....that's the way this movie hits you!! For all people who think that Edward G. Robinson's 1950s movies were only rehashes of his earlier hits - then they just haven't seen this film!! Robinson has an explosive performance in him as the brutal Vince Cannelli (the way Little Caesar may have ended up if he had lived)!!! And something you don't see every day - Jean Parker (she of the sentimental "Little Women" and "Sequoia") playing Cannelli's hardened gun moll and the one who masterminds the last minute escape!!
Like caged animals, the prisoners pace their cells to the singing lament of "Black Tuesday". Vicious thug Cannelli is due to be executed that morning, along with another prisoner (Peter Graves) who has $200,000 hidden away in a fool proof hiding place!! But Cannelli is not looking nervous - his girl has hatched an escape plan which includes kidnapping the daughter of one of the guards over seeing the execution so he has no choice but to fall in with the plan. Which also includes taking Manning along as Cannelli hopes to get his hands on that hidden loot. One by one people are appalled by Vince's psychotic behaviour - leaving most of the people who helped him escape by the side of the road with only a lonely gun to help them in a shootout to the death when they are captured by police!! By the time they arrive at the hideout, the kidnapped daughter finds her father has already been killed and when Cannelli springs the old "if you don't give us our demands, a person is going to be killed every half hour"!! - from what the movie has revealed, you know he is not joking!! Problems start when Manning is shot and when forced to leave his sick bed to retrieve the money from a safety deposit box, leaves his calling card - a bloody finger print on the desk!! The finale features a blazing shoot out between the police and the gangsters, with innocent people fleeing flying bullets (not always successfully) - almost out bigging "The Big House"!!
Highly Recommended!!
Like caged animals, the prisoners pace their cells to the singing lament of "Black Tuesday". Vicious thug Cannelli is due to be executed that morning, along with another prisoner (Peter Graves) who has $200,000 hidden away in a fool proof hiding place!! But Cannelli is not looking nervous - his girl has hatched an escape plan which includes kidnapping the daughter of one of the guards over seeing the execution so he has no choice but to fall in with the plan. Which also includes taking Manning along as Cannelli hopes to get his hands on that hidden loot. One by one people are appalled by Vince's psychotic behaviour - leaving most of the people who helped him escape by the side of the road with only a lonely gun to help them in a shootout to the death when they are captured by police!! By the time they arrive at the hideout, the kidnapped daughter finds her father has already been killed and when Cannelli springs the old "if you don't give us our demands, a person is going to be killed every half hour"!! - from what the movie has revealed, you know he is not joking!! Problems start when Manning is shot and when forced to leave his sick bed to retrieve the money from a safety deposit box, leaves his calling card - a bloody finger print on the desk!! The finale features a blazing shoot out between the police and the gangsters, with innocent people fleeing flying bullets (not always successfully) - almost out bigging "The Big House"!!
Highly Recommended!!