The Secret of Convict Lake (1951)

Why is this movie so little-known? Yesterday I was checking the day’s schedule for the Fox Movie Channel and I came across the listing for the THE SECRET OF CONVICT LAKE (1951) at 10:25 AM (EST). The onscreen description sounded really intriguing. I didn’t write it down and it’s no longer available on the Fox Retro website, so I can only tell you it said something about five escaped convicts entering a western town populated entirely by women, with a cast topped by Glenn Ford, Gene Tierney, Ethel Barrymore, Ann Dvorak and Zachary Scott, surely enough to make me sit up and take notice. This premise and that cast are not to be taken lightly. I then looked it up in Maltin’s Movie Guide (the only place I’d ever previously seen a reference for this film) and it said, simply, “Set in 1870s California, escaped prisoners hide out at settlement comprised largely of women; fine cast makes the most of script.” It gave the film a **1/2 rating, which, in Maltin, can often be taken as a *** rating. The director was Michael Gordon, who had a few credits I liked very much, including PILLOW TALK and PORTRAIT IN BLACK. So I made plans to watch it. This is the kind of minor studio film that used to play constantly on local broadcast TV back in the day when local channels ran movies during the day, at night and on weekends, yet I don’t recall this one ever playing.