Five Minutes to Live (1961)

“A woman’s price drops fast as the time limit ticks away!” A true oddity also known as Door-to-Door Maniac, this low-budget, moderately entertaining flick stars none other than the “Man in Black” himself, Johnny Cash, as psychotic, guitar-strumming criminal “Johnny Cabot,” who teams up with another lowlife, “Fred” (Vic Tayback, yes the same guy who portrayed “Mel” on the TV show Alice), to commit a bank robbery. So Cabot takes the bank vice president’s wife “Nancy” (Cay Forrester) hostage while Fred visits the bank and tries to collect the ransom money. It turns out the vice president, “Ken” (Donald Woods) has a mistress, “Ellen” (Pamela Mason), on the side and he tells Fred he could give two shits about his wife—he was going to leave her anyway! Not surprisingly, it’s young Ronnie “Opie” Howard as the couple’s son, “Bobby,” who outsmarts the bad guys in the end (and out-acts the entire cast in the process!). To give you an idea of the film’s quality, it was directed by Bill Karn, who also made Ma Barker’s Killer Brood (1960). Bottom line: This is a must-see for Cash fans like me – everyone else can pretty much take it or leave it. Look for another country music legend, Merle Travis, as yet another lowlife named “Max.”

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