John M. Newman: Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Source:Brian F- sometimes a picture actually does say it all.

"Dangerous Crossing 1953 Trailer" 

From Brian F

"When a beautiful bride boards an ocean liner with her new husband, he goes into hiding, and she becomes the target of a murder conspiracy." 

From IMDB

I think perhaps the thing I love the most about this film, other than it being a 75 minute film that flies by and not just because it's so short. But it's so exciting, where you really don't have an opportunity to take a break, other than waiting for a commercial or hitting pause. But the thing that I really love about this film is that it doesn't have a lot of do's and don't's. It just has a lot of don't's. Which I'm going to explain to you. 

The IMDB description is pretty good. But there's a lot more to it. Ruth Stanton (played by the beautiful and too cute Jeanne Crain) just lost her father, who she still misses terribly. And she falls in love with John Bowman (played by Carl Betz) pretty much right after she loses her father. Ruth's father had a business that he left to her daughter, as well as good deal of money. 

So now Ruth Stanton is pretty vulnerable because Bowman knows all about this, but his brand new wife doesn't know him. Which comes back to be a big problem for her after he ditches her just after they arrive on the boat together. Because she can not only not find him, but has no idea what happened to him, and she has a helluva a story to try to explain to the ships's crew, who simply thinks that he got off the boat because there's no sign of him and perhaps he just ditched her.

So now Ruth is in a situation where the only person on the boat whose willing to try to believe her and help her figure out what happened is the ship's doctor. (Played by Michael Rennie) While the rest of the ship is thinks she's going crazy, or simply making all this up. Not knowing that there's a whole plan here that was put together by her husband to make it look like she's going crazy and he has one of the ship's stewardess's in on the scheme with him. 

The don't's of this story I think are pretty obvious:

Don't' fall in love with people you barley know. 

Don't go on a cruise with someone you barely know. 

Don't marry people you barely know. 

But if Ruth Stanton played it straight and smart, there wouldn't have been this great and exciting film noir, that I've seen maybe 10 times in the last 8-9 years. And I wouldn't be writing about it today.

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