On Bill Maher's programme recently Quentin Tarantino said the 1950s were dog days for Hollywood. I certainly preferred that decade's output to what we get now. A whole string of master directors were at the top of their game (Hitchcock, Ford, Mann, Lang, Kazan, Aldrich and others) and also you got second features. When one was as good as this little gem it was worth the price of admission on its own. I've watched this twice, something I rarely do.
I approached it without any high hopes. The director had a long and prolific career, but I'd never heard of any of his films, nor had I heard of the scriptwriter. However, the fact that RKO had assigned Nicholas Musuraca as DoP suggests they had faith in the project ( he'd photographed some of their great films noir such as "The Spiral Staircase" and "Out of the Past.") If so, the faith was justified. This is probably the best work Archainbaud and DeVallon Scott did, and it's a pity that they and Musuraca worked almost exclusively in TV later in the decade.
There are no real stars, unless you count Gig Young. He had a reputation as an abusive drunk, while James Anderson tended to play villains, but here both give attractive and sympathetic performances, as do Anderson's sister Mary, Lynne Roberts and Willard Parker. The script is intelligent and original, populated with believable and well-defined characters rather than just tough stereotypes. I'm not sure, though, why Young's father had to be one-armed. The film's one weakness was the scene where he manages to keep driving while shooting dead two hitmen, one shot for each.
I approached it without any high hopes. The director had a long and prolific career, but I'd never heard of any of his films, nor had I heard of the scriptwriter. However, the fact that RKO had assigned Nicholas Musuraca as DoP suggests they had faith in the project ( he'd photographed some of their great films noir such as "The Spiral Staircase" and "Out of the Past.") If so, the faith was justified. This is probably the best work Archainbaud and DeVallon Scott did, and it's a pity that they and Musuraca worked almost exclusively in TV later in the decade.
There are no real stars, unless you count Gig Young. He had a reputation as an abusive drunk, while James Anderson tended to play villains, but here both give attractive and sympathetic performances, as do Anderson's sister Mary, Lynne Roberts and Willard Parker. The script is intelligent and original, populated with believable and well-defined characters rather than just tough stereotypes. I'm not sure, though, why Young's father had to be one-armed. The film's one weakness was the scene where he manages to keep driving while shooting dead two hitmen, one shot for each.