At 80 minutes, this B picture from the mid-1950's was released about 2 years before RKO was sold to Lucy and Desi. This little seen picture is actually better than it has any right to be.
Solid film noir by Hugo Fregonese about two inmates running away from the death row the day before their execution. The film's progressively oppresive atmosphere is nicely portrayed by Fregonese in a cinema verité style.
Gritty low-budget prison film stars Edward G. Robinson as a death-row inmate about to be executed (black Tuesday) along with a convict (Peter Graves) who has $200,000 stashed away on the outside.
Incarcerated gangster Vincent Canelli (Edward G. Robinson) is on death row, just minutes from being put into the electric chair.
This little known and little seen Edward G. Robinson film takes Eddie back to the days when he was playing some quite serious gangster roles.
A grim drama consistently going from bad to worse the whole way to the end, but very efficiently told and acted, and Edward G. Robinson makes one of his most interesting characters as the angry gangster who only knows one way of life which is the worst without any room for any human feelings at all.
Finding a print of Black Tuesday is still quite impossible. And it's a long time mystery : written by Sidney Boehm (The Big Heat and a dozen films noirs), directed by Hugo Fregonese (The Raid, Apache Drums and the unknown Six Convicts), photographed by Stanley Cortez (Night Of The Hunter and so many more) and with EG Robinson as Vincent Canelli, a fast violent happy trigger killer, getting real mad all around his escape.
An interesting and surprisingly obscure prisoner-on-the-run crime drama, BLACK TUESDAY is perfectly suited for Late, Late Show viewing in the wee small hours of the morning, when much of the action takes place. Like KEY LARGO (also featuring Edward G.
....that's the way this movie hits you!!
