The hunting season is about to start in the sleepy mountain town of Summit City and a gangster has the perfect wall for the head of Craig Hill. The actor plays a doctor during an era when their door was always open. In the middle of the night two men—obviously mob-related judging by their attitude and vocal tone—bring in a fellow they “found” on the side of the road. The gangsters are rather murky about their background and quickly leave Hill with the badly beaten victim who does not survive the dawn. The police arrive and Hill is informed the dead man is a detective and the good Samaritans were bogus.
So begins a rather nifty—what should have been—television episode. But this suspenseful crime drama was never edited down from its seventy-three-minute run time. It is well-acted with a "blistering pace" for a routine premise of someone assuming a new identity in another town for his own survival. Dr. Richard Kimball may have had his own ideas after seeing this film. Expect the makeup department's budget to include the obligatory black-rimmed glasses, powdered gray wig, and mustache to facilitate Hill's transformation.
Hill wants no part in being confined under police protection and their eyewitness gets out of town fast. It is one year later and hardly recognizable without the makeup department's help. Now managing a sporting goods store in Summit City, he has taken a room at a lodge run by Willis Bouchey and his daughter Elaine Edwards. A wheelchair-bound World War II veteran, Bouchey is his usual film character doling out wisdom to Hill about making something of himself rather than just running a seasonal hunting store. Awkward. Bouchey is also an expert marksman and is quite pumped about the hunting season when the public flood the small town in the likes of Fairmount, Indiana during James Dean weekend. This is a rare film for the small screen actress, Edwards, who is on the verge of getting serious with Hill. But his “survival secret” offers setbacks. Yet, like Kimble, it becomes impossible to hide his Hippocratic oath. Because of this and other astute research, the gangsters soon get a bead on his location though their old “passport” photo of Hill throws them a few curves. How they got such a photo is questionable. My guess is the prop department.
The townsfolk unwittingly provided the thugs with needed information. Unlikely the two guys in suit, wingtips, and fedora are avid game hunters, it soon becomes apparent to Hill there are bullets with his namesake on them. Edwards cannot figure why Hill has to leave so abruptly, running fast into the wilderness to dodge mob bullets. The banter between Hill and the mob boss lands directly into the cliché territory. Wanting to hunt anything moving, Bouchey grabs a high-powered rifle with a scope and wheels himself to a window conveniently located directly opposite all the filmed action. He kills a five-point buck. No. He kills one of the gangsters about to fire on Hill. In an amazing bit of time-saving editing, the boss is actually captured in his car by the doctor who has been crouching in the back seat for who knows how long. It was the day the running stopped.
Note: The film was directed by Edward L. Cahn and produced by Robert E. Kent. They were frequent collaborators for films of this nature. Decent but forgettable. United Artists distributed it for the [renowned] production company, Harvard Film Corporation. The bits of location shooting will reveal that the Ford Motor Company volunteered their wallowing automobiles for the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment