dougdoepke It may be a gimmick movie, but the gimmick sure works. So how the heck are mom (Stanwyck) and son (Aaker) going to get dad's leg (Sullivan) from underneath the broken piling before the ocean tide comes in. If they don't, he's fish food. It would help if the family weren't in the middle of a Mexican nowhere. Worse, there's an escaped con (Meeker) on the loose, and he's already killed one man. This looks like a camping trip from heck.As I recall, the movie got a little spread in Life magazine at the time. Pretty good for a little b&w programmer with all of a 4-person cast. I imagine the biggest expense was trying to keep Sullivan dry since he took a real beating from the waves. I hope they paid him double. Director Sturges gets the most out of the one-note set-up, so it's no wonder he soon went on to A-productions, e.g. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). I'm still curious, however, how the pivotal scene ends between Stanwyck and Meeker when she tries to talk him into helping. Just what did she do. Maybe I missed something or maybe the scene was just playing footsie with the Production Code. Anyway, whatever her ploy, it appears to have worked on Meeker, at least for a little while. All in all, I guess it's not surprising the minimal premise works so well given the talent involved that includes scripter Dinelli who's responsible for other such nail-biters as Beware My Lovely (1952) and The Spiral Staircase (1945). So be prepared for biting down to the nub as the little family races against the tide and the odds.

mikhail080 Classic movie lovers and fans of fantastic Barbara Stanwyck would find this one hard to dislike. It's a nicely filmed and compact little melodrama that was recently aired on TCM. The storyline unfolds seemingly almost in real time, at a breakneck pace that's able to achieve a good deal of suspense.Stanwyck and hubby Sullivan are roughing it in Mexico with their small son, and run into extreme difficulties. Through a series of bad decisions, Sullivan soon has his leg caught underneath the pylons of a dilapidated pier as the tide comes in, and frantic wife Stanwyck sets out to get help, but instead encounters unsavory criminal Ralph Meeker.Exploitative and salacious in it's themes, "Jeopardy" has Stanwyck attempting to make a dirty deal with Meeker to rescue her trapped husband. Contrived as the plot may be, with the "ticking time bomb" element of the roaring tide that threatens Sullivan, what's here should please fans of Stanwyck and Meeker both. Although it may, in the final analysis, be one of her lesser efforts, Stanwyck displays a real commitment to the material. One physical scene displays the showbiz trooper that she was, as she desperately sprints through a deserted filling station (in heels) in an extended take that was certainly over a minute long. Remarkable how fit and slim this great actress was!There are some unintentional humorous bits involving the young son, and a pot of hot coffee, but most of the action is centered around Stanwyck and her dilemma. And the intimidating Ralph Meeker really is impressive, as both an object of scorn and forbidden desire reminiscent of Brando in that same year's "The Wild One." The locations used are quite effective and convincingly dangerous, and actually play a large role in developing the suspense. And the ending certainly is thought-provoking.This is no masterpiece but "Jeopardy" delivers seventy minutes of pure "old school" entertainment.*** out of *****

BatonRougeMike Awesomely improbable and foolish potboiler that at least has some redeeming, crisp location photography, but it's too unbelievable to generate much in the way of tension. I was kinda hoping that Stanwyck wouldn't make it back in time because, really, she was saddled with the wet, in more ways than one, husband,and she had an idiot child as well..why NOT run off with Meeker? But the nagging question remains..what sort of wood was that pier support made of if a rotten piece of it pulled off didn't float? Stanwyck, always impeccably professional, does the best she could with the material but it's threadbare.

fedor8 Just a dumb old movie. First Stanwyck's son gets his foot trapped in a really dumb way, and then her husband gets his foot trapped in another really dumb way. In an effort to save him, Stanwyck gets unlucky, yet again, and comes across an escaped convict. She has a chance to kill him but fails in a very dumb way. In the end her husband is saved, and Stanwyck tells us through narration what the dumb message of the movie is. All's well than ends dumb.I could never figure out how an unattractive woman like Stanwyck ever made it as a leading lady in Hollywood's glamour-oriented Golden Era; that nose is so beautiful… So photogenic… The film is mercifully short, running a little over an hour. It's as though the director sensed that he was making crap, so he thought it best to keep the crap short.