces himself as a mild-mannered Arab scholar, but who is revealed to be not who he says or what he seems. Vincent Price is great at being alternately friendly and menacing, and the chase is on again. They disembark in Athens where another attempt is made to shoot Graham. He is given the choice to be killed in Genoa or maybe lay low for awhile and possibly not be killed, which are his only two choices. He has good reason to distrust the people who promise to hide him.
Overall this movie was not that bad. The main character was likable while the plot was easier to follow than some movies and mostly plausible. The pace was well maintained and the ending was dramatic. You could do worse.