Mord in der Sierra Nevada

I do not know director William Witney, never heard of him before and doubt very much that I will in the future on the strength of this mediocre effort.

The film's greatest merit is its clear photography. The script has more character inconsistencies and holes than Swiss cheese (Marla English keeps jumping from the arms of Jan Merlin to those of Ben Cooper and back, and no one seems to mind as plain-faced Joan Evans starts smooching Cooper too, for instance).

Merlin has the plum role, playing the nefarious, impulsive, trigger happy but not stupid Kutner. What detracts from a successful performance is the poor script that has him suddenly and needlessly kill a compliant security van driver, then fail not kill Cooper when he could and probably should. Although he uncovers Cooper's and Evans' ploy involving a portable radio, he fails to detect that blocked nose, constantly sniffing Nick Adams has replaced the heist dough with pine cones, and finally crazily places himself in the line of fire.

Supposed femme fatale English is not that fatal, except to herself (she gets a stiff prison sentence). Besides traveling between the arms of Merlin and Cooper, and leaving a gun for the latter to pick up and point at Merlin, English's most memorable moments involve her light clothing and high heel shoes while everyone else wears warm clothes and the snow builds up outside.

Pretty boy Cooper seems in love with English, then falls for Evans. You can see that he is the one who can do something to turn the tables on Merlin and Adams, but at the crucial moment he fails to make meaningful use of the gun English gives him. He also drives a car needlessly fast when he is not even being chased - the script never clarifies whether he is just a fast driver by nature.

Talking about Nature: the sudden change from sunny weather to snow is too improbable for words. How Cooper and the authorities track down the heist stash hidden in the snow is never explained, you just learn that Cooper and Evans are getting a reward for returning the proceeds, when a minute earlier Cooper kept repeating that he had had nothing to do with replacing the money with pine cones, and had no idea where the dosh might be.

Too many character motivation holes, not enough action, bad script. Waste of valuable time.

This poor attempt at producing a movie fails over and over. Terrible bursts of music that might wake up the sleeping audience. Dumb characters. Good people are dumb and bad people are dumb. The music should have been dum, dum, dum, dum.

This could have been a sexy, robbery gone wrong, cute good girl, beautiful bad girl, even prettier young guy male lead, Ben Cooper action suspense adventure. My guess is the director was spending too much time studying for his grade school graduation test and he could not devote enough focus to this. Hey, the viewer can't focus on this either.

Beautiful cars in the first half of the movie. A bit of a look at a supermarket of the 1950s. Good hairstyles and make up for all the cast. They don't ever look stupid. That's just the way they act. They are all good actors, but this contrived bunch of nonsense never gives anyone a hint of reality or danger or intelligence.

What happened to the money? They needed a few more scenes when they ran out of film. I know where it was when we last saw it, but what happened to the money? Where's the money? Ben could have done so well if he could have rewritten each of his scenes. He should have been shirtless in the snow with the girl searching for the dough. Ben never got his Bonnie and Clyde role. This could have been like that with just a few changes on each page.

Tom Willett

Sometimes it's as if we can forgive the most trying stretches of believability, just because a film was made in an era like the 50's with a shoestring budget. I don't like that. Good, believable films were made at this time as well as clinkers. This has some things going for it, but the way these nasty characters behave is beyond imagination. They wave their guns around, threaten, but don't seem to want to act. Hostages are left to wander all over the place. There is tension among the thieves, but it is dealt with in such a silly, haphazard way, it doesn't work. A slip up of any kind, and their whole project is down the chute. If we are to believe the whole business about being locked up in the woods in the winter, it seems at some point, someone would begin to make realistic plans to get on their way. Are they already murderers? I don't know, but they could have certainly done a better job of getting on with their plot. Then there is the ending (I'm not going to do any spoilers). This is the most ho-hum, contrived mess I've ever seen. It's as if they ran out of time and just decided to create this ending. Judge for yourself. The bottom line is, people just don't act this way--they just don't.

This is quite an unremarkable 50's crime flick. It's about a gang of armed robbers who take a young hotrod hostage and hide out in the mountains in an isolated weather station, taking a further two innocent people hostage.

The whole thing is quite contrived and although it's not particularly interesting it's not that bad either. It's a pretty cheap production but the cast acquit themselves OK, and the story moves along at a decent pace. Things are ultimately wrapped up what is close to a non-ending. It's a half-hearted resolution at best.

Overall it's really not that strange an adventure. But, you know what, I've seen a lot worse.

Colorized? Republic stagey look instead of Sierras stopped making films 1958

"A Strange Adventure" is a film made by Republic Pictures shortly before the studio stopped making movies in favor of TV programs. As the studio was having financial trouble in 1956, it's not surprising that the film has no major stars and a relatively low budget. Also, while supposedly set in the Sierras, the film appears to have been made in a sound stage.

A trio of crooks have committed an armored car robbery. However, the leader, Al, is a real head case. He kills the armored car driver for kicks and it's obvious he just enjoyed killing. So, when they capture three people along the way, it's soon apparent that he'll eventually kill them as well...so it's a case of the kidnapped folks biding their time to see if there's any chance of escape in their mountain hideout.

So is it any good? Well, it's partly good. Jan Merlin is great as the psychotic boss. And, the story is GENERALLY good...but also falls apart at the end due to some serious logical errors...too many just to ignore.