JEOPARDY (1953)

A family travels into Mexico for a short fishing vacation at an isolated beach. Helen (Barbara Stanwyck), her husband Doug (Barry Sullivan), and their 10-year-old son Bobby (Lee Aaker) have an uneventful trip from Tijuana to Baja California. There are two obvious moments of foreshadowing: the car is stopped briefly at a Mexican police roadblock, and we see that Doug has brought a revolver along in the glove compartment. At the beach, Bobby goes out to play on an abandoned pier and when he comes back for lunch, his foot gets stuck under a wooden plank—no one noticed the sign, in Spanish, warning of danger. Doug goes out and frees him, but on the way back, Doug falls through some rotted wood and winds up trapped in shallow water, his feet pinned by a fallen piling. Helen and Bobby are unable to free him and, realizing that eventually the tide will come in, Helen takes the car to look for help. She drives back to find an uninhabited gas station, breaks into a tool shed to get some rope, and discovers an American named Lawson (Ralph Meeker) standing near the road. She asks him to come with her to help, not noticing the dead body near the road. Soon Lawson finds the gun and reveals that he is an escaped killer, the one the roadblock had been set up for. The rest of the film is a cat and mouse game with Helen trying to figure out how dangerous this guy really is, and Lawson keeping the upper hand with his gun and his bravado. (At one point, he tells her she talks so much, she must drive her husband crazy, one of the few bits of humor in the film.) Finally, after blowing through another roadblock and changing a flat tire, Helen lets Lawson know that she's willing to have sex with him, and even leave with him, in exchange for saving Doug's life. By the time they get to the pier, the water is getting close to Doug's face. Will Lawson come through on his promise (and did Helen already come through on hers)?

At a bit over an hour, this plays out like an episode of the old Alfred Hitchcock show. Actually, it's exactly the kind of plot that the Hitchcock show (1955-1965) would specialize in: a small cast, an atmosphere of tension, and a strong working-against-time element. Stanwyck had been extending her career by transitioning from roles of glamour and romance to tough dames with an almost masculine veneer of fortitude. She sort of combines both here, playing both a loving wife and mother, and a hardened woman determined to get what she wants. Viewers have debated whether or not Helen gives in and has sex with Lawson—who, by the way, as played by Ralph Meeker, is sexy in a sweaty, dangerous way—or has held out. We do see them kiss (without romance but with a bit of lust) and I assumed that they went a good deal further. Without spoiling the ending, Stanwyck's last bit of voiceover narration doesn't really clear the issue up, but can be seen if one wants to as one last smidge of evidence that they did. I assume the Production Code was one force in leaving things up in the air, although narratively, the ambiguity does work nicely. Sullivan hasn't much to do as the husband; Aaker is good as the kid; Meeker, as I noted above, does have sex appeal but also retains his edge of danger. The tension is built up well, and it’s a little weird to see publicity shots of the three adult actors more or less clowning around with the gun. Despite some claims, this isn't really noir, but a domestic crime melodrama, Though it's short, it does bog down a couple of times. Still, the ending is satisfying (if nicely ambiguous) and worth seeing for Stanwyck and Meeker, both pictured above. [TCM]