You Have to Run Fast

Lol the wooden performances and ham handed acting will have you cringing during every scene. I'm not sure how this picture was ever made, let alone released to the public. None of the actors are name brand, and none of their skills are worthy of even dinner theater. The funniest parts are when the head "bad guy" tells his moll that he needs a "lumber jacket," and when 2 of his thugs shoot a cop with a pistol to make it look like a hunting accident.

Doctor Craig Hill becomes a witness in a mob rub-out. To protect himself, he shaves off his mustache, ceases to wear glasses and becomes a gun store clerk in a town that lives by the hunting season. On the first day of the season, the mob boss who can finger Hill comes to town.

It's directed by Edward L. Cahn, so the pacing is pretty good, but it's produced by Robert Kent, so you know production values are going to be very poor. My expectations in this matter were met, particularly with the intrusive and annoying score by Richard Lasalle. Hill is nasal and wooden. It's no wonder he couldn't sustain a Hollywood career, but his good looks kept him busy in European productions for a third of a century. He died in 2014 at the age of 88.

Quite enjoyable yarn about the doctor who had to run and change his identity in order to save himself from a murderous criminal and his cohorts. In a new town after a year has passed, he has a new profession, new acquaintances and a new love interest. Criminals eventually catch upon him and he has to decide whether to run or to stand and fight. Hunting and medical skills come handy, once the decision is made. Story is predictable and on a simpler side, and directing is worthy a 'B' production certificate. A brownie points for parts of the dialogue and positive representation of a handicapped person. Worthy of watching on a Sunday afternoon (seen on Amazon Prime). 6/10

Director Edward L Cahn walked the line of mediocrity and YOU HAVE TO RUN FAST only provides incidental confirmation of that assertion: shoddy direction, childish script, amateurish acting by the leads Craig Hill and Elaine Edwards (who was she? I do not recall seeing her name on any film before!), paralytic retired US Army colonel Willis Bouchey who proves his lethal sniping from the comfort of his lounge's window sill after just turning over his handgun to the outlaws a minute earlier, rather rotund-bellied and inadvertently comic top villain Grant Richards as "Big Jim" Craven who has been searching for goody two shoes doctor Craig Hill all over the USA and gets to find him at Buckhorn Motel in tiny backwater town Summit City that does not even have a full-time medical doctor...

Poor Craig Hill can see the writing on the wall when even a local cop recognizes Craven but allows himself to be overpowered and shot through his chest before being placed against a tree. Amazingly, while drowning in his own blood, that superhuman cop manages to walk some distance to a makeshift operating table. Wonders never cease...

At least the title is spot on: you have to run fast... before you drown in all the senseless BS in this movie! An extremely generous 5/10 for the lovely 1950s cars on show.

A doctor gets into an awful mess when he accepts a patient from two strangers. The patient has been beaten to death, the strangers just pull off without paying, the doctor calls the police, the police has a murder case, they ask him to identify the two strangers from the police records, he does so, and they are professional killers. Their big boss is bound to send hired killers all over the country to hunt for the doctor, who has to find another life, which he does up in the mountains at a hunters' lodge. There he gets mixed up with an old veteran colonel and his lovely daughter, and they fall in love. Meanwhile the gangsters have picked up his scent, and things get hot up in the mountains at the approaching settlement. Yes, there are some shootings also, but not everyone gets killed. It's a good thriller about the awful dilemma of a doctor, who just has to cure patients whoever they are and in whatever circumstances. The doctor can't refuse. Doctor Mudd got into a similar predicament when he helped the murderer of Abraham Lincoln, without knowing anything. This could happen to any doctor. Never accept patients from strangers.