A seaman on shore leave looks forward to meeting his brother again. However, it proves strangely difficult to find him. After a while the seaman makes a terrible discovery : it turns out that his brother is sitting on death row, awaiting execution for murder...
"Three steps to the gallows" is a thriller/crime movie, and a convoluted one at that. Trying to save his brother's life, the seaman protagonist meets deception upon deception and trick upon trick, to the point where even the most careful of viewers may begin to feel as lost as a kitten in a boiler room. Sadly enough, the two brothers have little emotional connection : they seem more like fellow library users or like fellow train passengers than like people born of the same parents and raised in the same household. This lack of mutual rapport and affection impacts the movie badly.
"Three steps" also belongs to that annoying category of thrillers in which characters get beaten frequently and severely, only in order to stroll around resolutely with no limp or black eye to be seen. In real life, individuals beaten this badly would probably end up in hospital, if not in a morgue.
The passage of time has endowed the movie with a certain time capsule charm, but it has also provided a moment of unintentional hilarity : nowadays, "Gay Mask Club" conjures up a rather specialized kind of establishment. Ah well, in half a century our descendants will grin over double entendres as yet unborn...
"Three steps to the gallows" is a thriller/crime movie, and a convoluted one at that. Trying to save his brother's life, the seaman protagonist meets deception upon deception and trick upon trick, to the point where even the most careful of viewers may begin to feel as lost as a kitten in a boiler room. Sadly enough, the two brothers have little emotional connection : they seem more like fellow library users or like fellow train passengers than like people born of the same parents and raised in the same household. This lack of mutual rapport and affection impacts the movie badly.
"Three steps" also belongs to that annoying category of thrillers in which characters get beaten frequently and severely, only in order to stroll around resolutely with no limp or black eye to be seen. In real life, individuals beaten this badly would probably end up in hospital, if not in a morgue.
The passage of time has endowed the movie with a certain time capsule charm, but it has also provided a moment of unintentional hilarity : nowadays, "Gay Mask Club" conjures up a rather specialized kind of establishment. Ah well, in half a century our descendants will grin over double entendres as yet unborn...