Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Micitype Pretty Good

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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.

liz-barr Although I agree with most of the criticisms in the negative review already posted - I have just watched this movie on TV over lunch and really quite enjoyed it, which is why I came to this site to be reminded of the cast. I was surprised to see Anthony Newly's name - didn't recognise him. Margaret Lockwood looks much prettier than in many of her other films - her mouth is less prominent and her hair better groomed. Although I don't think it is worth seeing more than once - I do think it is pleasurable enough to watch once. Plenty of films are made of which that is not so. So if you haven't seen it - you won't hate it. It's just not absolutely terrific.

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.