Extraña aventura

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.

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.

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

Young hot-rodder Harold Norton helps out at the family motel. He falls for seductive guest Lynn Novak who is joined by two men. They turn out to be robbers. They have an inside man for their armored truck heist. After losing a guy, they need a new getaway driver.

This is a crime B-movie. Everything is generally B in this one. Sadly, it's a scale from A to B. The acting is broad melodramatic or stiff. The production is weak. There are holes in the story which includes a whiplash weather change. It's all very 50's. It needs better action to distract from all the bad acting and general problems.

I have no idea why this film exists, nor what audience it was intended for. This 1955 Republic drama in widescreen looks terrific and allows for some great L. A. background of the era. Adele Palmer costumes are good and the cast are quite effective, especially Ben Cooper. The film almost exists just to make a good trailer, which is well worth seeing how they salvaged the best bits for that. So much of the information is not shown, eg that Ben is a hot rod driver, so they just tell us. Also I have never seen a film end so abruptly. They just tell us what happened and cut to the fade out. I really enjoy Republic titles especially mid 50s but this one plays like Television in Cinemascope and contrives scenes and locations just to make a good trailer glimpse. The snow tractor on the poster is only there for 30 sec. I wanted to like this more but was continually shortchanged by the film just being cheap and silly. However days afterwards I kept thinking about it and how I now now want to see it again. Republic made about a dozen of these really cheap widescreen action dramas at the time and whilst each are interesting in their low budget way, they really are a suburban time capsule of their time. I have no idea who would go to see these in any cinema when first released. SNOWBOUND HOODLUMS would have been a far better title.