Black Tuesday

Vincent Canelli is a condemned gangster who escapes from death row moments before his scheduled execution. He takes Peter Manning, a bank robber and cop killer due to die next, with him, along with several hostages. The two men plan to recover the money from Manning's robbery to pay for their flight out of the country, a scheme that places everyone around them in danger.

Hugo Fregonese directed this 1954 crime thriller, working from a screenplay by Sydney Boehm and produced by Robert Goldstein. Edward G. Robinson leads the cast as Canelli, with Peter Graves as Manning, Jean Parker as Hatti Combest, Milburn Stone as Father Slocum, Warren Stevens as Joey Stewart and Sylvia Findley as Ellen Norris. The film runs 80 minutes and was released at the end of 1954, arriving between Fregonese's earlier Hollywood work and the international productions he directed later, including Marco Polo in 1962 and Old Shatterhand in 1964.

Audience responses to the film are fairly positive though not enthusiastic. On IMDb, where it holds a 6.8 rating from roughly 1,500 votes, viewers rate it solidly, while on TMDB the score is 6.1 from a much smaller group of 34 voters. The larger IMDb sample carries more weight, and it suggests the film is regarded with reasonable favor by those who have seen it, with no critic rating recorded among the facts.