Having worked in Hollywood for decades already, director Andrew L. Stone dove into the crime genre throughout the 1950’s, releasing a string of 1950’s noirs, beginning with Highway 301 (1950) and concluding with The Decks Ran Red (1959). Part of this string was Cry Terror! (1958), a lesser-known hostage noir with a somewhat illogical script about a family torn apart by a blackmail scheme. At the very end of his prolific film noir career, James Mason plays electronics expert Jim Molner, whose wife Joan (Inger Stevens) and little daughter are held hostage by criminal mastermind Paul Hoplin (the always extraordinary Rod Steiger) and his gang; Hoplin has planted a bomb, unwittingly designed by Molner, on a major commercial flight, and forces the Molners to participate in retrieving the ransom from the FBI. A fantastic supporting cast includes a young Jack Klugman, who would go on to star in TV’s The Odd Couple and Quincy, an even younger Angie Dickinson, here playing a bad girl kidnapper, and the always understated Neville Brand, who plays a drug-addicted sex maniac who methodically attacks Joan in the film’s most memorable scene (Brand’s character says the word “rape,” one of the earliest such occurrences in an American film). Mason appears indifferent at times, and Stevens’ melodramatic performance is undoubtedly a weak spot, but there’s plenty to recommend the film, including compelling action (scenes in an elevator shaft, a subway tunnel) and some occasional cinematographic innovation with extreme closeups, deep focus, etc.