The Desperate Hours (1955) on Netflix
Approved19551h 52mCrimeDramaFilm-Noir
Escaped convict Glenn Griffin and two other fugitives take over a suburban Indianapolis home and hold the Hilliard family hostage. Dan Hilliard must protect his wife and children.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb7.5/1011,912 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dan Hilliard lives with his wife Ellie and their two children in a comfortable house in suburban Indianapolis. Glenn Griffin, a convicted murderer, escapes from prison with two others: his younger brother Hal and Sam Kobish, a thug. The three fugitives move into the Hilliard home as a place to lie low, and the family becomes their hostages while a statewide police manhunt searches for them. Griffin is waiting for his girlfriend to send money that will pay for the trio's flight. Dan, an executive with a predictable life, is determined to protect his home and family from the intruders.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Desperate Hours (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Paul Newman played Glenn Griffin in the original Broadway production but was passed over for the film because Humphrey Bogart was a much bigger star; the script made Griffin older so Bogart could play the part. Bogart described the story as "Duke Mantee grown up."
- The film's source was a real case: five members of the Hill family were held hostage for 19 hours on September 11 and 12, 1952, events that inspired Joseph Hayes's 1954 novel and then the 1955 play the movie was based on.
- Spencer Tracy was originally cast as family patriarch Daniel Hilliard, but he and his friend Humphrey Bogart both insisted on top billing, so Tracy withdrew from the picture and Fredric March took the part.
- The Hill family, formerly of Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania, sued Time, Inc. over a February 1955 Life magazine article about the play; they complained it falsely described the actual events while claiming to be truthful, and it used staged photos taken in their former home.
- The family was represented in the Supreme Court by Richard M. Nixon, then an attorney in private practice, and the ruling made it extremely difficult for ordinary private people to win defamation or "false light" invasion of privacy cases.
- Paramount commissioned its staff songwriters Burt Bacharach and Wilson Stone to write a song for possible inclusion in the film; their "The Desperate Hours" was recorded by Eileen Rodgers with the Ray Conniff Orchestra and released as a Columbia single in 1955.
- The house seen in the final seasons of the television series Leave It to Beaver was used for the exterior shots of the Hilliards' home.
