Killer Red Kluger (Charles McGraw) busts out of Folsom Prison and makes for a bleak desert hideout. But first he makes a violent detour to Los Angeles to kidnap the three people he blames for his ticket to the gas chamber: a cop (Michael O'Shea), the DA (Frank Conroy) and ex-girlfriend (Virginia Grey) he believes betrayed him. Before Red gets out of the country, he's going to get even, one sweating, sadistic murder at a time.

In this gripping, relentlessly paced B-movie, film noir great McGraw -- who breathed menace even when he played a cop or a detective -- dominates the screen with a presence so ice-cold cruel not even the pitiless Mojave sun could melt it. Jittery with fear and suspense, The Threat is the kind of little-known gem every film fan rejoices in discovering.

Homicidal criminal Charles McGraw busts out of jail, kidnapping the three people responsible for his incarceration. The hapless hostages include detective Michael O'Shea, district attorney Frank Conroy, and nightclub singer Virginia Grey. McGraw makes no secret of his plans to kill O'Shea and Conroy once he has successfully made a getaway; he has other plans for Grey, however, and for a while it seems as though she'll willingly play along with him. The cat-and-mouse game reaches its peak of tension some sixty minutes into this 65-minute thriller. Sparse and unpretentious, THE THREAT contained far more excitement than many a more expensive, star-studded film noir.