Edge of Eternity

A film set at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Les Martin is a deputy sheriff. There is little work in the district and he is bored. A body is found. Strangled, and left near an abandoned mine. Then a second body. The connection is an old gold mine. It closed years ago and carries a story. From there the film is an investigation. Les goes around the town and finds that everyone is hiding something. There is a miner. There is an operator. And a woman new to the district. Janice is the daughter of a rich family. Her father runs a business there. A line forms between the two of them. The canyon is inside the narrative. The roads are narrow, the distances long, and help is always far away. The last section takes place on a cable car. There is a freight line crossing the canyon; it was built to carry guano. The car hangs between the two rims. The fight starts there. That section was shot on location. The cable line was real and the canyon was underneath. What the narrative is interested in is not murder but place: its idea is that the canyon itself is a threat and that in every scene there is the possibility of falling. The narrative is short and tight. The film runs a little over eighty minutes. Don Siegel made it before his bigger films; the structure is plain and without display. The images are widescreen and colour; the landscape is its strongest feature. Cornel Wilde, Victoria Shaw, Mickey Shaughnessy and Edgar Buchanan are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1950s American crime films and tension built on place. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a complex puzzle; the plot is thin and the killer can be guessed early.