Classic Film : Split Second (1953)

Split Second (1953)



Crisp crime thriller in which two escaped killers hold a group of people hostage in an abandoned mining town which is at the center of a nuclear test scheduled for the following morning.

Two men running across the desert heralds the dramatic opening. Dick Powel l had one of the most remarkable careers in Hollywood history. He rose to fame as a boyish crooner in Warner Bros musicals of the 1930‘s until advancing age caught up with him, switched to tough noir crime thrillers in the mid 1940’s and finally directing in the 1950’s. His initial effort, Split Second, is as dry and bleakly uncompromising as the desert town in which most of the action takes place.



Stephen McNally heads the cast as killer convict, Sam Hurley. McNally gave up a career as a practicing attorney to take up acting in the late 1930’s, specializing in tough guy and villain roles. He scored a big hit as Locky McCormick who rapes the mute Johnny Belinda (1948) and thereafter was seldom out of work on film and in tv. Despite his long career, McNally fell into that category where audiences remembered the face but could never recall the name. He died of heart failure in Beverly Hills in 1994



Sam’s closest companion and escapee, Bart Moore, is played by Paul Kelly, one of Hollywood’s true life tough guys. Kelly had grown up on the tough streets of Brooklyn and was on Broadway at the age of 8 to support his family after the death of his father. In 1927, the actor was convicted of manslaughter for the killing of the alcoholic and violent Ray Raymond over Kelly’s affections toward his wife. Curiously, the incident didn’t damage Kelly’s career and he went on to portray a series of tough guy/gangster roles on screen and Broadway until suffering a heart attack in 1953, the year he made Split Second. He died after a second attack in 1956.



Jan Sterling portrays Dorothy Vail, a dance hall girl and (unspoken) prostitute. Sterling was a striking figure in the 1950’s, sexy and tough as nails and always entertaining. She had a long career, but was never able to scratch her way out of b-films. Her second husband was Paul Douglas, which whom she had her only child, a son. They remained married until his death.

Keith Andes is a newspaper reporter on the trail of Sam and Bart. Andes had a long career as the second lead in dozens of films and tv shows in the 1950’s, with his handsome face and viral physique, posing for “beefcake” photos in his younger days. He semi-retired in the 1970’s then ran charter boats until his death in 2005.



Arthur Hunnicutt is the only resident of the deserted town. Forever typed as a rustic with a broad sense of humor and even broader country accent, the actor appeared as Davy Crockett in The Last Command (1955) and blew the minds of every kid who had a poster of Fess Parker taped to his bedroom wall.



Richard Egan as Dr. Neal Garvan is coerced into attending to Bart’s wounds because Hurley is holding the doctor’s wife hostage. Egan may be the best known actor in the cast, appearing in 68 films and tv series between 1949 and 1982, including the elder brother of Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender. He died at the much too early age of 65 in 1987.



The idea of stranding people in an isolated location where their lives are in danger and there is no escape and no hope of rescue is about as old as the movies. Most often, the western takes full advantage of the situation, particularly when pioneers circle their wagons against an Indian attack or a fort is surrounded and becomes an island of safety. Of course, the very nature of westerns demands that the cavalry come to the rescue in the nick of time.

Isolation works best when the endangered characters are few in number and are slowly killed off, one by one, leaving their dwindling company of companions to face greater odds against success. In The Lost Patrol (1934) British soldiers in an oasis are trapped by Arab enemies. A variation of that scenario is used in Flight of the Phoenix (1965) when an airplane crashes in the desert and in Isle of the Dead (1945) a group of people are unable to leave a small island because of plague raging on the mainland. More recent examples are Alien and Aliens, this time using a distant planet as the scene of isolation and a particularly vicious predator with which to contend.

With everyone gathered into the tight setting and the atomic bomb ticking away a few miles down the road, their true natures come to the surface. Director Powell does an excellent job keeping up the tension in what is a heavily dialogue driven movie, giving each actor an opportunity to create a fully dimensional character in the short time they are given.



The film kicks into high gear for the exciting climax, an unexpected turn of events that catches everyone by surprise. The atomic era was new and terrifying in 1953. There was news footage of Hiroshima and of atomic testing in the U.S. desert, but no Hollywood movie had shown an atomic explosion which included human beings at ground zero.

No time to run and nowhere to run even if there was time.



Keith Andes has a cautionary line about the world of the future. The words are as relevant sixty seven years later as they were when the actor spoke them in the final scene of the movie.



Split Second is mostly forgotten today, a character study of people trapped in an impossible situation and a time capsule of an era when the fear of total annihilation was new and very possible.

And This, Too, Shall Pass Away

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Re: Split Second (1953)

That's much too sensitive of a topic for filmboards right now. I like your review though.

https://youtu.be/iPUwtyZglQI

https://youtu.be/QRTNm6GLJYI

Re: Split Second (1953)

Right now a virus might bring the world to its knees, rather than the Bomb.

Re: Split Second (1953)

Haven't seen this in ages, but remember liking it a great deal. Thanks for the wonderful review.

And you're right about Powell. Very interesting actor, in my opinion. And a good business man, too, forming Four Star Television, along with Charles Boyer, David Niven, and Ida Lupino, and appearing in numerous Four Star programs in the fifties and sixties.

Anyway, I saw this when I was very young, but it made a big impression on me.
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