The film is tense and exciting throughout. A panther has a message inserted into a collar around its neck, a message which is of great interest to some questionable characters. The panther escapes its cage and is tracked by Howard Duff, representing the U.S. and by parties who represent the subversives (Ivan Tresault being one of them). The entire film deals with the search and provides some very tense moments. Marta Toren is the beauty who has questionable credentials which have one guessing as to which side she is on. A good film which deserves some recognition.



J.W.

This is in almost every aspect a truly amazing film, and there are many odd things contributing to make it unique in its way. The main players and attractions are not Howard Duff and Marta Toren with all their retinue but the two black panthers, that break loose from a train in Switzerland and terrorize the entire landscape, forcing the army to go to war against them and shoot them dead at any cost, while they are invaluable to Howard Duff, their keeper who lost them, and Marta Toren, who used one of them for a spy message. The intrigue is equally masterly contrived, many parts getting involved in this thing, and several of them not hesitating to kill for their business. Walter Slezak, as the inn-keeper, is the one outsider who is totally innocent and provides a charming character for a change and picturesque addition to the stew. It's difficult to follow all the ways and intrigues and turnings of various spies and agents, which it is impossible to discern immediately who is on which side, but some of them come out alive. It's a delicious piece of cake quite out of the ordinary, there is no other spy thriller like it, but its most rewarding qualities are the marvellous shots from the hunting parties in the Swiss Alps, reminding of great natural documentaries, like those of the Swede Arne Sucksdorff, and also of Frank Borzage's "Mortal Storm" ten years earlier.

Over the years in the movies, microfilm has been pretty much hidden everywhere as a way of hiding it from the enemy, and here, it is in the collar of one of two dangerous black panthers. A bit of documentary narration at the beginning goes into the detail about that nature of the beautiful large cat, and it's not one you want to tangle with, even over its diamond collar that contains valuable secrets. A train accident with the two cats aboard causes them to escape, and good agent Marta Toren joins forces with U.S. agent Howard Duff to find the panthers before the microfilm falls into the hands of enemy agents. This takes them out into the middle of nowhere, on occasion spotting each of the panthers through their binoculars and the telescopic lens of their rifles. But as they aim preparing to fire, something always happens, making it appear that someone among their group doesn't want them to have access to the valuable collar or its even more valuable secrets.

Compact and tense, this cold war spy drama is very well done, the type of crowd pleaser that had post World War II audiences enticed by all the intrigue going on in the world around them. It is never identified what group the enemy agents belong to, but with supporting actors like Walter Slezak, Philip Dorn and Kurt Krueger, the audience is kept guessing which ones are the good guys and which ones are the bad guys. One of the great scenes occurs when Toren and Duff track the collared panther to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and Toren endeavors to lock the panther in so it won't escape. There seems to be a cut scene though, because when we next see the panther, it is already in a cage as everybody surrounding it wonders how they are going to get the darned collar off. That's a minor mishap, however, because the rest of the film is exciting and filled with tension.