Tense
A tense film that follows a home invasion and hostage situation. It might be a little dated for some younger watchers, still it has fine performances from Bogart and Fredric March.

Enjoyable suspernser
This is a very well done, suspenseful film. Bogart and March are excellent in the leads. What is especially fascinating is that, even though Paramount was the studio, the exteriors of the film were filmed on the Universal lot, and one can clearly see the Hillard's home as the same as the one in Leave it to Beaver. Lots of shots of the Universal lot where Desperate Housewives is filmed now, more than 50 years later.

Tension from start to finish!
What a pair: Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March face to face as mortal enemies. Good vs. evil. We know who will win but we don't know how. The excellent twists and turns keep us forever surprised. Spencer Tracy originally declined the role opposite Bogart because he refused second billing.

All acting is superb, though a bit of overkill with the 2 hysterical women captors. The child actor is a marvelous spunky character who never rose to deserved fame as did other kid actors.

As one reviewer wrote, What indeed would we do in this same situation, where Bogart & his 2 prison cronies hold a suburban family hostage. Fredric March, with his "clickety-clickety" mind, as Bogey calls it, is constantly trying to outwit the brutal escaped convicts once they escape from their jail like uncaged lions.

This is actually a great family action film where true loyal family values dominate, unlke today, and the starring family actually sits down for meals together and lovingly communicate with one another.

As a point of interest, the story is loosely based on the eponymous novel. The original story was covered in Time Magazine. The family held hostage sued Time - apparently there was never a settlement - but the lawyer representing the family was none other than Richard Nixon, an attorney in private practice between campaigns.

Terrible!
Unlike many other reviewers, I found this movie TERRIBLE! If it were newly released today, I think people would laugh at it, as I often did during its playing time.

The story is HIGHLY contrived, and, unless you leave your brains somewhere else, you can't help see the countless illogical occurrences in it. These contrivances make the story increasingly unbelievable--so much so that you can't suspend your belief that this is a movie. It's one plot hole after another--characters being forced to do this and that to obtain a particular effect. And on and on of the same foolishness.

The acting is pure ham--especially bogart, who is a highly overrated actor, who does not act. He just plays himself and presents what he believes the character should sound like. He does not, and cannot, enter deeply into any character he plays (except those who resemble his own life character). In other words, he presents a stereotype or charicature of a character, never really understanding it. His tough guy personna is the same old Humphrey but with a tough-guy tone and accent. It's laughable. Even the lowest level TV actor on the soaps today is far better.

The other actors are just as characaturish--the brave, concerned mom, the tough dad, the cutsy kid, the pretty daughter. Just a perfect household of nice goody-goody people who don't have a flaw in them, supposedly making them worthy of being rooted for. They don't feel their lines but try to act them, as if they were reading from a script. This makes them non-credible, hollow, distant. I felt no relationship with any of these so-called victims and didn't care if the cops saved them or not.

The directing was formulaic to the max, far below today's director standards. The name WYLER doesn't automatically mean good movie direction. There was nothing unique, awesome, or compelling about his style of moving from scene to scene.


DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS--IT IS HIGHLY OVERRATED. In its time it may have had some pizzaz or sparkle, but by today's standards it's an insult to anyone who uses even the least intelligence to follow the story.

The film gives us the most ruthless and disgusting gangsters the screen has yet seen...
"The Desperate Hours" is a towering achievement in suspense films... It was cast to perfection, written and directed by a meticulous, serious artist...

Its basic situation - of a family trapped in their home for 36 hours by an utterly ruthless gang - was not new... What was new and immeasurably compelling was the fact that these were not simply "good guys" and "bad guys," but all were real, breathing, vulnerable human beings... They all knew how to hate and to be afraid, and to want to kill and want to love... There were no supermen either... They got hungry, and irritable, and tired, and they showed hesitation and uncertainty as well as pure courage...

It began as an ordinary day for the Hilliard family in their pleasant home in Indianapolis... Eleanor (Martha Scott) gave breakfast to her family and saw them off - husband Dan (Fredric March) to his job in a store, pretty daughter Cindy (Mary Murphy) to her office desk, and ten-year-o1d Ralphie (Richard Eyer) to school...

Turning on the radio, she paid little attention to the news item, about the escape of three desperate criminals from jail: ruthless Glenn Griffin (Humphrey Bogart), his younger brother Hal (Dewey Martin) and the brutish Sam Kobish (Robert Middleton).

These three needed a safe hideout while they awaited the arrival of some expected money and they chose the Hilliard home... They were installed and completely in command when Dan and the two youngsters came home - and there the family was trapped, under the gangsters' order to "make it normal" and with no doubt of the consequences if they did not obey...

As the major tensions mounted - the money did not arrive and the police closed in - there was a fascinating interplay of lesser conflicts:

- The father urgently trying to repress his rage to save his family - until his final gamble...

- The schoolboy unable to believe that the guns and bullets are real - and unable to understand why his adored father is apparently submitting without a fight...

- The wife fighting hysteria in an attempt to live normally in such circumstances...

-The spitfire daughter and her boyfriend (Gig Young), whose impatient courtship almost causes disaster...

- The youngest criminal coming to see in the quiet normality of the lives he has invaded a message of the waste of his own...

- The deputy sheriff (Arthur Kennedy) leading the hunt and knowing he has been marked out for murder...

- The gang leader, played by Humphrey Bogart with an intelligence to match his deadly ruthlessness, with a shrewd instinct for discovering others' weaknesses... and torn when his own younger brother quits, finding himself as much a prisoner in the house as his hostages... Once before, in "The Petrified Forest," Bogart gave us such a man, but that performance was relatively restrained compared to this beast at bay...