Small-potatoes programmer bad enough to halt a few writing, directing & producing careers, a would-be cautionary tale on the limits of circumstantial evidence neither informative nor entertaining. Single-dad Michael O’Shea, a quick-tempered Irish-American jerk, pissed at the local baker who took his son’s hatchet away, storms into the guy’s shop, determined to get it back and spoiling for a fight. In the scuffle, the baker dies from a head wound, but was it an accidental slip or hatchet blow? From a certain angle, three witnesses at the shop testify to murder, sending happy-go-lucky Dad to Death Row. Yikes! And while his son sinks into depression & pathetic pleas for the witnesses to recant, O’Shea’s ex-BFF, nice guy/mailman Lloyd Nolan, whose testimony at the trial only made things worse, works up a strategy to trick the Governor into signing a stay-of-execution. Ridiculous without being fun (a ‘reverse’ jail break, probably second-unit work, shows a few signs of life), with even a total pro like Nolan stinking up the joint.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Nolan was just off one of his best, Elia Kazan’s superb debut pic A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN/’45.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: While O’Shea clearly would never get Murder One and the Electric Chair, he’s clearly guilty of something; looking for trouble when he precipitated the ‘accident.’ A bigger budgeted film would have had the Breen Censorship Office breathing down its neck.
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