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.
Spikeopath
Split Second is directed by Dick Powell and written by William Bowers, Irving Wallace and Chester Erskine. It stars Stephen McNally, Alexis Smith, Jan Sterling, Keith Andes, Arthur Hunnicutt, Richard Egan, Paul Kelly, Robert Paige and Frank DeKova. Music is by Roy Webb and cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca. Escaped convict Sam Hurley (McNally) is on the run with his wounded pal Bart Moore (Kelly) and henchman accomplice Dummy (DeKova). Carjacking two lots of hostages, Hurley takes them to a ghost town on an Atom Bomb test sight figuring it's the perfect place to hole up. But with Moore in need of medical help, the test bomb set to go off in the morning and tempers frayed within the group, something is going to have to give... A taut and sweaty noir, Split Second taps into the 50s fear of the bomb and explodes the character dynamics Petrified Forest style. The premise is simple, once the character introductions are out the way, we wind our way to a bleak ghost town and stay in the company of a disparate group of people for the remainder of the film. As the clock ticks down, with the bomb set to be detonated on the town at 06.00, the various characters introduce their respective traits into the story. The tension mounts and the over-spills are often nervy, sleazy and poignant. The makers don't soft soap the situations, but they do dangle shards of sympathy. As is the case with Hurley, who is a cold blooded killer, we know and witness this, but his back story is that of a war hero, he also has a deep affection for his injured older pal, somewhere along the line a good man lost his balance. Dottie Vale (Sterling) is a dancer, street wise and aware of how to play the situation, but sadness resides behind her waspish tongue. Kay Garven (Smith) is a lost cause, she will do anything and trample on anyone to save herself. One of the best sequences in the film finds Garven throwing herself at Hurley, the rest goes on behind closed doors, but we know what happens and it adds spice to what follows in the final third. Not all of the characters work for dramatic impact, such as Hunnicutt's talkative miner who wanders in to the plot at the mid-point (it's amazing how easy everyone finds it to get into this supposedly secure military site!), but the dynamics work wonderfully well. Weaklings, heroes in waiting, the forlorn, the foolish or the borderline psychotic, they all make for a potent and spicy psychological stew. The suspense angle of the impending bomb detonation is water tight, as is the ebbing away of Bart Moore, directer Powell never resorts to cheap tactics or clichés to keep the noose tight, and we are constantly wondering just who, if anyone? Will survive the ordeal. Once daylight disappears and we leave the scorching Mojave vistas behind, night time envelopes the ghost town and ace cinematographer Musuraca brings his atmospheric magic. Webb scores it with dramatic verve and the RKO effects team (headed by Harold Wellman) do sterling work to pull it all together without cheap and tacky baggage. Powell gets great performances out of McNally, Kelly, Sterling, Egan and Smith, while his ability to not let the logic holes dominate the narrative belies the fact that this was his first directing assignment. From the ominous opening shot of two men fleeing over sun-baked mud flats, to the thrilling and darkly tinged denouement, Split Second is a coiled spring waiting to explode. 8/10
Alex da Silva
A journalist (Keith Andes) is moved assignment from covering an A-bomb testing to report on a story about 2 escaped prisoners (Stephen McNally & Paul Kelly). On his way out of the testing range, he picks up a female drifter (Jan Sterling) and is then hi-jacked by the escaped convicts and their getaway driver (Frank DeKova), along with a married lady (Alexis Smith) and her lover (Robert Paige) who the convicts have previously hi-jacked at a petrol station. The group, under the lead of McNally, head into an abandoned town which is due to be destroyed by the bomb (6.00am is detonation time). Kelly is injured and needs a doctor, so Smith's husband (Richard Egan) is summoned under threat. He joins the group that night along with a lone drifter (Arthur Hunnicutt) who is wandering around.The film then follows the alliances, rivalries and love interests that are formed within the group as we wait for the doctor to fix Kelly and we count down the hours before the explosion. Will the convicts, under the ruthless leadership of McNally, kill everyone? Does McNally intend to save anyone by driving them out with him?......and then.......the authorities bring forward the detonation time to 5.00am and the 5 minute warning siren suddenly sets off...........There are a couple of moments when credulity is stretched, eg, the ease with which everyone remains unnoticed within the forbidden zone despite coming across a road block, and Egan's arrival at night. We have been shown the thoroughness with which the military has evacuated the area and set up blocks preventing people from entering the area at the beginning of the film.....maybe the American military are a bit dumb..........but who cares.Its a film about the tense situation that a group of strangers find themselves in and its well acted.
RanchoTuVu
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.
