Man-Trap (1961), the only solo feature directing credit for Edmond O’Brien, based on a novel by John D. MacDonald, is rather underrated. I’ve read that O’Brien doesn’t demonstrate any visual style, but I don’t think that’s true: For one thing, there are mirrors all over the place, doubling / troubling the characters.

Jeffrey Hunter, David Janssen, and Stella Stevens make a compelling lead trio. Stevens has come in for some criticism for playing Hunter’s neurotic hot mess of a wife exactly as written, but if the part is a little too in-your-face (and I’m not sure that’s so), that’s not on her. In some ways this is very Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? territory, although it predates the play.

This is really Hunter’s show, and he’s quite good as a caught-in-the-middle kind of guy, trying to get out of the grasp of Stevens and her sleazy father whom he works for by conducting a tepid affair and ultimately by seizing on a larcenous opportunity provided by his old service buddy Janssen. Janssen’s motivations remain tantalizing throughout - is he really wanting to help out Hunter, who saved his life in Korea, or is he just suckering him?

The spicy theme involving decadent suburbia plays like a stronger version of No Down Payment, in which Hunter also starred, and was of course a dominant motif in many Sixties pulp novels. Those scenes feature Bob Crane (presciently on-the-nose casting) and a leering long-in-the-tooth Frank Albertson.

The third act twist involving the fate of Stevens is nicely played - perfectly logical, although you may not see it coming. I wasn’t entirely happy with the denouement, when the moral sense of Hunter’s dull mistress comes into play. But maybe I just wanted things to work out better for the put-upon Hunter.