Wonderful character development!

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Fun Little Movie. No much science fiction.Good acting, plot was good, acting was good. Some quick one liners and comedy. Quick moving. Decent movie.Fun Little Movie. No much science fiction.Good acting, plot was good, acting was good. Some quick one liners and comedy. Quick moving. Decent movie.Fun Little Movie. No much science fiction.Good acting, plot was good, acting was good. Some quick one liners and comedy. Quick moving. Decent movie.Fun Little Movie. No much science fiction. Good acting, plot was good, acting was good. Some quick one liners and comedy. Quick moving. Decent movie.

I love most of the older films that I've seen but this one is a real snoozer. I found Murder by Television (1935) a bit more interesting (mainly for Bela Lugosi's performance in all honesty).I realize that in the 1930s television was a fairly brand new invention and they were kinda promoting it through motion pictures on the silver screen but the both films (Murder and Trapped) are not all that grand to me. Don't get me wrong, the film is not awful but it's not a great film. I really find it mediocre at best.The actors in the film are good but it's just a typical semi-comical or "cutesy" gangster flick of the 1930s - really nothing to make this film stand out other than the idea of a television which was done a year earlier with Lugosi in Murder by Television.3/10

I got this movie as part of science fiction set. It is not science fiction but that is not the fault of the film. There are two old time stand by actors in this one. They do a decent job of acting. A studio is facing failure with the advent of the new technology, television. There is the inventor who has invented a unique set of video equipment and he gets a surprising backer in a collection agent. They get hooked up with two women who are entrepreneurs of dubious nature but they actually fund his development of his gear. There is the bad guy who is so typical for this time. Sharp faced, cheesy mustache, hard attitude that includes murder. This bad guy is out to get a lucrative television equipment contract from the studio so he has a studio exec who is his accomplice divert the display of the equipment, then by trickery they bust the CRT and the demonstration fails. All is not lost as the women come to the rescue and pay for the part, he fixes his gear, fools the company board to meet, and televises to the board from his apartment. This broadcast includes a fight scene between the inventor and two crooks. There is a running pursuit that ends up with the bad guys arrested, the good guys are vindicated, and the studio is saved.

This film tries to blend comedy with drama, and the result is an uneasy tossed salad rather than a smooth pudding. Lyle Talbot is so stalwart and large it is difficult to feature him as a TV inventor -- but he more than makes up for this in the fight scene, where, with his usual technique, he just beats the dickens out of the other actors for five or ten minutes. Nat Pendelton is wonderful as the dim-witted bill collector turned science hobbyist. Mary Astor, playing closer to her "Thin Man" arch smile than to her "Maltese Falcon" dramatic style, is a scheming but lovable promoter of potato peelers who decides to back this newfangled thing called television. All in all, this makes a better comedy than a drama, but the direction pulls it both ways, and thus it fails to satisfy either audience altogether. Kudos to the prop department for building the most amazingly art deco television camera and receiver in the history of film -- complete with a flat screen monitor! Great stuff, that! Anyway, it's a fun film, won't put you to sleep, and might give you a few laughs until Lyle Talbot swings into action and starts the fight scene that you knew was headed your way the minute you saw his name in the credits and his broad shoulders in that unconvincing scientist's get-up.