» Genre Films

TRAPPED

2020 PERSONAL CHOICE AWARD (Lorenzo Codelli, Juror)

Before making Hollywood epics such as 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954), THE VIKINGS (1958), and BARABBAS (1961) director Richard Fleischer started his career  in the mid 1940’s with a series of low-budget B-features, often taking crime stories and transforming them into taut noir dramas.

In TRAPPED, a young Lloyd Bridges stars as hardboiled hoodlum Tris Stewart, a convicted counterfeiter doing time in the Atlanta penitentiary. When a fresh batch of fake bills starts circulating, treasury agents bail Stewart out to help lead them to the maker of the fake plates. But Tris double-crosses the Feds, hooking up with his gun-moll sweetie (22-year-old Barbara Payton in her breakout role). They plan to heist the plates and hightail it across the border. With the T-Men closing in and the double-crosses piling up, Stewart finds himself increasingly trapped by his own devices.

Although long sought by the Film Noir Foundation,TRAPPED was believed to have suffered the unfortunate fate of many B-films of the era—oblivion. But when a private collector deposited a 35mm acetate print at the Harvard Film Archive, the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive (with support from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Charitable Trust [The HFPA Trust]) sprang into action, restoring the film. The result, presented in this Blu-ray/DVD dual-format edition, honors the assured direction, crisp cinematography and convincing performances of this heretofore largely unseen film noir.

Bonus materials include a documentary on the film’s creation and history, a remembrance of Richard Fleischer, the director, an audio commentary track, and rare photographs and poster art.

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