Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81961 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-02-01
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 75 minutes

Amazon.com
Directly in the wake of his Oscar-winning comeback in From Here to Eternity, Frank Sinatra took on the role of a psychopathic hit man in this taut, low-budget film noir. The choice shows how interested Sinatra was in serious acting during the mid- to late '50s; there's nothing remotely likable about this angular, neurotic assassin. He's in the small town of Suddenly to kill the president, who is passing through on a quick train stop. Sinatra makes hostages of a local family and sheriff Sterling Hayden, and the film is basically a countdown to the president's arrival, with Sinatra's patter getting loonier as the day goes on. Aside from the interest of Sinatra's performance (very focused and downright perverse at times), and the film's place in the American noir tradition, Suddenly is uncannily prophetic on the subject of assassination. It's clear that the killer is doing it for the fame as well as the money, a theme that would crop up in later confessions of real-life killers or would-be killers. Perhaps the 1954 film was too prophetic; like Sinatra's Manchurian Candidate, this movie was pulled from circulation for years after the JFK assassination. According to Kitty Kelley's bio of Sinatra, Lee Harvey Oswald saw this film a few days before he took rifle in hand. Now in the public domain, Suddenly is generally available in cheap, scratchy prints. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

"I'm not a traitor, I won a silver star"
Frank Sinatra is riveting as a cold-hearted hit man obsessed with his spurious war record, who traps a family in their house, along with a few others that get caught in his net, as he plots to assassinate the president, who is making a stop in Suddenly, California, on his way to Los Angeles. It's a great character study, and Sinatra pulls it off flawlessly, making this a taut thriller, with a quiet, folksy beginning that turns into a nightmare.
Sinatra followed his Oscar Award winning performance in "From Here to Eternity" with this film, which unfortunately hasn't been seen much, and one of the reasons is Sinatra himself; he was horrified to know that Lee Harvey Oswald had watched "Suddenly" shortly before the Kennedy assassination, and requested the film be pulled from distribution.

Co-starring Sterling Hayden who is excellent as Sheriff Tod Shaw, it has well paced direction by Lewis Allen, a crisp script by Richard Sale, and a score by David Raskin. There have been other films with this type of hostage scenario like the '55 Humphrey Bogart "Desperate Hours" and its 1990 remake, and this is up there with the best.
My DVD copy is of the inexpensive variety, a little blurry with imperfect audio (distributed by VINA) but is still fascinating viewing.
Filmed almost entirely in one room, it holds one's attention, mostly due to Sinatra's superb performance.
Total running time is 75 minutes.

Oswald Goes to Mayberry
I first saw this movie at the Chicago Art Institute about 10 years ago double-billed with "The Manchurian Candidate." The latter movie is one of the great films of all time, and by far Sinatra's best. "Suddenly" is something quite different. Sinatra's performance here is outstanding. He is thoroughly believable and engrossing as the Oswald-like John Barron. Given this performance, it is rather surprising to me that most of the other actors' acting is so terrible and flat. The non-Sinatra scene dialogue seems like it was written by a b-level 50's t.v. writing team - on the level of "The Adventures of Superman" or "The Lone Ranger." But the scenes with Sinatra are very well written and carried out, particularly the interchanges between Sterling Hayden and Sinatra (which really make up the core of the film, the rest is just filler). In fact, these scenes are so good, I forgive the rest of the film while remaining amazed how bad the rest is.

I do want to reiterate one warning made by some of the other reviewer's of this particular DVD version (Madacy Entertainment). The price is hard to fight with, but the film copy they transferred to the DVD was very poor quality. The sound is often very poor (the non-Sinatra scene dialogue sounds very much like it was dubbed in latter), and there are awkward jumps in the film itself, i.e., where it looks like the film either broke and was spliced together rather half-hazzardly, or the sprockets skipped or something. Unfortunately, one of these skips comes during one of the best scenes where Sinatra is talking about how "he hates crowds, and used to dream about that crowd". It seems no one at the company making this DVD bothered to watch it while the transfer to DVD was occurring. Perhaps one of the other DVD versions has a better print, but in lieu of knowing that, my advice would be to videotape the movie next time it is on AMC or TMC - they seem to have better prints of it.

Sinatra is the bad guy, Hayden is the hero
One of two Frank Sinatra movies that dealt with assasination. The other was "Manchurian Candidate." In this one Frank is the bad guy. Sterling Hayden shows no signs of the future characters he will play in major films of the 60s and 70s (Dr. Strangelove, Godfather). Hayden is just the hick town by-the-book sheriff with the Barney Fifeish assistant. This is not a great movie but it moves along nicely and never gets boring. It has some good "what if" situations. It also has wonderful footage of old cars and trains. This would make a good double feature with "Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" because one film pushes the pro gun totin' policy, and one is opposed to the use of weapons. It may surprise you which is which. This is not the best movie of the 1950s but the issues raised are still out there. Tom Willett