The Price of Fear (1956)

A lean crime thriller that wastes no time. Director Abner Biberman drops us straight into a hit-and-run that ignites blackmail, murder, and moral collapse. At just over an hour, the film plays like a dime-store novel come to life; brisk, hard-edged, and unapologetically noir.

Business women Jessica Warren (Merle Oberon) gets in an accident driving home. Her panic at the scene sets everything in motion. Oberon, best known for Wuthering Heights (1939), trades romantic grandeur for steely calculation here. Her Jessica is cool on the surface yet troubled underneath. Far from the dreamy Cathy, she’s a modern woman cornered by her own choices.

Lex Barker, famous as Tarzan in the early ’50s, plays Dave Barrett, the co-owner of a dog race track. His partner Lou Belden (Tim Sullivan) has sold out his own interest in the track to the infamous gangster Frankie Edare (Warren Stevens). Barrett rejects Edare and confronts his former partner about it. So angered about the sell-out, Barrett threatens Belden in public. When Belden later turns up dead, Barrett is the prime suspect.

Biberman’s direction is efficient, not showy. The film’s noir soul shows in its sense of fatalism: no one escapes untainted, and even the “good” choices deepen the trap. The plot relies on coincidence, but that’s part of the charm. It moves with the momentum of a pulp magazine and never looks back.

What makes The Price of Fear stick is how it blends noir cynicism with a psychological edge. This isn’t about crime mechanics; it’s about how fear rewires people and causes them to act in ways they might otherwise have never considered. Not a top-tier noir, but stylish, gripping, and tighter than a noose.