**SPOILERS** The film "Desperate" is well worth watching only for the fact that it has the very underrated Steve Brodie, as independent trucker Steve Randell,in one of his few leading roles. The film itself has a number of inconsistencies that almost sink it before it ever takes off. There's the head hoodlum Walt Radak, Raymond Burr, at one point getting shot and and on the brink of death, as he's being attended in his hideout by a quack doctor, and then in what seems like days is back in charge and fit as a fiddle. Radak walks and drives around giving orders without the slightest hint of him ever being badly wounded or even wounded at all!
There's also Radak's eager to make it big as a gangster kid brother Al, Larry Nunn, who insists, against his big brothers timely advice, to take part in a warehouse robbery, where Steve is tricked into being the wheel-man, and ends up shooting and killing a policeman that lands him on death row. Steve who tried to warn the cop by blinking his headlights ends up in hot water with the Radak Mob in holding him responsible for the predicament that the very foolish and hot-headed Al got himself into.
Radak spends almost the entire movie trying to track down the one the run Steve not to kill him but to get Steve to falsely confess to killing the cop that Little Al knocked off. Radak also holds Steve responsible for Al's capture by the police by stepping on the gas and leaving Al behind where he was soon captured. With a wife Anne, Audrey Long, about to give birth Steve takes off to her parents farm in far off Minnesota to lay low until the heats off; Not from the cops who are out looking for him but from Radak and his gang.
The local police headed by Det. Ferrie, Jason Robards Sr, seem to be the only cops around chasing Steve, and later Radak, for hundreds if not over a thousand miles with Steve feeling that he'll be charged as an accessory to murder of the policeman back at the warehouse. Steve later gets the surprise of his life when Let. Ferrie tells him that one of Radak's hoods Shorty Abbott, Freddie Steele, gave a deathbed confession saying that he had nothing to do with the policeman's death! How Convenient!
As the day for Little Al's execution, that's to take places almost a thousand miles away, nears we see in the headline of the local Mountain City newspaper, covering the entire front page as if it was reporting the bombing of Pearl Harbor or V-J Day, that he's to be executed at midnight. Little Al's big brother Walt Radak, who's also in town, then comes up with this plan that only his totally sick and disturbed mind can dream up.
Always having a flair for the dramatic Radak want's to do in Steve at the very moment, when the clock strikes midnight, that his little brother Al is to get the juice, electricity, turned on him. Radak is so obsessed with having Steve get it the same way that Al will that he also forces Steve to eat his last meal, a stale turkey sandwich with a glass of milk, like a waiting to be executed prisoner on death row before he's, in Steve's case with a fuselage of bullets, himself to be executed!
This insane act on Radak's part is so badly mishandled with everything going wrong as not only the people in the apartment building catch on to what's going on but also the police, headed by Let. Ferrie. All that leads to Radak ending up as the man in the cross-hairs not Steve. This whole wild crazy and unbelievable conclusion of the movie ends up at precisely the time that Radak planned it, midnight, with the results, or victim, being somewhat if not totally different then what he planned.
There's also Radak's eager to make it big as a gangster kid brother Al, Larry Nunn, who insists, against his big brothers timely advice, to take part in a warehouse robbery, where Steve is tricked into being the wheel-man, and ends up shooting and killing a policeman that lands him on death row. Steve who tried to warn the cop by blinking his headlights ends up in hot water with the Radak Mob in holding him responsible for the predicament that the very foolish and hot-headed Al got himself into.
Radak spends almost the entire movie trying to track down the one the run Steve not to kill him but to get Steve to falsely confess to killing the cop that Little Al knocked off. Radak also holds Steve responsible for Al's capture by the police by stepping on the gas and leaving Al behind where he was soon captured. With a wife Anne, Audrey Long, about to give birth Steve takes off to her parents farm in far off Minnesota to lay low until the heats off; Not from the cops who are out looking for him but from Radak and his gang.
The local police headed by Det. Ferrie, Jason Robards Sr, seem to be the only cops around chasing Steve, and later Radak, for hundreds if not over a thousand miles with Steve feeling that he'll be charged as an accessory to murder of the policeman back at the warehouse. Steve later gets the surprise of his life when Let. Ferrie tells him that one of Radak's hoods Shorty Abbott, Freddie Steele, gave a deathbed confession saying that he had nothing to do with the policeman's death! How Convenient!
As the day for Little Al's execution, that's to take places almost a thousand miles away, nears we see in the headline of the local Mountain City newspaper, covering the entire front page as if it was reporting the bombing of Pearl Harbor or V-J Day, that he's to be executed at midnight. Little Al's big brother Walt Radak, who's also in town, then comes up with this plan that only his totally sick and disturbed mind can dream up.
Always having a flair for the dramatic Radak want's to do in Steve at the very moment, when the clock strikes midnight, that his little brother Al is to get the juice, electricity, turned on him. Radak is so obsessed with having Steve get it the same way that Al will that he also forces Steve to eat his last meal, a stale turkey sandwich with a glass of milk, like a waiting to be executed prisoner on death row before he's, in Steve's case with a fuselage of bullets, himself to be executed!
This insane act on Radak's part is so badly mishandled with everything going wrong as not only the people in the apartment building catch on to what's going on but also the police, headed by Let. Ferrie. All that leads to Radak ending up as the man in the cross-hairs not Steve. This whole wild crazy and unbelievable conclusion of the movie ends up at precisely the time that Radak planned it, midnight, with the results, or victim, being somewhat if not totally different then what he planned.