The White Trap

In the United Kingdom, second-feature B films were nicknamed “quota quickies” because UK cinemas were required to have a certain percentage of their exhibited films made in the UK per the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927, which meant foreign distributors, especially American-owned UK subsidiaries, had an incentive to produce cheap, short films fast until the law was repealed in 1960. One of the performers whose face appeared frequently in these films was Canadian actor Lee Patterson, whose British career spanned 26 films and several television series in a mere six years, from 1954 (The Good Die Young) to 1960 (October Moth). In Sidney Hayers’ The White Trap, Patterson plays Paul Langley, a wrongly convicted prisoner whose latest escape attempt is aimed at reaching his ailing wife and the infant to whom she’s just given birth. Along the way, Langley’s aided by old pals like Harry (Harold Siddons) and friendly strangers like nurse Ann Fisher (Yvette Wyatt), who, charmed by his good looks, helps Langley gain access to the hospital room where his wife Joan (Felicity Young) is struggling to recover from a complicated childbirth. Detective Sergeant Morrison (Conrad Phillips) and Inspector Walters (Michael Goodliffe) are on Langley’s tail for the duration, including an entire third act playing cat and mouse throughout the hospital where Langley hides by wrapping his head with bandages or pretending to be a doctor or sneaking into an employee party. While many of these little noirs culminated in tidy endings, The White Trap is a downbeat journey that by the end leaves no doubt that the whole world is “lousy.”