Movie night!

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was Sea Hunt starring Lloyd Bridges. I was watching Mr. Bridges dive underwater long before he was watching the skies blearily in Airplane. And long before that, he was making tonight’s movies.

That’s right, I said “movies”…plural.

It’s a Lloyd Bridges double-feature tonight (now there’s a phrase you don’t hear every day); The Limping Man (1953) and Trapped (1949). Inexplicably, neither have been made into musicals or roller coaster rides.

The Limping Man features early 1950’s plane travel (yes, it was hard to seriously watch Bridges in an airplane of any kind) with passengers disembarking on the runway and then walking to the terminal in the open air. (Geezer moment – this was de rigueur at Bluegrass Field in Lexington when I began flying, rain, snow, or shine.) The seats on Mr. Bridges’ movie plane were bigger than my first apartment.

The movie also features a complex and smart plot and a completely stupid ending. Think Dallas and weep.

Trapped features lots of Treasury Department doin’s with counterfeit twenty dollar bills (a bogus twenty in 1949 was damn serious bidness) and clunky cars in Los Angeles in the shortest car chase I’ve ever seen. Little-known fact illustrated by this flick; the Treasury Department in the late 1940’s was comprised 100% of white men in three-piece double-breasted suits. I’ve not seen such a monolithic wardrobe in film since Men in Black. Mind you, I’m not complainin’, I’m just explainin’ – I love a good three-piece suit.

The film also features a young and delicious Barbara Payton which is quite worth the price of admission. Ms. Payton later made an interesting early Hammer sci-fi film; The Four-Sided Triangle (1955). Unfortunately, much of the plot of The Four-Sided Triangle revolved around the irresistible physical charms of Ms. Payton’s character. By that point in her career, she wasn’t quite as irresistible, but she looks great in Trapped.

As for Lloyd Bridges…

…well…

…he was in both flicks.