Earl Holliman is really good in this movie. Often in films he came off as being rather stiff but if you fast forward to his moments in the film you are seeing the only virtues it's got.
Sold as a thriller it has very little thrills or courtroom drama either, it spends most of it's time with the young judge splitting his time in the sack with a white Blonde of a Mexican black haired girl, guess which one his mother prefers. There is a bit of frank talk but not much heat to these romanic elements and one long travelogue day in Mexico seuqence that tries to convince us we aren't just on the Universal Backlot the whole time.
Lamont Johnson had a long career doing good television work, but all his features feel like bad tv movies and this is no exception, even though it's shot by Robert Burks who shot many Hitchcock films this feels overlit and small scale, though it's supposed to be a period film all the costumes look like costumes freshly cleaned in between every shot.
Even Gene Hackman doesn't make any impression here. Really for the most part this tries to be a kind of light weight romance with the young judge bantering with his Mexican mom. Then once in awhile we cut abruptly to something related to the supposed race against the clock to save a man's life.
The film could have sordid elements but probably the censors at the time forbid this so there is nothing much to shake you out of waiting for the next commercial, which doesn't happen as it's not really the television movie it feels like.
Bafflingly happy to lucky Leonard Roseman score, as if told, hey let's push the romance.
The thriller plot is pretty goofy really but perhaps the few twists there might work if the movie was at all interested in being about the murder of the law. It might have had something to say. Who knows maybe they tried to keep too much in from the novel so everything feels undeveloped except the judge's romance and that hardly is about a Covenant with Death--something a rushed speech near the end mentions very briefly because, why should a movie with that title have anything to do with that subject matter.
A dud.
Sold as a thriller it has very little thrills or courtroom drama either, it spends most of it's time with the young judge splitting his time in the sack with a white Blonde of a Mexican black haired girl, guess which one his mother prefers. There is a bit of frank talk but not much heat to these romanic elements and one long travelogue day in Mexico seuqence that tries to convince us we aren't just on the Universal Backlot the whole time.
Lamont Johnson had a long career doing good television work, but all his features feel like bad tv movies and this is no exception, even though it's shot by Robert Burks who shot many Hitchcock films this feels overlit and small scale, though it's supposed to be a period film all the costumes look like costumes freshly cleaned in between every shot.
Even Gene Hackman doesn't make any impression here. Really for the most part this tries to be a kind of light weight romance with the young judge bantering with his Mexican mom. Then once in awhile we cut abruptly to something related to the supposed race against the clock to save a man's life.
The film could have sordid elements but probably the censors at the time forbid this so there is nothing much to shake you out of waiting for the next commercial, which doesn't happen as it's not really the television movie it feels like.
Bafflingly happy to lucky Leonard Roseman score, as if told, hey let's push the romance.
The thriller plot is pretty goofy really but perhaps the few twists there might work if the movie was at all interested in being about the murder of the law. It might have had something to say. Who knows maybe they tried to keep too much in from the novel so everything feels undeveloped except the judge's romance and that hardly is about a Covenant with Death--something a rushed speech near the end mentions very briefly because, why should a movie with that title have anything to do with that subject matter.
A dud.