Film Listings – Bognor Regis Observer – Friday, 15 June 1956

PAVILION, SELSEY. "THE DESPERATE HOURS," a powerful drama of a family who are terrorized for two days by three desperate escaped convicts, stars Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March. Bogart plays a sadistic, revenge-ridden escaped convict, and March a father whose courage, when his home is invaded by Bogart and his deadly companions, is slowly awakened through 48 hours of terror. Arthur Kennedy plays a forceful detective burdened with the responsibility of organizing the search for the convicts, despite the fact that he is Bogart's prime target. Martha Scott is a courageous but anguished wife and mother whose love for her husband deepens as she realizes what a "tough bird" she married. Dewey Martin is Bogart's younger brother and partner in escape embittered by the sense of what he has missed in life and what his end is bound to be. Gig Young and Mary Murphy are young lovers whose relationship is almost finished. Alan Ladd has one of his most virile roles in "TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST." Based on the famous story by Richard Henry Dana, the film gives a realistic picture of the bad old days of sailing, when crews were half-starved and otherwise ill-treated by barbarous skippers and brutal mates. Brian Donlevy. Howard de Silva, and William Bendix are prominently featured in the film, which is presented against a convincing background of the high seas. " POLICE DOG" shows how Alsatian dogs are trained to obey their police handlers and arrest a suspect by pinning him down until called off. "NOT AS A STRANGER," with Olivia De Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Charles Bickford and Frank Sinatra, is a domestic drama centred on the life of Lucas Marsh, an idealist, whose ambition is to become a doctor.