Five Minutes to Live (1961)

Originally released in 1961 as Five Minutes to Live, this low-budget crime drama was later re-released as Door-to-Door Maniac. Fred narrates the film in flashback, detailing a suburban bank robbery that goes awry. In his simple plan, he hires a hard-up hood, Johnny Cabot to take the wife of the bank's vice president hostage. Cabot will hold her until he gets a call alerting him that Fred has been successful in getting ransom money. Cabot waits, and watches the Wilson house as the husband leaves for the bank and their young son heads off to school. Posing as a door- to-door guitar instructor, he forces his way into the house and takes Nancy Wilson hostage. At the bank, Fred talks his way into Ken Wilson's office, and presents his personal check for $70,000, intending that Wilson will withdraw the funds to cover the check as a ransom for his wife. He has Wilson call home to prove that Nancy is being held by the unstable Cabot, and gives Wilson 5 minutes to make his decision.Not a great film. Johnny Cash can't act at all and he brings down the production. The prints of this film currently look like they were lifted off a TV -- kine-scope fashion which makes it hard to watch. The characters are broadly drawn and dated.Opie is in the movie too and his scene plays like a TV commercial.In all, just not so good.

Hi, I'm Johnny Cashless. I need to make a quick buck and I have a guitar that Merle Travis actually plays while they show my hands which are really Merle's finger pickin' hands. Got it so far? Oh, and I have a gun with a silencer but it makes a big noise when I shoot it.Merle Travis and Johnny Cash are both country music legends who appear here as actors. They act like they are acting. Dolly Parton was too young and Minnie Pearl was busy with a function at Grinder's Switch so they got some blonde who looks like Barbara Billingsley to be the female lead who also has to pretend to act.Good cast with Vic Taybeck thrown in. He is OK as a sleasey guy. Ronnie Howard does a good job. The old dinosaur who plays the bank guard is a believable character. There's also a dark haired other woman, who I guess is either Pamela Mason or Tiny Tim or Raymond Burr. She looks a lot like Jack Lemmon did in Some Like it Hot but she is less desirable, of course.The plot is a basic bank robbery gone wrong/telephone/nice '60s cars type of chowder served with a fur covered negligee and some broken statuettes. If it were not for the great names in the cast this one would have disappeared altogether like many other fun films that gave us a look at the technology and attitudes of 50 years ago.The only thing I missed seeing here was a revolving door at the bank. That is always a great place for a shootout.The title song is so bad even Johnny Cash can't save it. The song could be done worse by Wayne Newton or Dinah Shore, but it really kills any popcorn appetite you might have brought into your viewing room.Other than that it was OK and I did watch it for free so I am not complaining. I want to watch it again after I have watched every other movie that has ever been made.Johnny Cash did do some other acting roles where he was pretty good. Many pop singers became good actors such as Bobby Darin and John Denver and Burl Ives.

(There are Spoilers) Being told in flashback by gangster Fred Dorella, Vic Taybak, we get the lowdown of the bank heist that he was involved with the on the lamb cop killer Johnny Cabot, Johnny Cash.Johnny fled him home state of New Jersey after a blotched warehouse robbery where his partner Pete,Max Manning, and two policemen were shot and killed. Cooped up with his gun moll Doris, Midge Ware,in this flea bag motel in Carmellia Gardens outside L.A Johnny is edgy and a bit irritated in not being on a bank job where he can get back into action as a seasoned criminal. It's when Johnny's contact in town bowling alley owner Max, Merle Travis, gets in touch with him about a pending bank robbery that things start to pick up for the by now deeply depressed, in being stuck in dull as dishwater suburbia, Johnny Cabot. Meeting New York hoodlum Fred Dorella Johnny not only gets the job that he's been craving for, as the both wheel and hit man, but as a bonus finds out who set him and the late Pete up in the blotched warehouse job back in Jersey.The plan thought out by Dorella to rob the Harper Federal Trust in Carmellia is foolproof with Johnny holding the bank's vice president Ken Wilson, Donald Woods, wife Nacny, Kay Forrester, hostage in her suburban home. Dorella is then to get Wilson to give him $70,000.00 from the bank vault in order to insure his wife's safety. The plan as air-tight as it is has in fact a number of very serious flaws in it that both Dorella and Johnny, having no idea of Wilson's secret love life, didn't take into account. There's also the problem of both Wilson and Nacy's six year-old boy Bobby, little Ronnie or later to be known as movie mogul Ron Howard, who has a habit of showing up unexpectedly from school. Johnny who would kill a man or woman just for looking at him cross-eyed or not appreciating his country & western music, he plays the guitar in his spear time, has this thing about shooting adolescents.Jonny Cash, in what seems to be his first movie role, has the time of his life playing the ruthless and murderous Johnny Cabot doing as good of a performance as you would have expected from a young James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Even when Johnny is slapping Nancy, and threatening to blow her brains out, around he still finds time to play his guitar, Cash also wrote and sings the films title song "Five Minutes to live", and crack a number of jokes that puts off the edge of the tension that's built up in the film. Wilson who's being blackmailed by Dorella to clean out his bank vault is really not all that interested in his wife's safety since he's planning to leave her for his girlfriend Ellen Harcourt, Pamela Mason, and fly to Las Vages to get married that very evening!Everything falls apart as both Dorella, in the bank, and Johnny, at the Wilson home, get royally screwed not by Ken Wilson and Nancy but by a number of people or innocent bystanders, that includes little Bobby, who unexpectedly get involved with their so-called master plan. Like all perfect crimes the one that Dorella and Johnny concocted didn't factor in the unexpected and it was the unexpected that in the end did them both in.

I had never heard of this flick before I discovered it at the dollar store. It was only a buck so i had to get it and I can definitely say it was worth the money. I almost feel as if i should go back to the store and insist they let me pay them so more(it was that worth it to me) Johnny Cash's hair is perfect it's almost another character altogether. When he gets mad it gets mad and when he's cool it stays cool. And it stays cool most of the films as Johnny Cash does a good job playing the well dressed bad guy. The guitar playing is really interesting and kind of creepy. Creepy because who wouldn't be a little freaked out by a guy whose been sent to kill you; singing and playing the guitar? I liked the story line, of course it's very dated being as it was a low budget film made in 1961; but it was still enjoyable. I also really liked Vic Tayback's performance. I know he's been in a lot of things but I only really remember him when he was fat and balding Mel Sharples on ALICE. Seeing him in this movie made me want to look for some other stuff he's in. Also, little Ronnie Howard is adorable!