When the Clock Strikes (1961) User Reviews

Wonderful Little 'B' movie noir (if there is such a thing)

[Troubleboy · 7/10 · 27 February 2003]

This is an excellent little B-movie that takes place over the course of a few days at a place called Cady's Lodge.

The story revolves around several characters gathering at said lodge to mark time until the execution of a certain bad seed by the name of Frankie Pierce, who is receiving his just desserts one Friday evening down the road at the local penitentiary. The characters are all there for their own reasons and everything plays out to its logical conclusion.

The acting is bad; the dialogue even worse - "you tryin' to give me the creeps!?" and "rain or shine, one glass of beer."

But, for some bizarre reason the movie holds you with its genuineness at being nothing more or nothing less than 70 minutes of good old B-movie mystery.

Not Bad.

[panaboydean · 7/10 · 5 July 2010]

Although this isn't a great movie, or even a very good one, it holds your attention in a very intriguing way.

The acting is pretty bad, the dialogue is bad, but every time I was about to stop watching it the plot took another little twist and kept me interested.

I am a big fan of film noir and although 1961 is a little late for noir this did some nice things with the form.

It would have made a better play than a movie. A little more character development, some better dialogue, and it could have worked much better.

Interesting Script Meets A Short Budget

[boblipton · 5/10 · 19 January 2022]

James Brown -- no, the other one -- is at Henry Corden's lodge near the state prison, where they're hanging a man on his testimony. Brown is an honest man, and his identification was not certain, and he said so. But it hanged the man, and now another has confessed. Brown meets Merry Anders, the dead man's widow at the lodge, who's looking for a clue towards $160,000 he stole from a bank.

It's a well written little thriller, with lots of sudden turns in the plot that kept me surprised. The problem is that it seems to have been shot on the cheapest of budgets, by Edward L. Cahn. Cahn was, in his long career, a competent journeyman; give him a good cast and he could turn out a good B picture. This one looks like it was shot for one of the television anthology series that flourished in the 1950s, without sufficient rehearsal time to modulate the performances. The result is a movie that probably played the drive-ins. Too bad. It could have been much more.

A Good Movie from the Auteurs of Invisible Invaders

[alonzoiii-1 · 6/10 · 30 January 2010]

Robert E. Kent (producer) and Edward L Cahn (director) made many low budget movies together in the later 50s and early 60s. Mainly, those movies stunk. the actors generally went for the monotone variety of bad acting, the settings were cheap and unimaginative, and the off screen narrator droned on and on and on and on. One suspects these movies live on because of the monsters and aliens that populate them, and give the rather dreary proceedings some camp value.

So this movie, which IS cheap, but has no monsters, aliens, or over-talky narrators, is a shock. This one is good, surprisingly moody, and does a pretty good job of covering the plot implausibilities with interesting characters. The result is something that looks like an extended episode of Playhouse 90, given the limited sets and somewhat undistinguished acting. It even takes on an issue of the day -- capital punishment -- with some degree of seriousness, and deals with many of the philosophical concerns found in noir movies in a notably non-noir way. (This may be good or bad, depending on your point of view.) In other word, this is worth seeing, but the viewer is going to have to make some allowances for so-so acting and an over-telegraphed plot twist.

Good writing in parts but disconnected story acts

[RevvedReview · 7/10 · 25 June 2023]

Overall the writing was good. The character motivations and backstories were slowly dripped and in Act 1 it really looked like the movie was setting up some good payoffs.

Unfortunately, the moral dilemmas that were formed in Act 1 quickly disappeared in Act 2 when it became all about the money. Resolved was the mystery of each character's motivation. Resolved was the tension between the characters' competing interests.

Act 2 was a simple find the money plot with the characters making very poor choices. Why would you have the money mailed from the post office deposit box instead of driving there? It puts you at way too much risk. Why would you divulge your entire scheme to the real wife?

Act 3 consisted of some plot twists that got the action and drama going again. However, wrapped up too tidy for me.

Overall a fun little B movie that has some good parts to it.

Is anyone who they claim to be?!

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 12 December 2022]

A group of folks arrive at an inn...ostensibly they are there because a criminal is being executed in the nearby prison. However, it soon becomes apparent that many of the people, if not all of them, are not who they claim to be and they all seem to be there for one thing...the stolen money from the soon to be deceased man's exploits! What's next and who can be trusted?

This is an okay movie. The acting is just okay. The script is okay. None of it's bad...but it's also not all that good...especially the hokey ending. The ending just seemed, well, hard to believe and contrived. Overall, this film seems to be a 'time-passer' and nothing more.

The clock must have stopped while I watched it.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 23 May 2019]

It's a dark and stormy night at a secluded Lodge in the middle of nowhere and a group of strangers gather together as a criminal is about to be executed for an alleged robbery which led one man dead and a ton of money missing. Why are all these people gathered together who don't even know each other? Obviously someone knows where the money is or if somebody else actually committed the crime, and everybody else seems interested in knowing the answers to that question as well. Merry Anders and James Brown happen to meet at the bottom of a hill, with her car broken down and heading in the opposite direction. As they begin chatting, it's obvious that both of them know something, and when they get to the end, it is apparent that everybody else is there for similar motivations. One person will end up dead and somebody will be revealed to know more than everybody else.

This starts off interesting, but unfortunately the middle third of the film is very chatty and not really very interesting. It is a cast of almost all forgotten actors, with Ms. Anders the only person that I had ever heard of through a series of B films that she made in the late fifties and throughout the 1960's. It is basically another variation of "The Petrified Forest", except that everybody present is guilty of something, and the main criminal is actually never seen. This film never really maintains the interest and thus never becomes anything more than a mediocre caper drama with cliched characters, uninspired direction and a screenplay that can only be described as weak and formula. Basically, the best thing that can be said about this film is that it has an incredible title.

Follow the Money

[Goingbegging · 8/10 · 24 April 2022]

Glamorous blonde hitching a lift, out in the wilds, in the middle of a violent storm - a bit odd somehow, and the sure sign that things are not what they seem in this story.

In a small roadhouse, several people are awaiting the chimes of midnight, when a condemned bank-robber will meet his fate at the local penitentiary. The blonde announces herself as his wife, but doesn't show much emotion about her imminent widowhood, apparently a hard-bitten cynic who cares for no-one and nothing (in other words, business as usual for Merry Anders).

Her rescuer turns out to be James Brown, left over from Rin Tin Tin, where he was Rusty's virtuous role model, a character essentially replicated here. He is feeling guilty because his evidence has been twisted by the prosecution, making it look as though he alone is responsible for the death sentence, which he felt was unsafe. But the whole picture alters when another self-proclaimed widow checks-in at the same hotel...

Naturally it's all about recovering the loot, which finally does arrive through a most ingenious sub-plot, which we can't reveal. But Brown's good-scout act which ends the story is looking a little tame for the Sixties, which were just starting to take shape.

Stagy & Over-Baked "B"...Talky ...Ends With 1 Violent Flurry...Pedestrian Pic.

[LeonLouisRicci · 5/10 · 8 November 2023]

Busy "B" Director Eddie Cahn who was All Over the Map, Starting in 1931 with Dozens of "Shorts' , then Features Starting in 1942 Through 1962.

Cranking Out Second-Features Genre Hopping Like a Bunny Collecting Carrots.

Some Notable, Familiar Titles Found a way on His Filmography Through Attrition..."Destination Murder" (1952)..."Creature With the Atom Brain" (1955)..."The She Creature" (1956)..."Shake, Rattle, and Rock" (1956)..."Invasion of the Saucer Men" (1958)..."It the Terror From Beyond Space" (1958)..."Guns, Girls, and Gangsters" (1959),,,"Invisible Invaders" (1959)

Unfortunately All that Work is in Little Evidence in this Talky, Confined, Twisty, Tale of a Group of Uninteresting People who were in the Orbit of a "Hanged Man" who Stashed $160 Large, Before He was Executed for a Crime He Did Not Commit (don't ask).

It's Over-Written, Overplayed and Drawn-Out for 70 Min, the Final 10 or So Containing some "Movement" Beyond Bending Elbows and Ears.

The Only Familiar Face is "James Brown", seen as "Rusty's Pal" on the "Rin Tin Tin" TV Show.

It's Competent, somewhat Dramatic, but Stiff as a Board, and You May be too, Unless You're Not Looking for Anything Resembling a Film-Noir or a Pounding Suspenser.

It's too Much Like the Hundreds on the Tube at the Time

Maybe Worth a Watch, with the Lowest of Low Expectations.

Note...Except the "Babe in Bondage", nothing else on the poster appears in the Movie (OK the clock).

On a stormy night anything might happen

[clanciai · 9/10 · 18 January 2022]

The film has everything you need for a good thriller: stormy weather, a stranded beautiful girl lost in it with her car broken down, a confusion of identities, a murder case leaving some doubts and the chief witness with a bad conscience, an atmospherical inn on the roadside, the drama of the execution going on out of reach of those involved, a traffic incident with trees blocking the road, and the stormy weather just going on and on.... What more do you want? Of course, there is a villain also and a lot of money involved. There are some fights and some gunfire, and the drama is complete. Even the music is good. You couldn't ask for anything more.