Konterr Brilliant and touching

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Hitchcoc Tony Perkins, fresh off of "Psycho," isn't Norman Bates, but he's damned close. His eccentric, childish persona really made me nervous. I forgot what a looker Sophia Loren was. I remember her later when she had put on so much weight. Anyway, she has to deal with Perkins and his idiotic moods. He's violent and a bully, so she is stuck. Imagine the relief when she thinks he is dead. But then he shows up and ruins her life. Gig Young comes to investigate and she must carry with her all these secrets of bilking the insurance company. It's a really uncomfortable film to watch. Perkins is way too much here and that kind of ruins it for me. But there is some morality at work here.

marcslope A prestigious director, two celebrated screenwriters, a trendy early-'60s production design, and Sophia Loren and Anthony Perkins, and this ludicrous crime drama just adds up to misguided. Others have pointed to Perkins' miscasting, but who could have persuasively played this despicable rotter, who goes from beastly to charming and back again in a snap, sometimes in the same line? He's an abusive husband who fights with wife Sophia, heads off to Casablanca for a business trip, the plane crashes and he's presumed dead, but he returns, and schemes to collect a large insurance policy he took out at the airport. (This couple, with their designer fashions and her fabulous sports car, don't look to be hurting for money.) Eventually the insurance-fraud plot turns to murder, and Sophia's forced to turn to smarmy Gig Young, at the tail end of his leading-man days, for advice and consolation. And there it just ends, when the plot hasn't been resolved at all and we're not even sure whether we're on her side or not. Sophia does not look happy to be there, but she's at least focused and consistent, which is more than can be said for Perkins, and there's a notably good supporting turn by child actor Tommy Norden, as a snoopy neighbor who threatens to undo the larceny. It all feels quite modern and with-it for 1962, with moody black-and-white photography and jazzy score, and it ain't dull. But it sure ain't good.

Wizard-8 The first thing that will strike viewers as strange is the title. Is "Five Miles To Midnight" a common expression? If so, I've never heard of it before. Anyway, placed next to the movie, it doesn't make that much sense, even though a character in the movie does say the title out loud at one point. If they had used the Charles Bronson title "10 To Midnight", it would have made a bit more sense.The second thing that will be strange to viewers is the pairing of Anthony Perkins and Sophia Loren. True, they were paired together as a romantic couple a few years earlier in "Desire Under The Elms", but reportedly that worked as well as it does here. How a beauty in the form of Loren could be attracted to the nervous, boyish Perkins is hard to swallow, to say the least.But even if the title was fixed AND they got two lead actors with better (and believable) chemistry together, I think the movie still wouldn't have worked. I could see this story being told as a short graphic story in the comic "Tales From The Crypt". I could see this story working as a half-hour episode (with commercials) of a show like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". Or even as a full hour. But this telling of the story lasts about 110 minutes. It's VERY slow-moving, full of padding like the stuff with the little nosy boy. Plus, the ending of the movie is very predictable - I guessed what would happen after reading the plot synopsis before actually starting the movie.Far from the worst movie I've seen, but still not worth seeing. Trust me, you've seen this story before one way or another.

moonspinner55 You would think that any thriller beginning with Sophia Loren doing the Twist in a Paris nightclub couldn't be all bad! Unfortunately, the plot mechanisms (and red herrings) of "Five Miles to Midnight" nearly defeat Loren, very good as the put-upon wife of a neurotic who has sneakily walked away from a plane crash, hoping to collect on his flight insurance worth $120,000. Anthony Perkins, more nervous and fey than ever, continually bites his fingernail, his face twitching in possessive jealousy, while we in the audience wait in agony for Loren to come to her senses and put him out of his misery. It's hard to determine which element of the picture is more inappropriate: Perkins' icky Norman Bates-isms, Gig Young's leering, Cheshire Cat-like performance as an ex-detective-turned-newspaper man, or Mikis Theodorakis' insanely 'Parisienne' background music. ** from ****