Fresh and Exciting

Expected more

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This film has a couple of things going against it, which makes it feel a bit like a B movie...well, it is a B movie...but a darned good one. "A list" movies usually aren't only 69 minutes long, and despite being in 1953, it's black and white. And, the film has only one first rate star.But on the plus side, this is a taut little thriller. Can a woman (Barbara Stanwyck) save her husband (Barry Sullivan) who is trapped under a beam at a pier in the deserted Baja California in Mexico and will drown when the tide comes in? She's got her little boy to think about, too. So who does she find when she goes for help? An escaped murderer (Ralph Meeker).Stanwyck may be past her prime here (although she still had a few "A" pictures coming up in her career (such as "Titanic" with Clifton Webb"), but she was still a powerful actress...and she certainly demonstrates that here. Barry Sullivan, who was soon to turn more to television parts, is a comparative lightweight, but he nevertheless does fine here. And an actor most of us love to dislike (or even hate) -- Ralph Meeker as the ex-con -- gives a whirlwind performance here. You'll love the scene where he slaps Stanwyck...multiple times! Of course, we are quite sure the husband will be saved...but how? And will Meeker survive? And did Stanwyck have a tryst to secure Meeker's help. Well, on that last one you're left to guess...after all, it was 1953! Worth watching at least once!

Classic movie lovers and fans of fantastic Barbara Stanwyck would find this one hard to dislike. It's a nicely filmed and compact little melodrama that was recently aired on TCM. The storyline unfolds seemingly almost in real time, at a breakneck pace that's able to achieve a good deal of suspense.Stanwyck and hubby Sullivan are roughing it in Mexico with their small son, and run into extreme difficulties. Through a series of bad decisions, Sullivan soon has his leg caught underneath the pylons of a dilapidated pier as the tide comes in, and frantic wife Stanwyck sets out to get help, but instead encounters unsavory criminal Ralph Meeker.Exploitative and salacious in it's themes, "Jeopardy" has Stanwyck attempting to make a dirty deal with Meeker to rescue her trapped husband. Contrived as the plot may be, with the "ticking time bomb" element of the roaring tide that threatens Sullivan, what's here should please fans of Stanwyck and Meeker both. Although it may, in the final analysis, be one of her lesser efforts, Stanwyck displays a real commitment to the material. One physical scene displays the showbiz trooper that she was, as she desperately sprints through a deserted filling station (in heels) in an extended take that was certainly over a minute long. Remarkable how fit and slim this great actress was!There are some unintentional humorous bits involving the young son, and a pot of hot coffee, but most of the action is centered around Stanwyck and her dilemma. And the intimidating Ralph Meeker really is impressive, as both an object of scorn and forbidden desire reminiscent of Brando in that same year's "The Wild One." The locations used are quite effective and convincingly dangerous, and actually play a large role in developing the suspense. And the ending certainly is thought-provoking.This is no masterpiece but "Jeopardy" delivers seventy minutes of pure "old school" entertainment.*** out of *****

"I like cheap perfume better; it doesn't last as long..." - Ralph Meeker's convict character (Lawson) tells this to Barbara Stanwyck's Helen character, after he gets a whiff of the perfume that she picked out w/her husband in Tijuana...! This line cracked me up, and also seemed like a metaphor for this film - that cheap is better than expensive, because a cheap perfume-loving man who has a way with a 2 x 4 is a better man to have around in the long run! I agree with some of the other comments posted about Helen's attraction to Lawson. Even though her narration states that she wants Lawson to be put away, she did seem attracted to his fiery nature, and that passion he stirred up in her wouldn't likely wash away with the tide!

Just a dumb old movie. First Stanwyck's son gets his foot trapped in a really dumb way, and then her husband gets his foot trapped in another really dumb way. In an effort to save him, Stanwyck gets unlucky, yet again, and comes across an escaped convict. She has a chance to kill him but fails in a very dumb way. In the end her husband is saved, and Stanwyck tells us through narration what the dumb message of the movie is. All's well than ends dumb.I could never figure out how an unattractive woman like Stanwyck ever made it as a leading lady in Hollywood's glamour-oriented Golden Era; that nose is so beautiful… So photogenic… The film is mercifully short, running a little over an hour. It's as though the director sensed that he was making crap, so he thought it best to keep the crap short.