SPLIT SECOND (1953)

This film marks Dick Powell’s directorial debut, and he should have felt good about the final project. Roy Webb's powerful opening score adds a real sense of danger. Accompanied by a custom title font symbolizing electric voltage, it sets the movie up as, literally, an explosive tale of prisoners and hostages about five to ten miles away from a Nevada atomic test site. Interspersed with stock footage of an actual test, it is the film's unique element. Beyond this, it is another RKO crime thriller. The film does not get any more “B” than this, with actors Stephen McNally, Jan Sterling, Alexis Smith, Robert Paige, Richard Egan and Keith Andes, all trying to stay alive in Arthur Hunnicutt's neighborhood. The atomic test site premise was done with a modicum of laughs a year later in The Atomic Kid starring Mickey Rooney. Sterling handles Dick Powell's trademark glib humor for this tale.

McNally is typecast again as a ruthless criminal and recent prison escapee, with a heart as small as an atom. His two cohorts, a badly wounded Paul Kelly and Frank de Kova, as “Dummy,” are along for the ride of their lives. During their gas station stop, Smith and her affair, Paige, are taken hostage by McNally. At the same time, Andes is on his way to interview McNally for his paper, picking up Sterling along the way. One may wonder why the interview. Send the state troopers to “interview” him! Fortuitous script timing as Smith's car runs out of gas, with Andes stopping to help.  McNally hijacks Andes' station wagon. At this point, the entire cast, minus Hunnicutt, is in this vehicle with barely enough room for dialogue. All are positioned like a seasonal office portrait so that everyone can be seen. They arrive at an abandoned resort near the epicenter of the atomic test site. For the obvious reason, it is now a ghost town. But in McNally's mind, it is the perfect hiding place.

Hunnicutt plays his usual rural character, this time as a prospector, an old-timer who remembers seminal moments from 1901. Hunnicutt’s real age and suspension of disbelief collide. After the cast has settled into a dusty building, he stumbles onto the entourage. All the characters are now intertwined into talkative, character-developing scenes. Knowing he is irresistible, McNally makes a pass at both women. First, Sterling appears to have rented a Shelly Winters wig for her role—a wound-tight platinum wig about to break a spring. Contrast this with her dark eyebrows, which symbolize her lifelong pent-up anger. It is a harsh look. The street-smart Sterling seems to have her head screwed on right, however. A more trustworthy person than the self-centered socialite and cowardly Smith, who begs McNally to take her with him, caring little for anyone else, even though Paige is standing right beside her. Paige is disgusted with the whole thing (outside of his affair with Smith). He is always loudly threatening McNally, who warns him several times to shut up. Paige ends up on the pointy end of two bullets. 

McNally’s best bud is Kelly, who has a normal-sized heart, though barely beating. McNally found out that Smith’s husband is a doctor, Richard Egan, once again cast as one half of a shaky relationship. McNally calls him from a phone booth in a nearby town and threatens to shoot Smith's head off if he does not come and save Kelly. After a lengthy pause...he decides to come. The operating scenes and the attempt to overpower McNally are tense and handled well by Powell.

Perhaps for their own amusement, those in command move the atomic test up one hour with actor Clark Howat, calling the excruciatingly slow countdown. McNally makes a split-second decision. Smith throws herself into the car with Kelly sandwiched in between. In their escape, they go the wrong way, heading straight toward the detonating tower. Smith lets out a blood-curdling scream and Kelly loses his hearing. The bouncing miniature car backing up is pretty humorous. Naturally, their car gets stuck in the sand. Hunnicutt and the three remaining cast members find protection from the fallout in an abandoned mine. 

Note: RKO had planned to team Victor Mature and Jane Russell as leads, coming off their roles in The Las Vegas Story one year earlier. The pairing might have brought in a few more moviegoers initially. McNally makes a much more disgusting human than Mature could have ever projected. Assuming Russell was cast in Sterling's role, that might have worked. Along with Egan, McNally and Mature would co-star two years later in a more diverse crime story, Violent Saturday. Also set in desert climes, it has its own unique angle: an Amish family that has settled in arid Arizona.