User Reviews

Johnny Cash gives a raw and disturbing performance, but this film is a nice watch. Some really creepy scenes float through this one and it's not directed with much pace or flow, but has it's moments. Little Ronny Howard is great as the kid. Alternate title: DOOR-TO-DOOR MANIAC. A 4 out of 10 with Howard taking the acting honors.

Vic Tayback (ALICE) is authentic as a criminal type and the black and white cinematography is cool with strange music. I'd never heard of this until recently. All Cash fans should check it out (1961). The rest of the cast is standard TV drama quality, but I wasn't bored at all. This is on DVD now and quite cheap.

Before making "Five Minutes to Live", Johnny Cash's only prior film credits included a handful of TV Western guest appearances. On the flip side, seven year old Ron Howard, billed here as Ronnie, already had a pretty extensive career spanning five years. I don't think any of this really matters as far as the picture goes, but I like getting into this kind of trivia.

What you have here is the makings of a cult classic, but up until today I had never heard of it. It's packaged as one of two hundred fifty films as part of the Mill Creek Mystery Collection, and as my habit goes, I pick the flicks to watch at random. I'm well past the half way mark by now and never noticed Johnny Cash's name on any of the DVD sleeves or I would have put this at the head of the line. After watching it though, it might just as well stay at the back of the pack.

Well, to be fair, if you're a Johnny Cash fan, you'll want to catch this little gem, but for all the wrong reasons. His performance here is maniacally sadistic, juxtaposed with occasional riffs on his guitar belting out lines from the title song. It's all kind of surreal in it's own way, and perhaps there was a method to the madness of Cash cashing in on his growing celebrity status as a country singer. Otherwise I wouldn't get this at all.

The single plot element that really could have taken this film over the top was the idea that bank president Wilson (Donald Woods) was OK with ex-con Fred Dorella (Vic Tayback) having his wife killed if he didn't fork over seventy grand. That whole story line went down the drain well before it had to, and it would have been much more interesting if Wilson told Dorella to just go ahead. And by the way, why go through the pretense of having Wilson cash Dorella's check - he was robbing the bank!!!

Anyway, it looks like most of the posters on this board had a fine time with the flick so I don't want to throw any more cold water on it. You'll have to see it and judge for yourself. For my money, it was worth the proportional price I paid for the Mill Creek box set, which would have pegged it at about twenty cents. If you do catch the film, pay attention when the bowling alley owner Max (Merle Travis) encounters Tayback's character early in the story and orders him up a 'club and soda' - wouldn't that just be a plain club soda?

5 Minutes to Live

The film opens with Vic Tayback getting the third degree in a police detective's office. He tells the cops, "It all started back in New Jersey were Johnny killed those two cops..." The film cuts away to a warehouse were two men are breaking in. A pair of cops pull up which starts a gun-battle that ends with one of the men, and both cops dead. The survivor is Johnny Cabot, who is played by Johnny Cash. He knows he is now hot, so he grabs his girl, and flees town for the west coast. He cools his heels in a rundown $2.50 a day motel outside of L.A. He starts to grow bored with his dolly and the lack of money.

He jumps at the offer of a big payoff for a one day job when contacted by local heavy, Tayback. Tayback has the "perfect" plan. They are going to hit the largest of the local banks for no less than 70 grand. Cash asks as to how only the two of them could pull this off. Tayback lays it all out for him. They will grab the manager's wife as a hostage, and then threaten to kill her if the money is not handed over.

Tayback tells Cash he has spent months planning the job and that nothing can go wrong. Cash is to grab the wife while Tayback goes to the bank to pay the manager, Donald Woods, a visit. Next morning they begin the caper. Cash poses as a door to door salesman to gain entry to the banker's house and get a grip on the wife. Tayback calmly enters the bank and asks to see the manager on an urgent matter. He is shown into Woods' office where he quickly fills in Woods on what he must do. Of course it turns out there is a fly in the ointment. It seems Woods has been getting some on the side and had planned to leave for Vegas that night with his new love. Woods sees no reason to pay! Tayback plays it cool and calls the house where Cash is holding the woman. "If you don't hear from me in 5 minutes, kill the woman!" Now the game of chicken starts, will Woods stand his ground or cave?

Back at the house, Cash is having a grand old time smacking the wife around and destroying the furniture. Woods meanwhile has agreed to the terms and gets Tayback the money. Tayback tells Woods he will call from outside the bank and have Woods' wife released. Smooth as could be, Tayback heads for the exit. Another fly enters the picture as the guard recognizes Tayback from a poster and jumps him. To Woods horror several bystanders also pile on Tayback. Woods runs for the nearest phone and calls the police.

At the house, Cash is enjoying himself so much he loses track of the time. The couples' son, Ronnie Howard, shows up just as the police do. Cash grabs the kid as a shield and runs out the back door. A quick exchange of gunfire and Cash is dispatched.

The wife is played by Kay Forester who also wrote the screenplay. The director was Bill Karn. His claim to fame is that fun grade d film, MA BARKER'S KILLER BROOD. Despitethe low origins there are several things that make this film work. First, the cast is all quite good with Cash looking great as a gunman with a screw or two loose.

Second is the overall look of the film which was lensed by Carl Guthrie. Guthrie worked on such film noir as, THE WOMAN IN WHITE, FLAXY MARTIN, BACKFIRE, THIS SIDE OF THE LAW, HIGHWAY 301 and CAGED. A neat little low, low, low budget gem. I loved it!

(There are Spoilers) Being told in flashback by gangster Fred Dorella, Vic Taybak, we get the lowdown of the bank heist that he was involved with the on the lamb cop killer Johnny Cabot, Johnny Cash.

Johnny fled him home state of New Jersey after a blotched warehouse robbery where his partner Pete,Max Manning, and two policemen were shot and killed. Cooped up with his gun moll Doris, Midge Ware,in this flea bag motel in Carmellia Gardens outside L.A Johnny is edgy and a bit irritated in not being on a bank job where he can get back into action as a seasoned criminal.

It's when Johnny's contact in town bowling alley owner Max, Merle Travis, gets in touch with him about a pending bank robbery that things start to pick up for the by now deeply depressed, in being stuck in dull as dishwater suburbia, Johnny Cabot. Meeting New York hoodlum Fred Dorella Johnny not only gets the job that he's been craving for, as the both wheel and hit man, but as a bonus finds out who set him and the late Pete up in the blotched warehouse job back in Jersey.

The plan thought out by Dorella to rob the Harper Federal Trust in Carmellia is foolproof with Johnny holding the bank's vice president Ken Wilson, Donald Woods, wife Nacny, Kay Forrester, hostage in her suburban home. Dorella is then to get Wilson to give him $70,000.00 from the bank vault in order to insure his wife's safety. The plan as air-tight as it is has in fact a number of very serious flaws in it that both Dorella and Johnny, having no idea of Wilson's secret love life, didn't take into account. There's also the problem of both Wilson and Nacy's six year-old boy Bobby, little Ronnie or later to be known as movie mogul Ron Howard, who has a habit of showing up unexpectedly from school. Johnny who would kill a man or woman just for looking at him cross-eyed or not appreciating his country & western music, he plays the guitar in his spear time, has this thing about shooting adolescents.

Jonny Cash, in what seems to be his first movie role, has the time of his life playing the ruthless and murderous Johnny Cabot doing as good of a performance as you would have expected from a young James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Even when Johnny is slapping Nancy, and threatening to blow her brains out, around he still finds time to play his guitar, Cash also wrote and sings the films title song "Five Minutes to live", and crack a number of jokes that puts off the edge of the tension that's built up in the film. Wilson who's being blackmailed by Dorella to clean out his bank vault is really not all that interested in his wife's safety since he's planning to leave her for his girlfriend Ellen Harcourt, Pamela Mason, and fly to Las Vages to get married that very evening!

Everything falls apart as both Dorella, in the bank, and Johnny, at the Wilson home, get royally screwed not by Ken Wilson and Nancy but by a number of people or innocent bystanders, that includes little Bobby, who unexpectedly get involved with their so-called master plan. Like all perfect crimes the one that Dorella and Johnny concocted didn't factor in the unexpected and it was the unexpected that in the end did them both in.

This does not make sense. Why would the plot say that these killers went door to door killing whoever answered the door. That is a down right lie. No where in the movie did this ever happen!!!! It had only one motive, one event, no maniacs going door to door. I just wanted to know why it is stated that a band of killers go from door to door killing the people who answer the door. There is no band, just two characters who are involved with this bank robbery. There is basically one hostage and one ransom plea of $70,000. If you are going to rob a bank, you would not use your real name, would you? The manager of the bank discovers a wanted poster with the robber's name and picture. Too obvious.

This movie starts out fair enough. We see Johnny Cash shooting down police officers, his face jiggling as his machine gun rattles. A cool song of his comes on called, appropriately enough, "Five minutes to live". A couple of scenes pass buy, introducing the characters, who seemed interesting, at first. Johnny Cabot is an ex-con looking for a way to make some quick cash. Nancy Wilson is a housewife too caught up in activities outside the home to spend time with her family. Donald Wilson is her bored bank president husband, who is seeing another woman on the side. And then there's "Ronnie" Howard, as their son. There's a couple of other characters, two cons who include Johnny in their scam in robbing the banker. If he doesn't give them the cash, his wife gets shot by Johnny Cash. So the first few minutes were promising. Them, when Johnny got the banker's wife into her home alone, I could tell this was going to be boring. After Johnny smashes some pottery and forces himself upon Nancy, there really wasn't much left for them to do except sit around playing guitar while one points a gun at the other. I'll admit a bit of suspense comes into play, as the two wait for the call from the banker that will save the woman's life,but this accumulates to nothing, as, rest assured, owl' Donald comes to the rescue just in time to save his wife. The problem with this movie was, it tried it's best to NOT be dark. It added bland humor at every possible moment, gave Ronnie some mildly funny jabs, and makes sure the ending is as happy as possible. Ronnie doesn't get shot, after all, bad guy dies, Donald ends his affair, and they all lived happily ever after. The movie is wrapped up with a little bow, as Nancy and Donald drive off with grins on their faces and stars in their eyes.This overshadows the somewhat dark performance by Johnny Cash, and the first 10 minutes or so, which has several people shot down by Johnny. In my opinion, it looks like they tried to make a film noir for Andy Griffith fans, and just didn't pull it off successfully. Maybe, if this film were remade by the Coen Brothers, we would have a good film. I can see William H. Macy as Donald Wilson right now... Note:I was calling the hero character Donald Wilson. The character's name is Ken Wilson, while the actor's name is Donald Woods. My mistake.