Almost last lap for the once-heroic Alan Ladd, with whom it is hard not to sympathise in his all-too-visible alcoholic decline.
Cast as a rather improbable rocket scientist (a distraction, in fact), Ladd manages to run out of gas in a rough street at night, where some less-usual teen gangsters from genteel homes show their courage by challenging him five-to-one and beating him to pulp. Rod Steiger somewhat underplays the sympathetic but overworked cop, whose slow, deliberate detective work provokes Ladd into a manhunt of his own.
Much of the storyline probably looked as implausible then as it does now, especially Ladd's single-handed trouncing of the armed gang-leader before deciding whether to perform a noble act of mercy.
But the film is now mainly rewarding as a little black-&-white mirror of a vanished suburban life, just before the 60's became the 60's. Ladd's young wife, played by Dolores Dorn, is the vulnerable blonde in the perfect home that suddenly gets a mafia-style threat through the window. Ladd's investigations show us into other affluent homes too, with the mean features of Jeanne Cooper as one of the parents concealing their sons' guilt, Margaret Hayes cool and elegant as another. And when Dorn is unexpectedly flung to the floor, there is more erotic voltage in two seconds of her part-exposed thigh than in any of the yawn-porn that would soon become standard.
Cast as a rather improbable rocket scientist (a distraction, in fact), Ladd manages to run out of gas in a rough street at night, where some less-usual teen gangsters from genteel homes show their courage by challenging him five-to-one and beating him to pulp. Rod Steiger somewhat underplays the sympathetic but overworked cop, whose slow, deliberate detective work provokes Ladd into a manhunt of his own.
Much of the storyline probably looked as implausible then as it does now, especially Ladd's single-handed trouncing of the armed gang-leader before deciding whether to perform a noble act of mercy.
But the film is now mainly rewarding as a little black-&-white mirror of a vanished suburban life, just before the 60's became the 60's. Ladd's young wife, played by Dolores Dorn, is the vulnerable blonde in the perfect home that suddenly gets a mafia-style threat through the window. Ladd's investigations show us into other affluent homes too, with the mean features of Jeanne Cooper as one of the parents concealing their sons' guilt, Margaret Hayes cool and elegant as another. And when Dorn is unexpectedly flung to the floor, there is more erotic voltage in two seconds of her part-exposed thigh than in any of the yawn-porn that would soon become standard.