Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

LeonLouisRicci Considered one of the most Bleak, Depressing, Gloomy, Brooding, but Ultimately Unsuccessful in the Genre of Film-Noir. Unsuccessful at the Box Office and Unsuccessful, but Not Completely with Critics and Fans.It's a Troubled Subject and it was a Troubled Production. The Subject of "Religion" in Motion Pictures in the "Code" Era was Scrutinized as much as Anything from the "Overseers/Big Brother" Censors with Hays Hubris and Nothing Slipped by that wasn't "Christian" Friendly.So this Story of a Young Man who was Dissed by the Church and wouldn't give His Father a "Decent" Burial because of Suicide and the Trauma that Followed was Suspect. But that's just the Pro-Log. His Mother than Succumbs to TB, Dies, and the Trauma is Repeated. Not because of Suicide but because He and His Mother are Ghetto Dwelling Poor.What Ensues is a Film that had to be Pulled and "Softened" with "Book-Ending" New Scenes.The Movie is as Dark as Noir can get with its Relentless Display of an Uncaring and Ugly World, especially if You don't have Money. Audiences at the Time would have none of it and the "Money-Men" at the Studios Shunned the mere Existence of the Film and it Languished in Limbo for Years.The Star, Farley Granger Bad Mouthed the Movie any chance He got and the Film Remained Unrecognized for Decades. Dana Andrews, Paul Stewart and the rest of the Fine Cast all Add to the Agonizing Atmosphere and the Movie Stands on its own. Noble, but Flawed by Fawning Concerns that were Against the Grain of the Source Material.When Viewed Today, it can Showcase Societal Attitudes about Organized Religion, Pulverizing Poverty, and a Studio System, like American Lower Class Life, that was in Dire Need of Liberal Reform in a Post War America that was Showing its Capitalistic Muscle.

secondtake Edge of Doom (1950)It would be hard to find a movie as unrelentingly dark and brooding as this one. Everyone from the priest to the hero's mother, from the sweet girlfriend to the neighbor down the hall is burdened with the pain of everyday life. Most of the scenes at night, too, or inside dark rooms and hallways, or both, so the shadowy world only descends lower. And this is partly what makes it really work. Dana Andrews is a worldly, reflective priest in a tale of redemption, actually, against all this gloom. The protagonist is a young Farley Granger, who gets in trouble from a single rash act, and is in a tailspin for the rest of the movie. From one shadowy scene to another, running through dark streets or hiding in a dingy apartment, Granger has to face his inner demon.But Granger, like Andrews, is a thoroughly decent person inside, and the movie, despite all the negative vibes, is about faith and goodness. Director Mark Robson is not a big name, of course, but he paid his dues with some of the best--Robert Wise and Val Lewton. And he came out of an era of Hollywood that was uncompromising in its technical quality. It shows. This is a movie with a single main theme, and if it has impassioned acting and high dramatics (at times) it also is gritty and single minded, too. The plot is packaged too neatly, and littered with Andrews narrating through the long flashback. That's its one limitation--that it's limited. But what it does do it does with real intensity.

David (Handlinghandel) My view is that this movie falls somewhere between hose two genres. I'd call it closer to soap opera. And how, with all the talent involved, it failed so badly, makes it something of a mystery as well.The same year, "Side Street" came out. Farley Granger was heartbreaking. He had been heartbreaking in the most poetic of all noirs two years earlier, too: "They Live By Night." Here he shows, and elicits, no emotion at all. His character is written as someone who's a little slow. But why? There were lots of young men living with, and fanatically attached to their mothers. There still are some.)(By the way, I read the entry by the person whose father wrote the original book and feel empathy. There is certainly potential here. The movie just seems to have lost its way -- and lost it very early, despite the ministrations of a fine director, Mark Robson, and a superb screenwriter, in Philip Yordan.) None of it rings true, to put it bluntly. None of the major parts, that is. The florist for whom Granger works is well played and convincing. But the major characters are not credible.) Dana Andrews is miscast or ill directed as the understanding young priest who tries to help Granger. He goes in for such seriousness he seems to be speaking his every word in a hushed sounds. His delivery reminds me of Anne Baxter's when she is trying to convince people of her sincerity in "All About Eve." She convinced them for a while but he doesn't convince me. None of the principals do. And what a shame, too: It has potential and is performed, written, and directed by major talents.None is at his best here.

songwarrior52 My dad wrote the book that EOD is based on. It is interesting to me that a film that was declared a resounding failure still elicits some interesting commentary. The view that it is possibly the most depressing noir-type film around sounds like a huge compliment to me, given what noir is always striving to do, and indeed it IS a dark film (which makes the above comment about the Stradling cinematography kind of puzzling). Also, the IMDb trivia statement that the film has never been shown on TV can't possibly be true, since I remember seeing it on TV when I was a teen.The novel Edge of Doom used a Crime and Punishment narrative style to tell a contemporary murder story revolving around poverty in a large American city—the template was Philadelphia—and to raise issues about how devotion to church alone can not solve the ills of a modern society. The subject matter is indeed bleak, and indeed ahead of its time. It's certainly a brooding tale, but the novel as literature was considered significant in its day. How Goldwyn came to produce it as a film is a story unto itself, but there can be no doubting that if the film's creative team had stuck to their noir-ish guns, and focused more artfully on the message, it would have been a much better film, not to mention a film that might've actually raised noir above its melodramatic station. (Noir is great, of course, and it's fun to view its style, but a lot of the entries in the genre are tough to watch nowadays, simply because the dialogue is so corny.) Bookending the movie with the corny priest scenes ruined the film's chance to actually probe the poverty theme with seriousness. By soft-pedaling its style, Mark Robson and Philip Yordan failed to capture what was important about the novel. Here was yet another example of Hollywood so afraid of box-office impact that they made a difficult situation worse, when what they might've had was a critically well-received work that would have also failed at the box office but at least might've been counted as art.I can't say I agree with the above post that hails the work of Farley Granger. Granger has been publicly vitriolic about the movie, but in my view he did nothing to help it. He's wooden and self-conscious, and, let's face it, he was never a good actor even when Hitchcock directed him. However, I am also open to the possibility that, had Robson had any conceptual idea about how to best tell this tale, Granger might've made for an interesting screen subject. The Yordan screenplay tweaks trivialized the message and shortchanged the potential for a visual style. Even then, if Robson had brought a creative approach to things, even the screenplay issues might've been overcome.EOD the film remains a historical curiosity, but it's mostly an example of what happens when unsympathetic, apparently clueless, filmmakers are hired to tackle a subject of seriousness, which they can only reduce to cinematic hackwork. It could have been, it SHOULD have been, a much better movie.