SPLIT SECOND is a tough crime thriller from the early 1950s with an absolutely fantastic premise: a group of characters are taken hostage by some desperate convicts who've broken out of prison and will do anything to get away. The problem? They're holed up in a ghost town in the desert which will shortly be obliterated when a nuclear bomb test takes effect.I can't think of a better premise for tension building, so it's a shame that the suspense in this story is only so-so; former actor Dick Powell certainly knows how to shoot a good scene or two (there are some excellent brutal fights here) but the film lacks something overall. I think the music could have been a lot better in building suspense because it's all surprisingly subtle.Still, there's plenty to like here, not least the performances. Stephen McNally was a popular movie heavy and his murderous character burns up the screen. The rest of the performers are well judged, from the sinister mute villain to the crusading reporter hero and the cheating spouse. The nuclear ending doesn't disappoint; it's a neat precursor to the '80s wave of nuclear blast dramas.

Dick Powell who was looking for a career behind the camera on the big screen and small got his first directorial assignment in this RKO B picture Split Second with a B picture cast. Altogether fitting and proper that it would be RKO since that studio gave him the part in Murder My Sweet that got him out of musicals once and for all.Reporter Keith Andes is set to cover an atomic test in Nevada when he's reassigned to cover the break of a notorious criminal Stephen McNally from prison. McNally who's hidden away the loot from an armored car job escapes prison with Paul Kelly with deaf mute Frank DeKova meeting them with a vehicle. Circumstances force McNally and his crowd into a ghost town with a bunch of hostages that include Andes, Alexis Smith who is running away with Robert Paige, Jan Sterling who's been around the block a few times and Arthur Hunnicutt an old prospector. Later on Smith's husband Richard Egan joins them. He's a doctor summoned by Smith to tend a bullet wound that Kelly took in the prison break.Richard Egan's character is the central weakness of this otherwise good and suspenseful film. Not Egan's fault but he's given a character way too noble to be real.Powell took easily to the director's job and got good performances out of his ensemble. Best in the cast is McNally as tough and brutal professional criminal with only one weak spot, his concern for Kelly whom he looks up to as some kind of mentor. Also given good meaty parts are the women, Alexis Smith who is the unfaithful wife who after McNally kills Paige is quite ready to take up with him and Sterling who McNally would really like to take up with. Had Egan's character been better drawn Split Second would rate as a top noir classic. As it is it ain't half bad.

Most movies about villains holding hostages are like "Dial 1119", in which the police surround the subject building and try to negotiate with the kidnappers. Here, there are no police officers even close to the hostage scene--but everybody's in the blast zone of a planned nuclear test! Ultra-bad guy and prison escapee Sam Hurley (Stephen McNally, who played about the best bad guy in movie history), his accomplice Bart Moore (Paul Kelly) and mute henchman Dummy (Frank DeKova) kidnap several innocent people and hole up in a desert ghost town. Moore is wounded, so physician Neal Garven (Richard Egan) is summoned to tend to Bart. Grizzled prospector Asa Tremaine (Arthur Hunnicutt--who else?) blunders into the situation. All are held hostage while Garven operates on Moore...all the time, everyone knows that a nuclear test is scheduled in just a few short hours.Dummy is overcome and beaten up, just as Hurley, Kelly, and their moll take off in a car, trying to outrun the blast. Well, they don't make it...and end up satisfyingly incinerated by the blast. Tremaine leads the former hostages to an abandoned mine, where the group rides out the bomb detonation.I've always liked any movie that stars Richard Egan (although he plays a supporting character here), and Arthur Hunnicutt is worth the price of admission in his signature role as an old miner. Look fast for Nelson Leigh as a scientist in a control room. Dick Powell directs with a sure hand in his directing debut, and confines most of the story to one claustrophobic room in the abandoned town. Catch this film if you get a chance--the plot is familiar, but the cast and story twist concerning the nuclear test makes it all worthwhile.

***SPOILERS*** Breaking out of a Navada prison convicted murderer Sam Hurley, Stephen McNally, and his fellow and wounded convict Burt Moore, Paul Kelly, and friend Dummy, Frank DeKova, head straight for the ghost town of Lost Hope City that's to be pulverized in a secluded atomic explosion to take place the next morning. Kidnapping a number of people and their cars along the way Hurley expects to use them in his escape as possible hostages. What he really needs is a doctor to treat the very seriously wounded Moore.It turns out that one of the people that Hurley has hostage is Kay Garven, Alexis Smith, who's husband Neal, Richard Egan,is a doctor in Pasadena whom he calls at his doctors office to show up if he want's his wife Kay to stay alive. Kay who's divorcing Neal and is to get married to her constant companion and fellow hostage insurance man Authur Ashton, Robert Paige, in Reno still has some kind of hold on him. Neal shoots out to Lost Hope City to save her, and Moores, life even though she has no use for his. With additional hostage newsman Larry Fleming and down and out young dancer and singer Dottie Vale, Keith Andes & Jan Sterling, and local prospector Asa, Arthur Hunnicutt, later showing up at the doomed ghost town and all that's left for the people there is to get out before the atomic bomb is to be detonated.Race against the clock crime/drama with nuclear destruction as a reward to the loser makes "Split Second" more then just another 1950's cops and robbers black and white flick. With Kay doing everything in order to survive even playing up to the vicious and homicidal Hurley. Who just murdered her fiancé Authur Ashton who stood up for her.Hurley's badly wounded friend Moore seemed to have later gotten an out-of-body or near-death experience finally seeing the light, for the first time in his life. Moore telling Hurley that he first want's to hear passages from the Holy Bible and then pulls a gun on him in order to keep Hurley from killing the innocent hostages. With the atomic bomb explosion pushed up one hour, from six to five A.M, Hurley and Co.take off in a car but having no idea where their going drive right into the tower where the bomb is about to be set off. With Asa showing the "doomed" hostages a secret cave for them to hide in during the atomic explosion the entire town is blown apart, together with the fleeing Hurley Moore & Kay.In the case of the two-timing Kay her strong sense of survival only blinded her from knowing who her real friends were and voluntarily ended up with the escaped convicts as a mound of smoldering and radioactive dust.