Sun 27 Feb 2011
Movie Review: SPY HUNT (1950).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[5] Comments
SPY HUNT. Universal International, 1950. Howard Duff, Märta Torén, Philip Friend, Philip Dorn, Robert Douglas, Walter Slezak, Kurt Kreuger. Based on the novel Panthers’ Moon by Victor Canning. Director: George Sherman.
When a young woman (Märta Torén) posing as a journalist slips some vital information on microfilm into the collar of one of two rare black panthers that Steve Quain (Howard Duff) is taking from Milan to the United States – they are in fact his ticket back home, as he is otherwise flat broke – it’s the beginning of a fine tale of not so much espionage but high adventure in the heart of postwar Europe.
When the railroad car that Quain and the panthers are in is separated (intentionally) from the rest of the train, it crashes somewhere in the Swiss Alps. When Quain awakes, he is in bed in a ski area hotel, and the panthers are loose.
On the scene are a small but significant number of suspicious characters: a newspaperman, a big game hunter, and an artist, and the hunt is on. But who’s the one who’s after not the panthers but what’s in the male panther’s collar?
So hunting the down the spy is where the title comes from, but if you were to ask me, I think that they wasted a perfectly good one in Panthers’ Moon, the book by Victor Canning this movie is based on. The panthers play their part very well [FOOTNOTE], but so does Howard Duff, even though his voice and slightly perplexed speech patterns sound exactly like that fellow on the radio. Sam Spade – that’s the one.
Equally effective as essentially the only female character in this movie is the dark-haired and very pretty Swedish actress Märta Torén, whose several other American movies I am in the process of tracking down, many of them in the same noir or near noir category that this one’s in — that’s how great an impression she made on me. (Other the other hand there is a long list of female movie stars I say the same thing about. Fickle, I am.)
Märta Torén married writer-director Leonardo Bercovici in 1952 and the final few films in which she appeared were made in Italy. She died in 1957, only 31 years old.
FOOTNOTE. The black panthers were played by a pair of mountain lions who were dyed black for the film.

February 28th, 2011 at 1:54 am
Funny, I could have sworn Duff sounded more like Charlie Wild —
Great little movie isn’t it. Faithful to the book too for the most part.
The story (before the film)was adapted for the Brithish digest sized black and white comic SUPER DETECTIVE DIGEST along with several other Canning novels. If you google SUPER etc you should find a British comics site that will allow you to see the covers for that and the other Canning adaptations as well as ones for the Saint, Blackshirt, Bulldog Drummond, and others from that series.
February 28th, 2011 at 2:41 am
Steve
Those Canning covers and others are here along with many others — most nice painted covers too.
http://www.bookpalace.com/PicLibs/gallerynews.htm.
February 28th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
I’ve not seen this one, nor read the book, though I do have a few novels by Canning. Thanks for the review.
February 28th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Thanks, Richard. If you or anyone else is a fan of Canning’s, I messed up and forgot to mention that David Vineyard’s review of Panthers’ Moon is posted here on this blog. You can find it at https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=2060.
I see one difference between the book in the movie, but as David said in the earlier comment, they seem to have filmed the movie very closely to the book.
The discrepancy, and it’s a big one, is that in the book Quain helps Catherine Ullven (Catherine Talbot in the book) insert the microfilm in the male panther’s collar. In the movie she does it alone with a bit of deception on her part, and it takes him a while to trust her again when he finds out.
February 28th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Steve
In the book Quain is an Englishman, and obviously American in the film. I think the studio felt that it would be wrong to have an American hero actively involved in espionage in a foreign country. It was all right for him to be a pawn, but not a willing one.