The Threat (1949)

THE THREAT  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Felix Feist
    Michael O'Shea, Virginia Grey, Charles McGraw,
    Julie Bishop, Frank Conroy, Robert Shayne,
    Anthony Caruso, Don McGuire, Frank Richards
Charles McGraw was one of those B-movie actors who looked and sounded like a guy who could chew rusty nails and shit barbed wire. I have no idea what he was like in real life, but on screen he was tough. In "The Threat", McGraw plays Red Kluger, a vicious killer who escapes from Folsom and wastes no time getting even with everybody who got him sent up in the first place. It's a mean, economical film noir with a long segment in a hideaway shack in the middle of a broiling desert that plays like a low-budget variation on "Key Largo". McGraw made his last screen appearance in 1977, and achieved some unwanted notoriety in 1980, when, according to noir historian Eddie Muller, he slipped in the shower and the glass door broke and he impaled himself on the broken glass and bled to death. That California now has a law requiring safety glass in shower doors is because of B-movie tough guy Charles McGraw.