"Split Second" happened to be actor Dick Powell's debut behind the camera as a director. As a first time director, Powell managed to make an okay movie overall. The movie is strongest in its first third. The first thirty or so minutes are pretty good, being fast-paced, interesting, and somewhat exciting. However, once the characters get to the ghost town that's just a few steps from where an atomic bomb is to be detonated, the tension and energy diminish significantly. While the characters know that in hours an atomic bomb will be set off, there is little concern seen or felt from the characters about this. And Stephen McNally, as the chief bad guy, doesn't seem as dangerous and unpredictable as a thriller like this needs. The movie also slightly suffers from what was obviously not a big budget, though Powell seems to have saved some dollars for the special effects in the climatic sequence, which are pretty good. The movie remains watchable despite these flaws, so if the premise interests you, more likely than not you'll find it at least a passable 85 minutes.

A reasonably good noir thriller is probably the best description that can be afforded SPLIT SECOND. An above average noir it was produced by Edmund Grainger in 1953 for the home of the great noirs RKO. Excitingly written by William Bowers and Irving Wallace it was crisply photographed in black & white by the great Nicholas Museraca and surprisingly directed in a good workmanlike fashion by Dick Powell. With no "A" list stars to speak of the picture is more than effectively played by a well chosen cast headed by Stephen McNally, Paul Kelly and Alexis Smith.Two escaped convicts (McNally & Kelly) hijack a car with two occupants (Alexis Smith & Robert Paige), waylay another carrying two more people (Jan Sterling & Keith Andes) and along with an old prospector (Arthur Hunnicutt) hold them all hostage in a ghost town in the Nevada desert. The town has been earmarked and cleared by the military for the testing of an Atomic bomb in a few hours time. This the captors learn from the radio and are confident of leaving on time. In the meantime Kelly is badly wounded from a gunshot he received in his prison escape bid and must have a doctor. McNally finds out that Smith's estranged husband (Richard Egan) is a physician and inveigles him by phone to come to the hideout or his wife will be killed. Things for the hostages don't go too well with poor attempts at escape and the savagely violent and somewhat psychotic McNally beating Andes to a pulp and shooting dead Smith's lover (Paige). Suddenly the radio announces that the bomb test time has been moved up and will now go off an hour earlier. It becomes a race against time now to get off the site. Leaving the hostages to their fate in the town a scurrying McNally, his fellow fugitive and a fearful Smith, who pleads to go with them, take off in the car but drive onto the actual bomb site itself instead of going in the opposite direction. The picture ends with the massive A bomb explosion, McNally and company perishing in the car and the hostages all surviving after taking refuge in a cave.The cast do an admirable job with a nicely written screenplay. McNally is particularly good applying himself assiduously to playing what he always played best that of the sneering, unscrupulous and mean spirited villain. Paul Kelly - who never gave a bad performance - is also good as McNally's softer hearted partner in crime. But something of a revelation is Alexis Smith! Smith an actress who for years was buried in inane glamour roles at Warner Brothers brings much to the table here in SPLIT SECOND. Her panic driven character, continuously on the verge of cracking up, is an incisive and inspired piece of acting. Who would have thought she had it in her? It is the best thing she ever did!With brilliant cinematography, good performances, an exciting screenplay all wrapped in a fine dramatic and atmospheric score by RKO's resident composer Roy Webb SPLIT SECOND comes across as a fairly rewarding visual experience.

Boy oh boy, is this a rare gem! Here's the deal: a man escapes from jail with one of his friends and hides away in a ghost village right in the primary event area of an atomic bomb set to go off the next day. Through various coincidences and car troubles, he ends up putting a reporter, a prostitute, a wife about to get a divorce and her insurance salesman lover and her doctor husband, and a hillbilly for hostage as he tries to decide how to get out of there before the bomb goes off and what to do with people who have to stare down the barrel of his gun, trying to figure out if he'll let them live or not. It's like High Noon with claustrophobia and an atom bomb--the majority of the film is set in a single cabin and the characters have nothing to do but deal with each other as the threat of death looms closer and closer.Unsurprisingly, the characters' characters ultimately decide their final fate as they all try to socially compromise, some fatally and some ineffectually and some with surprise chain effects. It's everything that a well-made low budget survivalist movie can be, and then a friggin' atomic bomb goes off! What more could you need? I was extremely tired while watching this movie, but it woke me up like a cup of good coffee. It's amazingly compelling, multivaried, and unpredictable. I especially like how the production code constraints on one of the seduction scenes created a harrowing horror effect for the un-naive viewer: we "know" what happened, but we don't really know what happened. And the characters have some real surprises to give beyond their type, keeping the drama fresh and relentless and the clock ticks nearer to doomsday. This is an infinitely satisfying movie.--PolarisDiB

***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.