Background to Danger

The studio that put Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca also sent fellow film tough guy George Raft to Ankara for a World War II thriller featuring intrigue, romance and Casablanca's Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. The danger starts when a beautiful brunette hands American Joe Barton (Raft) some securities for safekeeping. The brunette turns up dead, the securities turn out to be explosive intel and Joe is #1 on the Most Wanted list of both Nazi henchmen and Soviet spies. Director Raoul Walsh (High Sierra, White Heat) ratchets up the tension of a gripping screenplay by W. R. Burnett (High Sierra) based on a novel by Eric Ambler, whose other page-turner-to-screen works include Journey into Fear, The Mask of Dimitrios and Topkapi.

• crime
• drama
• thriller