Director: Don Siegel
Screenplay: Knut Swenson, Richard Collins
Producers: Kendrick Sweet
Starring: Cornel Wilde, Victoria Shaw, Mickey Shaughnessy
Year: 1959
Country: USA
BBFC Certification: 12
Duration: 80 mins

With its goofily grandiose title and the promise of full colour CinemaScope Grand Canyon locations and scrappy action scenes, I felt sure I was going to enjoy Don Siegel’s Edge of Eternity before I even hit play. Siegel is a director I don’t know very well and, aside from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, all of the films I’ve seen by him are from the 70s. In fact, I didn’t realise for many years that the bulk of his work comes from the 50s and my notion of his aesthetic was mostly tied to 70s Clint Eastwood pictures. It’s a fascinating experience working backwards in a filmography like this and, with my suppositions about Edge of Eternity having proven accurate, I’m keen to explore more of his work in future.

Edge of Eternity, for the record, is neither a masterpiece nor a classic but it’s the kind of high-end B-movie that has always appealed to me. Though sometimes identified as Noir, the film is so good-natured and cheery in the spaces between its multiple murders that the vibe I got was of a forerunner of 80s Adventure shows like Airwolf and The A-Team. The characters converse genially with smiles on their faces and an undisguised fondness for one another, and the actors accordingly seem to be having an enjoyable time. Leads Cornel Wilde and Victoria Shaw are so affable that they sometimes seem to be on the edge of bursting out in fits of giggles. It was not a tone for which I was prepared but it did prove to be one I found delightfully agreeable. The cast is filled out with great character actors including the endearingly gravelly-voiced Edgar Buchanan, the desperate-looking Tom Fadden and the endlessly amusing Mickey Shaughnessy, whose turn as a local bartender starts at full tilt and somehow keeps going from there!

Although it was mostly intended to cheaply fulfil contractual obligations Columbia Pictures had with the aging Cornel Wilde, Edge of Eternity is not a cheap looking film. It has the rough-and-ready appeal of a low budget B-picture but its lavish colour palette and breathtaking location work make it handsome indeed. It’s possible that a better film could’ve been made from this material. Interesting angles such as Wilde’s Deputy being riddled with guilt about choosing to chase down a speeding car while a man was being murdered are undersold by both script and performance. “I’ll regret it until the day I die” he announces, before merrily arranging a date with the very woman who was driving the car. A climactic action sequence on an unsteady cable car dangling over the canyon is undermined by the constant cuts between bad back projection close-ups and very distant shots of obvious stuntmen and a floppy dummy. But Edge of Eternity is one of those odd cases where I’d genuinely take the ragged amusements of the low budget film we got over something technically better but not half as charming.

Edge of Eternity is quite a hard film to categorise. It starts with a fairly spectacular moment of a car going over a cliff, quickly followed by a punch up and a car chase. But the clumsy execution of the fight and the utterly leisurely nature of the chase immediately betray the fact that this isn’t going to be the thrilling Action masterpiece for which Dirty Harry fans might be hoping. Quickly, the film becomes a relaxed series of encounters, a police procedural with all the urgency of a Columbo episode in which the suspect and detective get on with each other. Once you adjust to Edge of Eternity’s odd rhythms though, it becomes something akin to a hangout film with a few pulpy peaks. A later chase scene finds Victoria Shaw driving a car in a straight line but wiggling the wheel from side to side like an intoxicated Charades player miming Driving Miss Daisy. If that’s the sort of thing you think you might find charming rather than distracting then Edge of Eternity could be your new favourite Sunday afternoon post-lunch winddown.

Edge of Eternity is released on 20 January 2025 by Indicator on limited edition Blu-ray. Special features are as follows:

* High Definition remaster
* Original mono audio
* Audio commentary with professor and film scholar Jason A Ney (2025)
* José Arroyo on ‘Edge of Eternity’ (2025): in-depth appreciation by the writer and academic
* Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
* New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

* Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Peter Cowie, an archival piece on the making of the film by producer Kendrick Sweet, an extract from Don Siegel’s autobiography, and film credits
* UK premiere on Blu-ray
* Limited edition of 3,000 copies for the UK

Edge of Eternity
3.5Overall Score
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