bsmith5552 "Man in the Vault" was produced by John Wayne's Batjac company and was directed by up and coming director Andrew V. McLaglan.Small time crook Willis Trent (Barry Kroeger) has a plan. With the help of his womanizing lawyer Earl Faraday (Robert Keys) and gofer Herbie (Paul Fix), Trent hopes to break into the safe deposit box of gangster Paul DeCamp (James Seay) and steal the $200,000 therein. to accomplish this, he needs the service of a reliable locksmith.Herbie provides Trent with the name of Tommy Dancer (William Campbell) who had just done some work for him. Trent begins to stalk Dancer to the point of showing up at the bowling alley where he is bowling. He lures Dancer to his home to open a foot locker. There just happens to be a party going on at the time. Young , rich and spoiled Betty Turner (Karen Sharpe) shows up looking for Faraday who is playing up to DeCamp's girlfriend Flo (Anita Ekberg.). She becomes angry and storms out.As he is leaving the party, Dancer strikes up a friendship with Betty. Later Trent offers Dancer $5,000 to make keys to break into DeCamp's safe deposit box. He refuses. After being worked over by Louie (Mike Mazurki), Trent's body guard, he reluctantly agrees. He makes the keys but is approached by Herbie to steal the $200,000 and split the proceeds. Dancer refuses and takes the money for himself..Realizing that Dancer has the money, Trent begins to apply pressure. He threatens to kill Betty if the money is not brought to him. Meanwhile as Dancer goes to retrieve the loot from his locker at the bowling alley, Herbie begins to stalk him. Dancer escapes and Herbie is arrested by the police after Dancer set off the burglar alarm.Before Dancer can reach Trent with the money, DeCamp enters the picture and.....................................................................................Many familiar faces from the "John Wayne Stock Company" appear in this film. First there is Director McLaglan the son of Wayne's long time friend Victor McLaglan. Paul Fix, Mike Mazurki, Karen Sharpe and Pedro Gonzolez-Gonzolez who plays Pedro the bowling alley pin boy and James Mitchum brother of Robert were also under contract to Batjac.The bowling alley sequence where Campbell tries to elude Fix is very well done and creates an atmospheric sort of suspense. The ending leaves a few unanswered questions such as what happens to Dancer, who actually did rob the bank and Betty Turner who is also taken away for questioning.Anita Ekberg whose star was rising at the time has little to do except look voluptuous and Karen Sharpe, long one of my favorites has an early leading role and looks just marvelous.

blanche-2 William Campbell, in my youth, appeared on a TV show called Cannonball that had a very catchy theme song. So catchy that we made up new lyrics to it that were about our school principle.He has several other distinctions, some as an actor, and he earned his place in the JFK saga by being married to one of JFK's girlfriends, Judith Campbell Exner.Campbell plays a locksmith, Tommy Dancer. He often hangs out at a bowling alley. One night he meets a man, Willis Trent (Berry Kroeger) who invites him to a party. After we hear the song "Let the Chips Fall Where They May" sung by Viviane Lloyd, Dancer meets Betty Turner (Karen Sharpe). They begin dating.Tommy is offered a job for $5000 if he will rent a safe deposit box, and while in the vault, make impressions for two keys to box 315. He doesn't know it at the time, but the box has $200,000 in it that Trent wants stolen. He refuses to do it until Mike Mazurki beats him up and then Betty is threatened. In a suspenseful scene, he makes impressions of the keys.Then he finds out about the money from a man named Herbie (Paul Fix) tips him off about the money and suggests that they split it.Familiar faces here, including Fix, Kroeger, Mazurki, and of course Campbell. Karen Sharpe, who played Betty, married Stanley Kramer and became a producer as well as an actress. Anita Ekberg, looking gorgeous, is on hand as Earl Farraday's (Robert Keys) girlfriend - it's Farraday who owns the safe deposit box.Despite the film being low budget, there are several interesting things about it. First, being low budget, it's filmed on the streets of Los Angeles. The sections they were in were familiar to me and made it so much fun, seeing a large Rexall Drugs, Dutch Paint, the whole ambiance of old Hollywood.The other thing is one starts to notice keys everywhere. Dancer works in a key-making establishment. He's called on by Trent to open a trunk, so he makes an impression of the lock; he makes keys for the safe deposit box, later he uses the keys to get into it - he is constantly using keys. Finally you're noticing them every time he pulls one out.Lastly, parts of the film are very Hitchcockian - one is the ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances; the other is danger in landmarks or familiar places not known for danger, as Dancer first escapes being hit by a bowling ball and then attempts escape by traversing pin-setting machines. Really terrific. Unfortunately, today we're all too familiar with danger in familiar places.Not bad for a low budget film.

Spikeopath Adapted by Burt Kennedy from the Frank Gruber novel, The Lock and the Key, Man in the Vault is a minor 50s crime flick that has somehow been lumped into the film noir encyclopedias. Andrew V. McLaglen directs and William Campbell, Karen Sharpe, Anita Ekberg and Berry Kroeger star. Story has Campbell as a locksmith who gets coerced into a deposit box theft just as Sharpe turns his head romantically.Amazingly, nothing much happens, there's a lot of talking and pouting, Campbell's teddy-boy quiff always holds court, while Kroeger tries to eat all the indoor scenery. William H. Clothier is utterly wasted on photography, only really getting to use his skills when the story enters out onto the real L.A. locations; which are actually the film's only saving grace. OK! The deposit box sequence has a modicum of suspense, the mystery element as Campbell tries to fathom out what's going on also works, but come the weak and cop-out finale you may well wish you had done the gardening instead. 5/10

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Decent 1950's film noir crime drama despite the very contrived and, due to the restrictive Hayes Commission, unconvincing ending.In an attempt to screw his former partner in crime, the head of West Coast illegal gambling racket, Paul De Camp, James Seay, L.A racketeer Willis Trent, Barry Kroeger, needs someone to makes him a set of safe deposit keys in order to break into and loot De Camp's box of some $200,000.00 in ill gotten gains.The Trent mobs gets totally innocent locksmith Tony Dancer, William Campbell, to do it's dirty work for it. Trent first has Tony's girlfriend Betty Turner (Karen Sharpe Kramer), whom he accentually met a cocktail party thrown by Trent,threatened to have her face worked over by his bodyguard the 6 foot five inch ex professional boxer Louie, Mike Mazurki. Tony goes along with Trent's demands but just as he's about to get his hands, in the banks safe deposit vault, on De Camp's cash he has a sudden change of mind and takes off with the money himself leaving both De Camp and Trent empty-handed.With De Camp finding out that his cash was heisted right under his nose he realizes that his sexy and well endowed girlfriend Flo Randell, Anita Ekberg, had two-timed him and beats the truth out of her. Flo had been having an affair behind De Camp's back with his lawyer the very handsome but almost always drunk Earl Farraday, Robert Keys. Farraday secretly working for Trent had used the beautiful Flo to get the number of De Camp's safe deposit box, as well as the bank where it's at, with the promise that he'll split half the loot that's in it with her.The suspenseful ending in an empty and darkened L.A bowling alley was as good as anything you'd see in an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Tony, who stashed the stolen money in a locker at the bowling alley, is constantly hounded by this unseen and shadowy assassin. The man in the shadows is trying to knock Tony off with a combination of bowling balls and bullets as he tries to make his getaway together with, the then held hostage by Trent's henchman Louie, Betty Turner. The final ending is a bit too pat and unbelievable to really take seriously and is about the only thing that spoiled the movie for me. But up until then "Man in the Vault" was about as good a movie, or film noir, as I would have expected and for that reason alone well worth watching up until the last two minutes.P.S I just couldn't get over the strong resemblance of actor William Campbell to Tony Curtis. Campball in fact was even better looking, in a pretty boy sort of way, then Curtis ever was. On top of all that Campbell didn't have that very thick Bronx accent, "Younder lies the castle of my Fattdaa", that Tony Curtis had when he first started out in films. That unintentionally comical accent was to become the butt of so many jokes about Tony Curtis among both movie goers and critics as well as stand up comedians back in the 1950's.