Jeopardy

This was made when Barbara Stanwyck was not exactly at her prime form but she was still a major star and she still had to stay busy and pay her bills by appearing in uninspired material like this. Film starts out with Doug Stilwin (Barry Sullivan) taking his family to Mexico for a fishing trip and they head to a secluded beach area to camp. Their son Bobby (Lee Aaker) gets his shoe caught on an old pier and Doug gets him out. While getting off he falls and a piece of the pier lands on his leg and traps him. His wife Helen (Stanwyck) must take the car and find some rope because the tide is coming in! While on the road Helen meets Lawson (Ralph Meeker) who is an escaped convict and takes her hostage. She finally convinces him to take her back to the beach in exchange for sex (Not exactly implied) and to go with him. She agrees! Story sounds just like those "B" movie scripts that kicked around every studio at the time. But their is a few interesting things to notice here. Stanwyck and Meeker have more chemistry together then Sullivan has. Sullivan is so stiff and the only time that he seems to come to life is when he see's a lobster boat and he starts barking orders to Aaker and has him running around like an idiot waving a white cloth and putting more wood on the fire. But as you watch Helen in her scenes with Lawson she gives off just enough glint in her eye and uses subtle body English to make you think that she's secretly attracted to the bad boy Lawson. He's the total opposite of her husband. Meeker makes the most of his role and is always grinning like the big bad wolf. The script is strictly "B" level but the cast does their best and they do raise the material up a notch.

Jeopardy has the feel of being a stock movie of sorts - one of the movies that the studios pumped out inbetween big budget/box office ones. It's a mere 70 minutes and doesn't feature many sets, and the only star is Barbara Stanwyck. But what a star, of course.

Stanwyck is a tough lady once again as she runs into an escaped convict while seeking help for her trapped husband in the Mexican desert. The majority of the movie is focused on how she deals with her captor, who wants her to submit to him in exchange for his help. Some psychological battling there.

It's a surprisingly effective little movie - its short length makes it taut, and that Stanwyck is great should go without mention (but I'll still praise her every time).

"Jeopardy" is a fun, punchy noir that finds Barry Sullivan trapped underneath a collapsed pier while his wife, Barbara Stanwyck, goes off to get help before the tide comes in and drowns him. Because this movie must earn its noir credentials, she can't simply find help without some complications. No, first she has to run into escaped con Ralph Meeker, who takes her hostage and doesn't care much about her doomed hubby.

This movie is a lot of fun, with assured direction by John Sturges and a jaunty score by Dmitri Tiomkin that doesn't fit what's happening on screen most of the time but is still fun to listen to. Though Stanwyck and Sullivan are paired in this one, it's Stanwyck and Meeker who have all the chemistry. Good grief, the erotic undertones are off the charts in their scenes together. Meeker is just dripping with raw sexuality anyway, and nobody could smoke a cigarette more suggestively than Stanwyck. After all, she'd do anything to save her husband........anything.

Grade: A-

A family (Barry Sullivan, Barbara Stanwyck and Lee Aaker) vacationing in Baja California encounter a life and death situation when the father (Sullivan) becomes trapped under a collapsed beam that was holding up a portion of a dilapidated and dangerous pier on an isolated beach. The situation intensifies with the rising tide. Wife Barbara Stanwyck goes off in the car frantically searching for help and encounters fugitive from justice Ralph Meeker. A fast pace between the occurrences on the beach as Sullivan and son Aaker try to come to grips with what is becoming a deadly situation and Stanwyck's intensifying relationship with Meeker make this movie significantly better than average, especially Stanwyck's attempts to get Meeker to go to the beach and rescue Sullivan. Meeker is chased throughout the film by Mexican police. His character is more complex than it looks. Stanwyck and Meeker share tense scenes as the day darkens, the tide rises, and the police close in. Directed by John Sturges, scene for scene this is a tough movie made on a small budget.

Jeopardy is a B movie, and it's sad to see the wonderful Barbara Stanwyck reduced to doing it. It is, however, not without merit. Stanwyck plays a wife and mother trying to get help for her trapped husband, Barry Sullivan. She runs afoul of Ralph Meeker en route. Now, here's the thing. He refuses to help her husband unless she has sex with him. As you can imagine, this being the 1950s, this is in the subtext and so far down that if you're not paying attention, you miss the implication.

This makes Jeopardy a cut above your standard B, especially because of the presence of Stanwyck. She's certainly desperate to save her husband, but the film raises some interesting questions. Meeker was more rough and tumble than her husband - was she perhaps attracted to him? Definitely worth seeing.