The first time I heard about this movie was in junior high school. I was in a "citizenship" class. The movie was based on a real incident. A family named Hill had been taken hostage by escaped criminals in 1952. There was an article about it in Life magazine at the time. You'll be happy to know that the criminals treated the Hill family courteously, so the Hills felt they were misrepresented by the magazine's claims that their nine-year-old was roughed up and that their adult daughter bit one of the men. The family sued. They won, but the Supreme Court turned on them and deprived them of their winnings. They ruled that the cost of a free press is crooked, money-grubbing "journalists" making up phony stories about you.
The movie is rather tense as you might imagine. The father (Fredric March) is trying to keep his wife and kids from provoking the escapees; Humphrey Bogart, meanwhile, is trying to keep a giant violent moron (Robert Middleton) he's escaped with from murdering them. Gig Young as the daughter's boyfriend who won't go away no matter how many times she tells him that it's not a good time and he can't come in.
With Martha Scott and Mary Murphy.
Also with Ray Collins, Arthur Kennedy, and Alan Reed (the voice of Fred Flintstone).
Joe Flynn from McHale's Navy as an additional hostage.
Dewey Martin played Bogart's younger brother. He died in 2018. The two kids, Richard Eyer who played the son and Louis Lettieri who played his friend, may be the only two left.
Several years ago, someone noted that Robert Blake was one of the few actors left who worked with Humphrey Bogart, but Richard Eyer was in a lot more scenes with him. He even attacked Bogart at one point. Blake had a small role in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Filmed in VistaVision even though most of it took place in a house.
Available on The Criterion Channel or on Pluto.
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