The plot for "Make Haste to Live" had promise...but ultimately the film made little sense and this annoyed me. It really could have been a good film.Crystal Benson was married to a violent mobster, Steve (Stephen McNally). He slapped the snot out of her and she was naturally afraid of him. Ultimately, she escaped and the law thought that he'd killed her and disposed of the body. So, even without a corpse, he was convicted and spent 18 years in prison. Now, he's out...and looking to exact his revenge on her...now that he's found her.While this sounds like a great plot, somehow the writing was not up to snuff. When Steve shows up in the small New Mexico town where she lives, she doesn't tell anyone who his is nor that he's threatening to kill her. Instead, inexplicably, he passes him off as her brother...and allows him to hang around her and her daughter....a young lady who doesn't know that her 'uncle' is actually her horrible father. Why doesn't Crystal tell EVERYONE he's out to kill her, he's a mobster AND why she ran?! This just doesn't make sense and the film became tedious...tedious because the solution to the problem seems simple yet the heroine seems inexplicably dim.

I'm a huge Dorothy McGuire fan and had was initially excited at discovering a film noir that I hadn't yet seen. About twenty minutes in I realized why I've never heard of this one. It's actually painful to watch. I really don't like any of the characters and have given up at 59 minutes. Just don't care what happens. For me, this is a first.

Dorothy McGuire (Crystal Benson), Stephen McNally (Steve), Mary Murphy (Randy Benson), Edgar Buchanan (sheriff), John Howard (Josh), Ron Hagerthy (Hack), Pepe Hern (Rudolfo Gonzales), Eddy Waller (Spud Kelly), Carolyn Jones (Mary Rose), Argentina Brunetti (Mrs Gonzales).Director: WILLIAM A. SEITER. Screenplay: Warren Duff. Based on the 1950 novel by Mildred Gordon and Gordon Gordon. Photography: John L. Russell Jr. Film editor: Fred Allen. Music: Elmer Bernstein. Art director: Frank Hotaling. Set decorators: John McCarthy Jr, George Milo. Costumes: Adele Palmer. Make-up: Bob Mark. Special effects: Howard Lydecker, Theodore Lydecker. Optical effects: Consolidated Film Industries. Hair styles: Peggy Gray. Assistant director: Robert Shannon. Sound recording: Earl Crain Sr, Howard Wilson. Associate producer: William A. Seiter. Executive producer: Herbert J. Yates.Copyright 4 March 1954 by Republic Pictures Corp. New York opening at the Victoria: 25 March 1954. U.S. release: 1 August 1954. U.K. release: 19 April 1954. Australian release through 20th Century-Fox: 22 September 1954. Sydney opening at the Park (ran one week). Approx. 8,100 feet. 90 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Dorothy McGuire plays the successful editor of a small town paper in New Mexico. Her security, and the happiness of her teenage daughter, are threatened when her husband is released from jail. COMMENT: An attractively photographed and appealingly acted thriller which suspense-fully builds to a fine climax. Both principal antagonists are perfectly cast, and it's good to see Mary Murphy in an early role, even if she has little to do. The director makes effective use of his locations. All told, it's a neat job.MY SECOND VIEW: Slow thriller. The script is over-weighted with dialogue and yet it doesn't succeed in generating much interest in the principal characters (and none at all in the subsidiary ones). Part of the fault lies in the casting — none of the principals are very convincing — and an even greater part in the ponderous direction. Something might have been made of the climactic chase sequence but it drags on far too long to retain interest and the sets are too obviously tatty.

The spooky opening sequence piques our appetite for Make Haste to Live. A sinister stranger looms in the bedroom where Dorothy McGuire tosses in restive sleep. The editor of a small-town newspaper in the New Mexico desert, she's being stalked by her husband, a gangster just released from the pen for murder -- HER murder. Seems that years before, in Chicago, a woman was killed in an rigged explosion; when the body was identified as hers, McGuire packed up and started a new life.But having set up this intriguing situation, Make Haste to Live loses its way and ends up a muddled mess. When the husband (Steven McNally) insinuates himself into the household of McGuire and their teenage daughter, he's passed off as a black-sheep brother. And credulity gets strained way past the snapping point. McGuire flip-flops between resourceful adversary and the most feckless of battered wives; at times the two roil with hatred for one another but at others a light flirtatiousness enters their interactions. Any valid psychology in this, however, isn't worked out in dramatic terms; we get no sense of the hold McNally has over his wife, only that he wants to kill her and she seems willing to die.A Bottomless Pit in an old Indian pueblo makes an early appearance but doesn't end up playing the role we come to expect it will; so the final resolution is contrived, coming not out of character but out of the blue. Moseying along from one thing to another, Make Haste to Live has no urgent destination in mind.