ARLENE MARTEL IN THE PSYCHO-THRILLER-NOIR 'THE GLASS CAGE'

Title: THE GLASS CAGE Year: 1961 Rating: ****

Arlene Martel (billed as Arline Sax) is one of the most uniquely beautiful, exotic and intriguing ingenues, able to play nearly any ethnic race and even outer-space Vulcan royalty on STAR TREK in her most important of many television guest spots from THE TWILIGHT ZONE to THE OUTER LIMITS to COLUMBO...

But she actually headlined a 1961 low-budget theatrical potboiler that's a unique hybrid of pulpy police procedural, shadowy film noir and the kind of creatively-shot PSYCHO-thriller popularized after the Alfred Hitchock classic...

Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE

So it's almost deliberately predictable that her dual-role as the good and bad twin is one in the same, both accused of murdering a burglar in a dingy tenement where young police detective Bob Kelljan, going against the advice of veteran cop partner (co-writing producer) John Hoyt, falls madly in love...

Understandable since Arlene Martel's shy vulnerability towards the smitten lawman's even more sensuously mesmerizing than her supposed twin-sister's dragon-lady/fatale-like manipulation of an psychotic red-herring: so basically, Arlene steals her own show here — twice.

Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE

Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE

Bob Kelljan and John Hoyt  in THE GLASS CAGE

Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE

Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE with King Moody

Bob Kelljan and Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE

Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE

Arlene Martel in THE GLASS CAGE