What do you do when you are in the middle of nowhere with an abandoned pier on the ocean front on the Pacific coast's Baja California? Go exploring, of course! It doesn't matter that the planks of these piers each weigh a ton and can pin a man under in the incoming tide. Add on a wanted felon and you're in Jeopardy! No vowels or Vanna will help you now.
This is the tale of a typical American family-father, mother and son. Papa Barry Sullivan is the unlucky man who goes out to rescue his son trapped on the pier and ends up being embraced by one of the loose planks, and Barbara Stanwyck is the frantic mother. A cute little kid named Lee Aaker is their precocious son. But the danger, hinted at by a roadblock, arrives in the form of help. Escaped gangster Ralph Meeker is the wanted man, and he wants more than help escaping-he wants Stanwyck.
A compact, neat little thriller with a passing resemblance to the same year's "The Hitchhiker" (adding on the family angle), "Jeopardy" seems to be like an extended TV anthology show released as a "B" feature with an "A" leading lady. Not quite past her prime, but not a box office attraction anymore like Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day or Marilyn Monroe, Stanwyck still has a fine, youthful figure, but I found her just a trifle too old to be believable as the mother of a pre-teen. The Jedi set is extremely scary looking, reminding me of set pieces in various Hitchcock films (particularly "Rear Window") and the one Stanwyck tries to escape from in 1954's "Witness to Murder". She starts off gently as the kindly wife and mother (narrating the opening much like she did in MGM's "East Side West Side") and turns tough in this, acting more like her calculating character in the same year's "Blowing Wild", where she was totally evil. Meeker, too, is brilliant in this, adding a touch of humanity (not too much fortunately) to his villain.
In watching the conclusion, I began to feel a bit sorry for him and felt touched by the screenwriter's obvious sympathy towards him in how Stanwyck bids him adieu. Her final words about him hit the nail on the head yet don't minimize the consequences of his previous evil actions. Ironically, the same year, Stanwyck would face doom on another ocean-the Atlantic-in 20th Century Fox's "Titanic".
This is the tale of a typical American family-father, mother and son. Papa Barry Sullivan is the unlucky man who goes out to rescue his son trapped on the pier and ends up being embraced by one of the loose planks, and Barbara Stanwyck is the frantic mother. A cute little kid named Lee Aaker is their precocious son. But the danger, hinted at by a roadblock, arrives in the form of help. Escaped gangster Ralph Meeker is the wanted man, and he wants more than help escaping-he wants Stanwyck.
A compact, neat little thriller with a passing resemblance to the same year's "The Hitchhiker" (adding on the family angle), "Jeopardy" seems to be like an extended TV anthology show released as a "B" feature with an "A" leading lady. Not quite past her prime, but not a box office attraction anymore like Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day or Marilyn Monroe, Stanwyck still has a fine, youthful figure, but I found her just a trifle too old to be believable as the mother of a pre-teen. The Jedi set is extremely scary looking, reminding me of set pieces in various Hitchcock films (particularly "Rear Window") and the one Stanwyck tries to escape from in 1954's "Witness to Murder". She starts off gently as the kindly wife and mother (narrating the opening much like she did in MGM's "East Side West Side") and turns tough in this, acting more like her calculating character in the same year's "Blowing Wild", where she was totally evil. Meeker, too, is brilliant in this, adding a touch of humanity (not too much fortunately) to his villain.
In watching the conclusion, I began to feel a bit sorry for him and felt touched by the screenwriter's obvious sympathy towards him in how Stanwyck bids him adieu. Her final words about him hit the nail on the head yet don't minimize the consequences of his previous evil actions. Ironically, the same year, Stanwyck would face doom on another ocean-the Atlantic-in 20th Century Fox's "Titanic".