. . . the U.S. Secret Service failed to cancel the President's visit to a Western whistle-stop hamlet when dying Los Angeles Stool Pigeon "Smiley Bitters" told them that a mob-connected gunman was going to pop the Commander-in-Chief there within a few hours. If you consider that "John Baron's" Real Life mob buddies actually DID rub out our beleaguered JFK less than a decade later from behind the Grassy Knoll, should SUDDENLY be seen as a dress rehearsal for the Debacle in Dallas? Perhaps it is Standard Operating Procedure for the taxpayer-funded Presidential Protectors NEVER to bow before any threat--foreign or domestic--but rather to trot out our Oval Office Occupants like so many dead ducks in a shooting gallery, knowing that there are plenty more billionaires available who'd be only too eager to have "Hail to the Chief" played for themselves. Probably any prudent Leader should carry an "insurance policy" in the form of a back-up detail of Mossad or KGB agents, so as not to become just another road-kill statistic like JFK.

The first thing you'll notice about this film is the first 10 minutes or so where the boy wants a cap gun and his mother does not want him to have one because his father was killed by gunfire in the military. She wants to basically keep the kid in a bubble or well protected from such things. Her boyfriend, the town sheriff, tells her that "guns aren't good or bad it's the people that use them". Well, the theme of guns will continue throughout the film and plays in important role in movie - and not just the assassination attempt on the president in the film.The movie does have some very intense moments and Frank Sinatra delivers a lot of those moments in his role as the villain John Baron. A very good role for Sinatra - and the rest of the cast was good too.A very good thriller if you like these type of films - worth watching.8.5/10

This is an entertaining crime drama with an excellent performance by Frank Sinatra in the role of an assassin. I was surprised at how convincingly Sinatra played a very different character than he'd normally be cast as. Usually he played the hero, here he plays a despicable cold-blooded killer.It's very well-written by Richard Sale and carefully directed by Lewis Allen. Most of the cast performed very well, notably Nancy Gates as widow Ellen Benson, Sterling Hayden as Sheriff Tod Shaw who is in love with Ellen, and James Gleason as Pop Benson, the father of Ellen's husband who was killed in WW II.

This is a painful dog to sit through. There is the 50s corny crap and an incredibly stupid script that is more talky than any French movie.Sinatra must be the stupidest assassin alive in this; any ordinary one would have simply killed everyone in the house or tied them up and gagged them!!....no, he engages in constant blather with the hostages. The hostages cleverly play on Sinatra's vanities and psychology to get him to become unglued.You can see the ho hum plot tricks a mile away. The gun in the top drawer of a dresser that looks like the toy gun the kid has etc....The actor playing the kid immediately got on my nerves with in the first 2 minutes of the show and half way through the film I began to hope all the hostages would be shot--starting with him and the old man. Unfortunately only the TV repair man got it.The denouement was actually funny....when the TV repairman has wired the table with 4,000 volts and the helper of Sinatra gets electrocuted and starts firing the gun like a machine gun from electric shocks to his convulsing fingers.As another reviewer stated garbage like this ages badly....since you not only have garbage but the 50s corny blather with it.DO NOT RENT DO NOT WATCH unless you want to be tortured for an hour and 15 minutes (it's only good point it is short).