High Sierra (1941) - Bogart steals the silver screen

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Suspense, danger, violence and one sexy dame - all promised on this poster for Raoul Walsh's High Sierra

Roy Earle is a career criminal who robs a hotel and helps an ungrateful country girl with her club foot and then attempts to run off to the 'end of the world' with his ravishing muse.

 

High Sierra is written by John Huston (The Killers (1946)) and W.R. Burnett (Sergeants 3 (1962)), adapting Burnett's same-titled 1941 novel, and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Raoul Walsh (General Villa (1914)).

Humphrey Bogart (Racket Busters (1938)) is magnetic in his first serious lead role, and Ida Lupino (Paris in Spring (1935)) is beguiling as his dame. The story is knotted but thrilling, SPOILER and the ending, in which Earle is shot on the mountain while trying to escape justice, is dizzying. "Free!" 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 491k $

Box office: 1,489 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 3.03 times its cost)

[High Sierra was released 23 January (USA) and runs 100 minutes. Shooting took place from August - September 1940 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film made 1,063k $ (71.4 % of the gross) in North America. It won a National Board of Review award. It was remade with different titles in 1949 and 1955. Walsh returned with The Strawberry Blonde (1941), the second of four films he directed that year. Bogart returned in The Wagons Roll at Night (1941); Lupino in The Sea Wolf (1941). High Sierra is fresh at 91 % with a 7.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of High Sierra? 

The Desperate Hours (1955) - Wyler's top-drawer true-crime home-invastion thriller

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Humphrey Bogart - a bona fide heavy on the poster for William Wyler's The Desperate Hours

QUICK REVIEW:

A small, normal suburban home gets terrorized by an escaped convict trio, who take the family there hostage, while they await some money to come their way.

SPOILER It is the brave, noble American family, - with Fredric March (A Star Is Born (1937)) sparkling as the sacrificial father, - who in the end serves as a monolith for the sanctity of private property here in this true-crime thriller classic. "Get outta my house!", he commands Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep (1946)), right before furnishing him with a fatal installation of internal AC.
Bogart is a real ornery devil here in his last performance as a villain. The fear he and his thug partners inspire is easy to sympathize with. The unpredictability of the criminals' world, - and of the world surrounding the potboiler nightmare, - as well as the ending makes for a fierce, neat time of suspense here.
Joseph Hayes (The Young Doctors (1961)) adapted his own book and play for the screen with Jay Dratler (The Dark Corner (1946)), and German master filmmaker William Wyler (Roman Holiday (1953)) directed the picture.

Related reviews:

William Wyler: Ben-Hur (1959) - Perhaps the greatest epic film of all time
The Big Country (1958) - A big western gift  
Roman Holiday (1953) - Wyler takes us to marvelous Rome on an unforgettable romantic adventure 

Watch the original trailer for the film here

Cost: 2.3 mil. $
Box office: 2.5 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty
[If Desperate Hours played very well internationally, it may have been a box office success, but it doesn't look like it was a huge hit theatrically. It was remade in 1974 in India as 36 Ghante and in 1990 in Hollywood by Michael Cimino with the same title as the original, - but to considerably worse reviews.]

What do you think of The Desperate Hours?
What's your favorite home-invasion movie?