The Breaking Point

THE BREAKING POINT is a quota quickie from those cheap guys at Butcher's Film Services. The director is none other than Lance Comfort, who churned out B-movie after B-movie during this era, before dying suddenly at the age of 58 in 1966. It makes one wonder whether he literally worked himself to death by giving his all to this genre of film.

In any case, THE BREAKING POINT is a fairly average movie, let down by the lack of money involved and a slightly plodding pace. The lead is played by Peter Reynolds, a rather foolish executive who finds himself with money problems and visits from a debt collector. In order to compound his problems, he gets involved with some gamblers and soon finds himself being coerced into a criminal plot.

The story behind this one is quite familiar and in fact I saw almost exactly the same thing play out in another film shown on the Talking Pictures TV channel (although I can't remember the title, as indistinguishable as they are). It's not the worst film ever, but there's a definite sense of going through the motions here, particularly on the part of the actors involved. THE BREAKING POINT just about passes muster as a time waster from the era, but there were a lot better B-movies being made too.