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Bait Reviews

Hugo Haas always made interesting films. This one is a combination of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. Haas and Agar find a lost gold mine that Haas has been looking for. Haas has promised Agar half the action. Then the old reprobate decides to get rid of Agar and uses Moore, his wife, as the bait (hence the title). Haas specialized in really low-budget pictures with high concepts. Lots of the action takes place in a small cabin, not unlike the one in Chaplin's THE GOLD RUSH. This is about as sexy as theatrical films got in 1954. Haas attempts to catch Moore and Agar en flagrante delicto so he can kill the younger man and call it justifiable. The plan backfires and Haas is vanquished. There is something intensely brooding about many of Haas's films, and this one is no exception. Given higher budgets and better scripts, he might have been a second-rate Hitchcock.