Split Second (1953)

SPLIT SECOND is a tough crime thriller from the early 1950s with an absolutely fantastic premise: a group of characters are taken hostage by some desperate convicts who've broken out of prison and will do anything to get away. The problem? They're holed up in a ghost town in the desert which will shortly be obliterated when a nuclear bomb test takes effect.I can't think of a better premise for tension building, so it's a shame that the suspense in this story is only so-so; former actor Dick Powell certainly knows how to shoot a good scene or two (there are some excellent brutal fights here) but the film lacks something overall. I think the music could have been a lot better in building suspense because it's all surprisingly subtle.Still, there's plenty to like here, not least the performances. Stephen McNally was a popular movie heavy and his murderous character burns up the screen. The rest of the performers are well judged, from the sinister mute villain to the crusading reporter hero and the cheating spouse. The nuclear ending doesn't disappoint; it's a neat precursor to the '80s wave of nuclear blast dramas.

Most movies about villains holding hostages are like "Dial 1119", in which the police surround the subject building and try to negotiate with the kidnappers. Here, there are no police officers even close to the hostage scene--but everybody's in the blast zone of a planned nuclear test! Ultra-bad guy and prison escapee Sam Hurley (Stephen McNally, who played about the best bad guy in movie history), his accomplice Bart Moore (Paul Kelly) and mute henchman Dummy (Frank DeKova) kidnap several innocent people and hole up in a desert ghost town. Moore is wounded, so physician Neal Garven (Richard Egan) is summoned to tend to Bart. Grizzled prospector Asa Tremaine (Arthur Hunnicutt--who else?) blunders into the situation. All are held hostage while Garven operates on Moore...all the time, everyone knows that a nuclear test is scheduled in just a few short hours.Dummy is overcome and beaten up, just as Hurley, Kelly, and their moll take off in a car, trying to outrun the blast. Well, they don't make it...and end up satisfyingly incinerated by the blast. Tremaine leads the former hostages to an abandoned mine, where the group rides out the bomb detonation.I've always liked any movie that stars Richard Egan (although he plays a supporting character here), and Arthur Hunnicutt is worth the price of admission in his signature role as an old miner. Look fast for Nelson Leigh as a scientist in a control room. Dick Powell directs with a sure hand in his directing debut, and confines most of the story to one claustrophobic room in the abandoned town. Catch this film if you get a chance--the plot is familiar, but the cast and story twist concerning the nuclear test makes it all worthwhile.

Escaped convicts take a group of hostages into a ghost town in the Nevada desert that will be ground zero for a nuclear bomb test early the next morning. Stephen McNalley's ruthless criminal hits some unexpected high points during the long night, gunning one man down, and later tossing a Bible he was reading from on the floor, but perhaps the film's best part is that played by Alexis Smith as an unhappy wife who's abandoned her doctor husband. Even though the film is full of bad lines, director Dick Powell has still managed to make it interesting, and ultimately exciting, with an absolutely terrific ending as the anticipated nuclear experiment takes place with everyone running for their lives.

An atomic age "Petrified Forest", this film is intense enough to make you sweat bullets. The storyline basically follow that of "PF" in that a gang of killers hold an assorted group of people hostage but with the added twist that audiences in the 50's loved....the "A" bomb.Stephen McNally, a journeyman actor, does a serviceable job as the lead baddie, as does the veteran Paul Kelly ( a bad boy in real life). The statuesque Alexis Smith is wonderfully slutty as the cheating wife who gets her comeuppance when she joins McNally in their final desperate flight to escape the atomic test site in which they have mistakenly become trapped. Others in the group hide in a cave and survive....well, at least in this film. Since they emerge about an hour later into what we know would be a highly radioactive environment, their chances are pretty slim but this was the 50's and what did we know? Also on the scene were two forgettable "leading men" of the time, George Nader and Keith Andes and the always dependable Jan Sterling.Although misconceptions about the terrible after effects of atomic explosions abound in this film, put that aside and be enthralled by a taut thriller that could only have been made in the 1950s.