Spikeopath Well the plot entails that an Iron Curtain country is developing insects to use as weapons should the need arise. The British Intelligence Division enlists sweet entomologist Frances Gray to meet up with an agent over the boarder and thus bring back some samples. However things don't go according to plan, and she's forced to rely on the help of newspaper writer Bill Casey to not only get the samples, but to escape the country alive!.The premise, tho oddly appealing, isn't executed with any great conviction. Margaret Lockwood, Dane Clark and Marius Goring are not bad exactly, in fact Clark steals the picture, they just work in motion with the staid nature of the script, and sadly it's one of those films that one cheers when the ending comes, but not as a high point in the picture, more out of relief that it's over. In the films favour is that it is at least offering something different in the British spy caper genre, and the last quarter does contain enough drama to have made it worth your while, but only just mind. 4/10

blanche-2 Margaret Lockwood is Frances Gray, a scientist who takes on a government assignment that is "Highly Dangerous" in this 1950 film also starring Dane Clark, Wilfred Hyde-White and Marius Goring. Frances Gray works with bugs, so the government asks her to go to a country of opposing ideology and get a sample of bugs being used by them, possibly for germ warfare. At first, she says no, and then relents and travels to this unnamed country posing as a tour director checking out possible tour locations. Her cover is blown immediately by the chief of police (a heavily disguised Goring) who is on the train with her, and shortly afterward, her contact is killed, and she is arrested, drugged and questioned. The head of the British consulate, tipped off by a newspaper reporter she met previously (Clark) secures her release.The film starts out as a drama, but the mood lightens once she's out of prison. Under the influence of the drug she's been given, she plots a way to get into the lab based not on reality but on the antics of a radio spy on a program her nephew likes. The reporter knows it won't work, but when the first part of it actually does, he goes along.Margaret Lockwood went through several phases during her career - this was her mid period, after the ingénue of "The Lady Vanishes" and before the older woman in "Cast a Dark Shadow." She does a good job and looks very attractive. The stronger role was Clark's - he was being groomed as another John Garfield but never quite got there - he's very good, handling both the dramatic and the comic aspects well. Goring is a far cry from Victoria's husband in "The Red Shoes" -this seems an odd role for him, but he's excellent.An odd film but, if taken for what it is, a good one.

bob the moo Frances Gray is a quiet and unassuming woman who also happens to be one of the top entomologists in the country. It is this that brings her to the attention of the Government, who are looking for some way of spying on a country in Eastern Europe and ascertaining rumours about a plot to wage germ warfare using insects as the carriers. Gray reluctantly accepts the task as a way of adding excitement to her life and soon finds herself in a country where she doesn't speak the language, sticks out like a sore thumb and isn't sure what she is doing.After the first few minutes I had managed to stop snickering at the idea of Margaret Lockwood being the top entomologist in the UK and tried to get into the plot. Sadly the casting makes about the same amount of sense as the actual plot does and it never really flows or engages – when the action starts, it only comes as a result of a contrived twist about radio thrillers and some sort of hypnosis. It says something that this twist actually improves the film, but it is still only serviceable and never got to the point where I was really into it. The plot doesn't make a great deal of sense and it comes across as Highly Dull as opposed to Highly Dangerous.The cast is strange. Lockwood is stiff but quite alluring but she overdoes the "innocent abroad" way too much and she doesn't develop much smarts along the way. If you think she is unconvincing as an entomologist then wait to see how unconvincing a spy she makes! Dane Clark is OK but feels like he is a marketing tool more than a smart bit of casting. He is likable and a better lead than Lockwood but he doesn't have much to do in terms of the actual plot. Goring is OK hamming it up behind a big mustache and cigar but he has too little screen time; support is good from reliables Hyde-White and Wayne.Overall this is a very thin affair that will just about do if you are looking for something to laze in front of on a Saturday afternoon but god help you if you need more than that. The plot is uninspiring and doesn't make a lot of sense or ever really engaged me, relying on a silly twist to make things happen. The cast are OK but Lockwood is helpless in a flat role that is hard to get behind and the whole film is all a bit dull and certainly not as exciting as the title or subject matter suggest it could have been.

edward wilgar Nicole Kidman was following an honourable tradition when she played a gorgeous neuro-surgeon in Days of Thunder for Highly Dangerous casts beautiful Margaret Lockwood as an entomologist. On this evidence the main job qualification seems to be that you don't find insects repulsive. What next, JayLo as a nuclear physicist?Despite being written by the estimable Eric Ambler, the screenplay for Highly Dangerous seems to me to be somewhat misjudged. The `humorous' elements, while never being remotely funny, serve to drain the excitement away from the dramatic sequences. I think the film would have worked much better as a straight thriller without all the nonsense of Margaret imagining she is a character in a radio serial after she's been given a `truth drug'Highly Dangerous has many elements typical of a Cold War drama of its time, the implacable police chief (a typecast Marius Goring), the brutal armed forces, the dissident priest who shelters the fugitives etc. Interesting that the war in this case is biological.Apart from the interest this film will have for the fans of Margaret Lockwood, a big British star of the years around World War II, Highly Dangerous is at best a fair time-passer.