Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Micitype Pretty Good

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

ksf-2 Reading the plot description, this one sounds like an updated version of "Petrified Forest". the opening two minutes looks like it was filmed near the mountains and deserts of palm springs. and everyone is so forthcoming with the exact location, time, and details of the atom bomb test. ah the good ol days. The first of only SIX films that Powell directed himself. Simple enough plot... gang holds group hostage, although this film has the added suspense of an impending bomb test right where they are hiding out. Lots of banter about not being heroes... a bit of "Key Largo" thrown in. It's not bad, but you'd think he wouldn't want to hang out in a location with all the feds (and a bomb test) nearby. Intentionally or not, Dottie (Jan Sterling) looks and sounds like Lana Turner, another Dick Powell connection... kind of. They starred together in "Postman". Eh. Not great. Never really gets going. 900 votes on Turner Classic, so they must not show this one very much.

edwagreen Excellent crime thriller with a group of people being held hostage by escaped killers.Stephen McNally nabs his role as a killer and Alexis Smith is wonderful as the neurotic wife of a doctor-husband, Richard Egan, who she is leaving for an insurance executive. Bored with life, but with a clinging desire to live, Smith will stop at nothing to survive including trying to fall for the McNally character.Set in the Nevada desert with the complications of nuclear testing about to be unleashed with a bomb, the film is nicely paced and offers interesting character developments.The ending gets you to think if the survivors really did survive and what they would have to endure due to nuclear fallout.

bkoganbing Dick Powell who was looking for a career behind the camera on the big screen and small got his first directorial assignment in this RKO B picture Split Second with a B picture cast. Altogether fitting and proper that it would be RKO since that studio gave him the part in Murder My Sweet that got him out of musicals once and for all.Reporter Keith Andes is set to cover an atomic test in Nevada when he's reassigned to cover the break of a notorious criminal Stephen McNally from prison. McNally who's hidden away the loot from an armored car job escapes prison with Paul Kelly with deaf mute Frank DeKova meeting them with a vehicle. Circumstances force McNally and his crowd into a ghost town with a bunch of hostages that include Andes, Alexis Smith who is running away with Robert Paige, Jan Sterling who's been around the block a few times and Arthur Hunnicutt an old prospector. Later on Smith's husband Richard Egan joins them. He's a doctor summoned by Smith to tend a bullet wound that Kelly took in the prison break.Richard Egan's character is the central weakness of this otherwise good and suspenseful film. Not Egan's fault but he's given a character way too noble to be real.Powell took easily to the director's job and got good performances out of his ensemble. Best in the cast is McNally as tough and brutal professional criminal with only one weak spot, his concern for Kelly whom he looks up to as some kind of mentor. Also given good meaty parts are the women, Alexis Smith who is the unfaithful wife who after McNally kills Paige is quite ready to take up with him and Sterling who McNally would really like to take up with. Had Egan's character been better drawn Split Second would rate as a top noir classic. As it is it ain't half bad.

krorie The success of this film is due largely to Dick Powell's analogy that international violence is caused by many of the same forces that trigger personal violence. Some might say the nation is the individual writ large. His pairing a detonation of an atomic bomb in preparation for a possible conflagration that would eliminate the human race with the escape from prison of a perverted hostile trio of killers hiding out in a deserted western town is indeed inspired. Add to this a clever, telling script written largely by Irving Wallace, who knew how to make today's headlines into entertaining stories, and the result is a near classic film for its genre.Some of the best lines are given to Jan Sterling in the role of a good-hearted showgirl, Dottie Vale, who has been ridden around the block a few times. At one point in carefree desperation, she states, "looks like we're caught between the devil and the bright red bomb." The ambiance of nonchalance permeates the entire picture and helps to lessen the tension caused by the split second count down to Armageddon for the trapped hostages. Even more humor is introduced with the character of Asa Tremaine, a desert rat who attempts to tell tale tales not unlike those of Gabby Hayes. Played by Arkansas native Arthur Hunnicutt (He's buried at Greenwood, Arkansas), Asa plays a pivotal role near the conclusion of the film. The rest of the cast is effective, particularly Stephen McNally who portrays the coldblooded killer with no morals, Sam Hurley.The story involves an assortment of personalities who unwittingly end up kidnapped by three escaped killers, one of them mute. The root of the plot centers on the interaction among the characters when their lives are stripped bare with doomsday at 6:00 am the next morning. They hold up in an abandoned town waiting for a doctor who happens to be the husband of a two-timer who is traveling with her boyfriend, now held captive by the killers. There is much edge-of-the-seat suspense as the clock clicks away the minutes.