The White Trap (1959)

The White Trap is a 1959 British crime thriller and while it’s very much a B-movie it’s a very very good B-movie that turns out to be not quite what was expected. And there is perhaps just a hint of film noir here.

Lee Patterson stars as Paul Langley, a man serving a prison sentence for a crime he claims he did not commit. Actually he isn’t spending much time serving his sentence - he keeps escaping. During his wartime service he made a number of daring escapes from German POW camps, and became quite a hero as a result. Escaping from plain ordinary British prisons is child’s play for Langley. It’s a game and he thoroughly enjoys it. Langley is most definitely not a violent prisoner and he’s always careful to make sure no-one gets hurt. The authorities are exasperated by his antics but even the prison governor can’t help feeling a certain sympathy for him.

Now Langley has a real reason to want to escape - his wife (to whom he is devoted) is about to have a baby and it’s likely to be a difficult and dangerous birth.

Escaping is easy. The hard part will be getting into the hospital to see his wife. Inspector Walters (Michael Goodliffe) is absolutely sure Langley will try to see his wife and he intends to be ready - he has men posted at various strategic points in the hospital. He has set a trap for Langley and he knows that Langley will have no choice other than to walk into it.

His sergeant is not convinced that Walters’ plan will work. Sergeant Morrison (Conrad Phillips) does not believe that Langley would be such a fool as to walk straight into a trap. This disagreement leads to a certain amount of tension between Inspector Walters and Sergeant Morrison.

Of course we know that Langley will try to get into the hospital, and despite all Inspector Walters’ elaborate precautions Langley is a slippery customer and it’s by no means certain who will come out on top in this game.

This is really as much of a prison escape movie as a conventional crime movie, and with Langley being a former war hero and a generally nice guy it really belongs in the daring escape against the odds genre (or at least it appears to at first).

To make things more interesting (and less predictable) both Inspector Walters and Sergeant Morrison are sympathetic characters as well.

Obviously a low budget movie can’t provide spectacular action escape set-pieces but Langley’s escapes are generally clever and well executed.

Sidney Hayers became a very prolific and very successful television director. He directed only a relative handful of feature films but that handful included some exceptionally interesting films. He does a fine job here, keeping the excitement level consistently high. The script, by Peter Barnes, is more than adequate.

Canadian-born Lee Patterson starred in an impressive number of British B-pictures during this period. It’s not difficult to see why he was a popular choice for these types of movies - he was good-looking, he had charm and he was a very competent actor. He’s excellent in this role - he seems like exactly the sort of guy who would have the bravado and the insane self-confidence to pull off so many escapes and we desperately want him to get away with it. 

Michael Goodliffe was one of those very solid character actors who was ideal for playing policemen, and could play such roles either very sympathetically or quite unsympathetically as occasion demanded. Conrad Phillips is equally good as the ambitious and somewhat frustrated Sergeant Morrison.

Although The White Trap has no Edgar Wallace connection whatsoever Network have included it as an extra in their Edgar Wallace Mysteries volume 2 DVD boxed set, and a very welcome extra it is. The transfer is anamorphic and extremely good.

The White Trap is a very well-crafted thriller with fine performances by Lee Patterson, Michael Goodliffe and Conrad Phillips, and it has the emotional hook of a living husband desperately trying to see his ailing wife. Langley is not just a man in a trap - he is a man who must place himself in a trap. Being the man he is, there is nothing else he can do. This gives the movie its slight film noir flavour. In fact you could even argue that Inspector Walters is trapped as well - trapped not by his emotions but by his remorseless sense of duty. This is really an excellent little movie. Very highly recommended.