Watch Make Haste to Live For Free

The Worst Film Ever

Excellent but underrated film

Best movie of this year hands down!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I'm a huge Dorothy McGuire fan and had was initially excited at discovering a film noir that I hadn't yet seen. About twenty minutes in I realized why I've never heard of this one. It's actually painful to watch. I really don't like any of the characters and have given up at 59 minutes. Just don't care what happens. For me, this is a first.

Dorothy McGuire (Crystal Benson), Stephen McNally (Steve), Mary Murphy (Randy Benson), Edgar Buchanan (sheriff), John Howard (Josh), Ron Hagerthy (Hack), Pepe Hern (Rudolfo Gonzales), Eddy Waller (Spud Kelly), Carolyn Jones (Mary Rose), Argentina Brunetti (Mrs Gonzales).Director: WILLIAM A. SEITER. Screenplay: Warren Duff. Based on the 1950 novel by Mildred Gordon and Gordon Gordon. Photography: John L. Russell Jr. Film editor: Fred Allen. Music: Elmer Bernstein. Art director: Frank Hotaling. Set decorators: John McCarthy Jr, George Milo. Costumes: Adele Palmer. Make-up: Bob Mark. Special effects: Howard Lydecker, Theodore Lydecker. Optical effects: Consolidated Film Industries. Hair styles: Peggy Gray. Assistant director: Robert Shannon. Sound recording: Earl Crain Sr, Howard Wilson. Associate producer: William A. Seiter. Executive producer: Herbert J. Yates.Copyright 4 March 1954 by Republic Pictures Corp. New York opening at the Victoria: 25 March 1954. U.S. release: 1 August 1954. U.K. release: 19 April 1954. Australian release through 20th Century-Fox: 22 September 1954. Sydney opening at the Park (ran one week). Approx. 8,100 feet. 90 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Dorothy McGuire plays the successful editor of a small town paper in New Mexico. Her security, and the happiness of her teenage daughter, are threatened when her husband is released from jail. COMMENT: An attractively photographed and appealingly acted thriller which suspense-fully builds to a fine climax. Both principal antagonists are perfectly cast, and it's good to see Mary Murphy in an early role, even if she has little to do. The director makes effective use of his locations. All told, it's a neat job.MY SECOND VIEW: Slow thriller. The script is over-weighted with dialogue and yet it doesn't succeed in generating much interest in the principal characters (and none at all in the subsidiary ones). Part of the fault lies in the casting — none of the principals are very convincing — and an even greater part in the ponderous direction. Something might have been made of the climactic chase sequence but it drags on far too long to retain interest and the sets are too obviously tatty.

How can you not love Dorothy McGuire? That haunting face who played so many scared little waifs, troubled but sweet romantic heroines and long-suffering wives and mothers has a hallmark on what screen ladies should be like. She was pretty, not a glamour girl, had eyes that would draw you into wanting to protect her, and would make you feel as if you've known her all her life. But even a star like her has to have at least one fiasco, and this Republic thriller is it. As the mother of an 18 year old girl, she covers the ground of my last description of her archetypes, but in playing a troubled lady in distress, goes back to the scared little waif, here not a young girl anymore but one so troubled by her past that she instantly gains your concern for her. It's just a shame that she's surrounded by one of the worst screenplays I've ever seen filmed and has to deal with the most unbelievable plot devices outside a 1940's serial.It's made apparent in the first scene that something or someone is stalking her, and at this point it's O.K. It's "The Spiral Staircase" all over again. But when she goes to local sheriff Edgar Buchannan and asks for a gun and gives no reason (and he simply gives one to her without question!), the eye roll begins and doesn't stop until the film is at its end. It turns out that McGuire, now a local newspaper editor, is being stalked by her snarling estranged husband (Stephen McNally), and flashbacks detail of how they courted, married, fought over his life of crime, and how she escaped from that by escorting a girlfriend (Carolyn Jones) on a trip, only to be thought of as dead when a girl he brought home somehow blew up. Now she's a respected member of this sagebrush community with a pretty 18 year old daughter (Mary Murphy) who tells her about a stranger she met who indeed turns out to be McNally, freed after 18 years in prison allegedly for killing her!When a suspense film as stupid as this stops being suspenseful because you are either laughing or shaking your head constantly at it, you know you've come across a real dog. McGuire gives her best shot to the ridiculous plot, but at times, you really want to shake her character and tell her to "shoot the bastard!". Somehow, her gun (hidden in an unlocked bedroom bureau) turns into a snake, ends up in the hands of a local youth accused of murder, and McGuire leads McNally on a chase to an old Indian burial ground where she intends to kill him so her daughter won't find out what kind of psychopath fathered her. I can appreciate the lavish imagination utilized to create such a plot, but it's one ridiculous twist right after another, and with nobody figuring out the connection between McGuire and McNally, is filled with the stupidest characters outside of a cartoon. In fact, with its desert mid western setting among mountains and caverns and canyons, it begins to take on the feeling of a Road Runner/Coyote short. McGuire even turns over an envelope of money to her daughter's boyfriend "just in case something happens to her". I've seen some bad films in my time, but unless you are a writer and don't want this to happen to you, this is one to "Make Haste to Avoid".

I expected "Sleeping with the Enemy" but this wasn't it. The tension wasn't there. I just wasn't afraid for the good guys or scared of the bad guy. I had hoped that the bottomless pit shown in the opening scene would play a bigger part, but it didn't - and it would have made a grand finale! But the ending was very disappointing!