This British programmer was filmed on the cheap in Yugoslavia, with an American star, Robert Ryan, to secure U.S. playdates. Ryan plays an American journalist who views with alarm as a dictator (Stewart Granger) runs roughshod over the citizens of an unnamed Balkan country. The news hound puts together enough incriminating evidence to topple the dictator from power. The problem for Ryan lies with staying alive long enough to make his findings public--a chancy prospect once the powers-that-be frame the journalist for murder. The Crooked Road was adapted from The Big Story, a novel by Morris West.