Edge of Eternity (UK Import) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jan 30, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Don SiegelRelease Date(s)
1959 (January 20, 2025)Studio(s)
Columbia Pictures (Indicator/Powerhouse Films)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region B-locked British Blu-ray import.]
Edge of Eternity (1959) is a potboiler enlivened by good direction from Don Siegel and excellent use of Grand Canyon locations. The picture seems to have been inspired by the success of crime/police procedural TV shows like Highway Patrol and especially State Trooper, the latter a very entertaining Revue series set and partly filmed all over the State of Nevada. Siegel himself had the year before directed The Lineup, a movie version of that popular radio and TV police drama. Meanwhile, a strange subplot that goes nowhere and really feels tacked on seems inspired by the relationship between alcoholic Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone in the popular Written on the Wind.
Edge of Eternity starts out well, with a man looking over the Grand Canyon with binoculars when another man pushes the former’s car at him, sending the vehicle over the cliff. The two men struggle, but it’s the attacker who goes over the edge, falling to his death. Later, the surviving man, strangely dressed, is seen wandering about, disheveled, and later found hanged, his hands tied behind his back.
Before that, however, eccentric local Eli (Tom Fadden) tries to alert Deputy Les Martin (Cornel Wilde) about the wandering man, but the deputy is distracted by speeding motorist Janice Kendon (Victoria Shaw), and later feels guilty for ignoring Eli to pursue the flirtatious Janice. Regardless, Les and Janice begin dating, partly because she provides vital information suggesting the crime may be linked to gold smuggling. Her alcoholic kid brother, Bob (Rian Garrick), also seems linked to the mystery somehow.
After Eli is himself stabbed to death, D.A. Sam Houghton (Wendell Holmes) pressures Les’s boss, Sheriff Edwards (Edgar Buchanan) to hurry up and solve the case, which also seems tied to a bat guano mine (!) with a bucket-like cable car line stretching across the deep canyon.
Edge of Eternity is more entertaining than it has any right to be. After that intriguing opening, the mystery gets bogged down in a lot of pointless meandering and false leads, and its resolution is not particularly satisfying. Cornel Wilde is okay, but Victoria Shaw’s acting abilities are limited and she’s unmemorable, despite a fashion show-like change of wardrobe throughout the story. Third-billed Mickey Shaughnessy, playing garrulous barkeep Scotty O’Brien, who becomes a major player during the climax, is far worse. Appearing in both big movies (From Here to Eternity, Jailhouse Rock) and small (Sex Kittens Go to College, Dondi), Shaughnessy typically played proud, in-your-face Irish-Americans, but as an actor he was invariably hammy and rarely credible, seriously damaging films like George Pal’s Conquest of Space. Here, he’s so over-the-top he’s like Malcolm McDowell’s flamboyant Nazi in The Passage, completely out-of-sync with the other performers.
Nevertheless, Edge of Eternity is salvaged by Siegel’s direction and use of Grand Canyon and Grand Canyon-adjacent locations, which look great through cinematographer Burnett Guffey’s Pathé Color-CinemaScope lensing. Beyond the canyon itself, the small towns, populated with great 1950s automobiles, don’t much resemble small desert towns from other Hollywood movies, pictures shot within a stone’s throw of Los Angeles. As with State Trooper, Siegel and Guffey bring an uncommon verisimilitude to all the exteriors, which viewing the picture today, combine with a fascinating time machine quality to these undoubtedly much-changed locales.
Siegel and Guffey apparently also did all the second unit work, meaning they also supervised all the aerial flyovers of the canyon, the car chase scenes, and most especially the inevitable cable car climax, which features one jaw-dropping stunt (no CGI or even a safety net, one gathers), and other hair-raising stunt doubling, edited with okay traveling matte shots of the leading actors dangling perilously over the canyon.
Previously released to Blu-ray by Twilight Time in 2017, Powerhouse Films/Indicator’s new Blu-ray, Region “B” encoded, looks fantastic. I don’t have access to the earlier release and can’t say whether this is a new video transfer, but it’s near-perfect: the colors “pop,” the image is excellent for still relatively early CinemaScope. (Bausch & Lomb is not credited, so the lenses could be Panavision, uncredited.) A pleasing film grain is visible, but the image is razor-sharp for the format; only dissolves and other opticals exhibit a slightly grainier image. The LPCM mono is good for what that it, and optional English subtitles are provided. This release has a pressing limited to 3,000 copies.
The disc has lots of extra features. They consist of a new audio commentary track by writer Jason A. Ney; Into the Canyon: Jose Arroyo on Don Siegel, a 17-minute video essay; Closer to the Edge: Jose Arroyo on Edge of Eternity, running 30 minutes; An Australian Cinderella: Stephen Morgan on Victoria Shaw, running 17 minutes, and an image gallery.
Alas, The Digital Bits was sent only a check disc, and thus did not receive the accompanying booklet, which reportedly features a new essay by Peter Cowie, and archival piece by producer Kendrick Sweet, and an extract from Siegel’s autobiography.
All those supplements aside, Edge of Eternity is really a minor but fun crime thriller-police procedural, its weaknesses compensated by Siegel’s direction, use of locations, and the CinemaScope photography. Recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV