Cheap The Desperate Hours (DVD) (Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy) (William Wyler) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Desperate Hours

A Family's Living Nightmare
The Desperate Hours is a very suspenseful tale of a family that is held hostage in their own home by three escaped convicts. The story is fascinating to watch because they must adapt to having these strangers in their home, and in some cases, they most go on about their lives and go out in public without telling anyone what is happening at home. It seems unrealistic that it could happen that way, but it makes sense in the movie. As usual, director William Wyler gets top performances from his cast. Fredric March is terrific as the father who feels frustrated and helpless that he is unable to free his family from the terrorizing of the convicts. Martha Scott does well as his wife. Humphrey Bogart, as the leader of the convicts, gives the good performance that you expect from him, and the rest of the cast is good, too. (If I'm not mistaken, the actor playing Kobish, one of the convicts, went on to be the voice of Fred Flintstone.) The Desperate Hours presents a story that will keep you in suspense, and it shows how people can find the courage to protect those they love.

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"Get out . . . Get out of my house . . . "
If I remember correctly "The Desperate Hours" was originally a stage play that was based on a true story. A photo-magazine ran a spread on either the play or the film with pictures of the "real" house and the family sued for invasion of privacy; one of their lawyers was Richard Nixon. Humphrey Bogart gets top-billing in "The Desperate Hours" as gangster on the lam Glenn Griffin, but this is really Frederic March's film. March plays businessman Dan Hilliard, who discovers his home has been invaded and his family taken hostage by Griffin's little band of criminals, which includes his kid brother Hal (Dewey Martin) and the brutish Sam Kobish (Robert Middleton). That morning Hilliard's biggest concerns had been Chuck Wright (Gig Young), the boyfriend of his daughter Cindy (Mary Murphy), the refusal of young sun Ralphie (Richard Eyer) to kiss his old man goodbye, and what wife Eleanor (Martha Scott) is going to make for dinner. Now he has to find a way to keep his family alive in a world where the police are perfectly willing to gun down unarmed criminals.

This is a taunt drama, carried mostly by the desperation of March's character, who fails every time he tries to prove the hero. Bogart's performance is notable because it is a return to the tough guy role that made him a star, only this time showing more restraint than we had seen two decades earlier. This 1955 film also stands as a testament to how much things have changed in Hollywood, because they would never allow for this clean of an ending to this situation, a point that would be obvious even without the horrible remake of this film with Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins, which gives into the perceived need for sadistic violence. Ultimately what makes this film work is that the climax exceeds our expectations given the set-up. You have to admire how a man can walk into a house with an unloaded gun and save the day. The final confrontation between Hilliard and Griffin is powerful because it speaks to not only the fact that you can hurt somebody without killing them, but also that even confronted with barbarians there is still virtue in being a civilized man. I still watch the ending of this film every time I stumble across it on television. In fact, I just did.

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Simply Amazing
With all the thrillers, i've watched till date, The Desperate Hour is truely the king of them all. Humprey Bogart rocks in this movie and while March plans to protect his family with the unloaded gun, the tension grips high times. This is a classic that need to be in every movie collectors shelves.