Fear Is the Key 1972

In a taut, globe-trotting thriller, Talbot [Barry Newman] finds himself at the center of a deadly scheme that begins with a radio conversation. He’s speaking to a woman and a pilot when another plane suddenly dives in and machine-guns them, setting a chilling tone of unpredictability and danger. The event feels almost scripted, yet the danger is real, and the mystery surrounding Talbot deepens from the moment that radio crackles with static.

Some time later, Talbot arrives in a small Louisiana town where his volatile presence erupts into a clash with local law enforcement. He is quickly arrested and hauled before a courtroom that brands him as a suspect in the murder of a policeman and a bank robbery. The tension spikes when Talbot makes a dramatic escape from the courtroom, shooting another officer and kidnapping Sarah Ruthven [Suzy Kendall], pulling her into a web of misdirection that will ripple through the next stages of the plot.

A high-stakes car chase threads the story forward, bringing Talbot into contact with a shadowy figure, Jablonsky [Dolph Sweet], who reveals a startling fact: Sarah is the daughter of a wealthy oil magnate. The revelation adds a powerful motive for the kidnapping and deepens the intrigue surrounding who is manipulating whom. As the plot unfurls, Jablonsky is placed under protection to guard Talbot, while Vyland [John Vernon], a man working for Sarah’s father, hires Talbot for a task that remains shrouded in ambiguity. It becomes clear that Jablonsky and Talbot share a long history and have orchestrated a larger plan whose purpose remains deliberately elusive, cementing the sense that every move is part of a carefully staged game.

Late at night, Talbot slips away to an offshore oil platform in search of something unknown. When he returns, Vyland’s henchmen are seen burying something—the body of Jablonsky—an ominous sign of the perilous layer cake of conspiracies surrounding him. Talbot then slips into Sarah’s room and lays bare a startling confession: the entire sequence up to this point has been a constructed scheme. The brawl in the town was a calculated device to land Talbot in the courthouse; the gunfight in court was faked, with Talbot firing blanks at the policeman. Sarah’s kidnapping was a deliberate lure designed to draw Talbot and Jablonsky into the house, and what looked like coincidence is revealed as a prearranged trap.

Talbot’s narration continues to peel back the facade as he explains the financial stakes behind the operation. He reveals that his involvement was tied to a salvage venture funded by Sarah’s father, a venture that Vyland exploited without knowing the full extent of the danger. The overarching danger compounds as Talbot warns that Sarah and her father are now in peril, especially after the death of Jablonsky. Despite the mounting danger, Talbot asks for Sarah’s help, though the specifics of his plan remain intentionally unclear as he guards a deadly secret close to his chest.

The mission then shifts to the platform again, where Talbot is tasked with operating a submersible for an unspecified project. Along with Sarah, Ruthven [Ray McAnally], Vyland, Royale [Ben Kingsley], and Larry [Peter Marinker], he lingers at the edge of a perilous venture. Talbot deliberately delays the sub’s launch, a move that sparks tension among the men on deck. The moment of danger arrives when Larry draws a gun on Talbot and collapses into the sea, the victim of a fatal mishap that underscores the ruthlessness of everyone involved. With Sarah’s aid, Talbot eliminates another of Vyland’s men, and the two of them struggle to summon help from the mainland as a storm rages overhead, trapping them on the platform.

Imprisoned by the weather and the distance from rescue, Talbot and his companions descend into the submersible and move toward the sunken wreck of a DC-3. Vyland finally reveals his true objective: he is seeking the cargo—$85 million in gold bars, emeralds, and uncut diamonds. Talbot counters that he already knows what the treasure represents: a payment from the Colombian government to the International Monetary Fund to fund a revolutionary arms move. The plane’s payload carried Talbot’s own brother, his wife, and his three-year-old son, a revelation that makes Talbot’s long vigil for vengeance feel personal and devastatingly real. For three years he has plotted a reckoning, and the moment is at hand.

In a wrenching turn, Vyland’s complicity is exposed as Royale takes decisive action, shooting Vyland dead. The traitor’s confession of his role in Jablonsky’s demise surfaces, exposing a chain of deceit that stretches even further than Talbot had imagined. With the truth out in the open, Talbot unleashes his final gambit of survival and revenge, as he turns on the oxygen and prepares to meet whatever fate awaits him below the waves.

Emerging back to the surface, Talbot returns to air and space, carrying with him the weight of secrets won and lost. The movie closes on a note of unresolved questions and hard-won conclusions, leaving the audience with the chilling sense that every character played a part in a larger, meticulously designed game—one in which revenge, loyalty, and greed collided beneath the sea and in a town where nothing is as it seems.