Double Feature

Dangerous Mission (RKO Radio) is a misguided tour of Glacier National Park in which the public inspects such unnatural phenomena as a studio glacier, a special-effects forest fire, an avalanche in miniature and Victor Mature. Actor Mature is a policeman from New York who has gone west to put the arm on a murder-case witness (Piper Laurie). One look at Piper and he offers both arms.

Meanwhile, a rather effete type (Vincent Price) keeps trying to cut in. But Price turns out unexpectedly to be "a notorious New York gunman," and Actress Laurie takes a bad fall off a cliff. Bouncy little Piper bounces back, only to take another tumble into a crevasse where Price lies dying interminably in shaved ice. As she shivers on a frigid shelf above the killer, the audience shivers in sympathy. But Piper, as the camera reveals when Victor hauls her out on a hawser, needs no sympathy to keep her warm. She is wearing snuggies.

Forbidden (Universal-International) is not to be confused with Dangerous Mission just because it has almost exactly the same plot. This one is set not in Glacier Park but in "the seething city of Macao" on China's southeast coast; and instead of Technicolor it provides a scarlet situation. The witness (Joanne Dru) is not only on the lam; she is also the "house guest" of an eminent gambler of those parts (Lyle Bettger) who for pure viciousness makes Vincent Price look like a corn-silk addict. The private eye in the caper is Tony Curtis, who not only uses his body more expertly than Victor Mature but sometimes even moves his face. The only trouble is that there's "a philosophical piano player" (Victor Sen Yung) in the house quite a bit of the time, and Confucius in ragtime is a little hard to take.

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