Edge of Eternity *** (1959, Cornel Wilde, Victoria Shaw, Edgar Buchanan, Mickey Shaughnessy, Jack Elam) – Classic Movie Review 5258

Director Don Siegel’s 1959 adventure stars Cornel Wilde as Arizona deputy sheriff Les Martin, who is hunting for the killer of the boss of a gold mine whose ingots went missing, part of a sequence of three brutal murders.

Siegel tensely directs this tight little Grand Canyon-set action thriller, which ends spectacularly with Les Martin (Wilde) and barkeeper Scotty O’Brien (Mickey Shaughnessy) fighting it out in a mining cable car. This climax was filmed in the aerial tramway to the Bat Cave mine, in the western Grand Canyon of Arizona.

It is a tense and atmospheric little movie, with picturesque scenery on location in the Grand Canyon, prettily photographed in CinemaScope widescreen and Eastman color by Burnett Guffey.

Victoria Shaw makes an ideal heroine as socialite Janice Kendon, making it even more disappointing she made so few movies (only 11), her potential largely unrealized, and Edgar Buchanan is his usual reliable self as the sheriff. It is especially good to have Jack Elam and Dabbs Greer in the support cast. Siegel can be seen in a director cameo at the motel swim pool.

Also in the cast are Rian Garrick, Alexander Lockwood, Tom Fadden, Wendell Holmes, John Ayres, George Ross, John Roy, Hope Summers, Paul Bailey, George Cisar, Ted Jacques and Buzz Westcott.

It was shot in Kingman, Oatman and Gold Road, Arizona.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5258

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