User reviews

Richard Talmadge is passing through town, where he is mistaken for a local fence, also played by Richard Talmadge. That fence has just gotten some diamonds to unload. The crooks who stole them don't trust him to leave town. So he arranges with Talmadge to carry fakes and distract the other crooks while he heads elsewhere to unload them.

It's a nice idea for a movie, and Talmadge does his usual assortment of stunts, mostly jumping while other actors clamber. Unfortunately, it's directed by Bernard Ray, which means the dialogue proceeds as if each line has no relationship to the one before or after, shots are held too long, and editor Fred Bain can't even cut a chase sequence decently.

Talmadge's starring career would not survive the following year, but he had a fine career ahead of him. He had entered the movies as a stuntman for Douglas Fairbanks. After the acting roles disappeared, he returned to stuntwork and second unit direction through the middle of the 1960s. He died in 1981 at the age of 88.

Stunt man Richard Talmadge starred in this ultra-low-budget film that's short on plot, shorter on logic, but packed with action filmed on the streets of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. Let's see, there's something about a guy who's passing through town on a train, who's mistaken for a local man who looks just like him. The local guy is supposed to sell some hot jewels, or something, I don't know, it doesn't make much sense. In fact, Talmadge's flicks were supposedly very popular in Stalin's USSR because the stories were so simple and childlike. But the action scenes are great, beginning with a foot chase and a free-for-all fight all around one of L.A.'s downtown train stations (the Santa Fe, I think). Most other shots were done in the Hollywood hills, particularly all around the Beachwood village, including a shop at 2961 Beachwood and the nearby Beachwood Market. With all the car chases and rolling down hillsides and fisticuffs--filmed on the streets and not on some phony back lot--who cares about plot anyway? The film is available in a not-too-bad print from Alpha Video.