As the Lord is my witness I am a wrong man. Texas cowboy Lincoln Costain (James Garner) gets ‘shanghaied’ in San Francisco, then jumps ship and washes ashore on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, right into the arms of widow Henrietta MacAvoy (Vera Miles) and her son Booten (Eric Shea) who are struggling to make a living as farmers. A lot of wild cattle often trample their crops, so Costain gets the idea to start cattle ranching instead. The Hawaiian farm hands don’t readily take to the American cowboy culture. You’re making yourself the laughing stock of the island. Costain explains to Henrietta that they need more equipment, unaware that she has to take out a credit note with banker Calvin Bryson (Robert Culp) who has eyes on her land (and her too) while Costain tries to make the locals useful but they make zero progress. He has to deal with a hothead Marrujo (Gregory Sierra) who tries to kill him and who then casts a spell on the farm’s head of staff Kimo (Manu Tupou). Then Bryson decides something has to be done to stop Henrietta making a go of the ranch … You just can’t expect to change a whole culture overnight. Written by Don Tait from a story by Tait, Richard M. Bluel & Hugh Benson, this Disney western is designed to appeal to the kiddies with the customary outstanding performance by child actor Shea, one of their occasional star roster). It also takes advantage of Garner’s amiable trickster persona, established in the back to back Support comedy westerns and which would be plundered to great effect in the longrunning TheRockford Files TV series airing for the first time one month after this was released, securing Garner’s fame and making him a household name. It’s toned down here to suit the tone of the family-oriented drama. TV star (I Spy) Culp makes for a smoothly persuasive villain while Miles is a lovely, trusting mother, just hovering on the edge of worry and hope. They call it death by sorcery. Managing the locals is one thing, Booten desperately wants a father figure and is permanently annoyed that Costain refuses to learn his name and that running gag offsets plenty of slapstick as Costain attempts to train pineapple cowboys. It’s attractively made and according to his memoir Garner for one enjoyed the surroundings of Kauai, the fourth largest of the Hawaiian islands which also served as a location for South Pacific, the 1977 remake of King Kong and Jurassic Park. Essentially a B western transferred to a tropical setting, replete with genre conventions – a stampede, a fistfight – included to build the tension towards an ingenious method of getting the cattle of the island to California, this is playfully done with a great deal of charm. And – Garner sings! Directed by Disney specialist Vincent McEveety. I wouldn’t bet against that man
Won’t some of you people get him up off the ground and into it? 1909. Las Cruces, New Mexico. Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is riding with men working for the Santa Fe Ring, when he is ambushed and coldly killed by his associates, including one John W. Poe (John Beck). In 1881 in Old Fort Sumner, New Mexico, William H. Bonne aka Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) is passing the time with friends shooting chickens for fun. Garrett, an old friend of Billy’s, rides into town with Deputy Sheriff J. W. Bell (Matt Clark) and joins the diversion. Later, over drinks, Garrett informs Billy that the electorate want him out of the country and in five days when he becomes Sheriff of Lincoln County he will make Billy leave. Six days later, Garrett and his deputies surround the small farmhouse where Billy and his gang are holed up. In the ensuing gun battle, Charlie Bowdre (Charles Martin Smith) and several other men on both sides are killed and Billy surrenders and is taken prisoner. While Billy awaits his execution in the Lincoln County Jail for the killing of Buckshot Roberts a year earlier, he is taunted and beaten by self-righteous Deputy Sheriff Bob Olinger (R.G. Armstrong) while the hangman’s gallows are being built nearby. Garrett warns Olinger not to taunt Billy again or he will be fired and sent back to Texas; then, Garrett leaves town to collect taxes leaving his two deputies to guard Billy. Olinger again argues with Billy but after J. W. Bell intervenes, Olinger leaves to get a drink. Billy finds a gun hidden for him in the outhouse and shoots Bell in the back. He then retrieves Olinger’s shotgun loaded with sixteen thin dimes and shoots Olinger dead in the street, saying, Keep the change, Bob. Billy leaves town. After Garrett returns to Lincoln and recruits a new deputy sheriff Alamosa Bill Kermit (Jack Elam), he rides to Santa Fe to meet with Governor Lew Wallace (Jason Robards), who introduces him to a pair of powerful men from the Santa Fe Ring. They offer him $1,000 for the capture of Billy the Kid, with five hundred dollars upfront. Garrett rejects the money and says they can pay him in full when Billy is brought in. He warns them that he will be successful as long as another cattle war is not started. Meanwhile, Billy returns to his gang at Old Fort Sumner, where he decides to hide back for a few days. He is confronted by three strangers looking to kill him; all three are killed in the subsequent shootout, helped by another stranger called Alias (Bob Dylan), who kills one of the men with a knife through the neck. Alias had witnessed Billy’s escape from the Lincoln County Jail. Garrett meets up with Sheriff Colin Baker (Slim Pickens), hoping he can provide information on Billy’s whereabouts. Baker and his wife go with Garrett to arrest some of Billy’s old gang. In a gunfight, the gang members including Black Harris (L.Q. Jones) are killed and Baker is mortally wounded. Baker’s wife (Katy Jurado) comforts the dying lawman as he waits to die by a river. Later that evening, Garrett watches a barge floating down a river with a man shooting bottles in the water. The two face off briefly from a distance before lowering their rifles. Garrett is joined by a glory-seeking John W. Poe, who works for the Santa Fe Ring. The two ride southwest to meet John Chisum (Barry Sullivan) a powerful cattle baron, who informs them that Billy has been rustling his cattle again and killed some of his men; Billy once worked for him and claimed that Chisum owes him $500 of back salary … I sure wish you’d try, son. I got my shotgun full of 16 thin dimes. Enough to spread you out like a crazy woman’s quilt. With its sweeping photography by John Coquillon, a lineup of genre performers that calls up legions of older films and a legendary soundtrack by Bob Dylan with the song Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door seared into cultural memory, this would appear to have been an instant classic. The reality was quite different. Rudy Wurlitzer’s screenplay was rewritten in collaboration with director Sam Peckinpah, who took over from Monte Hellman when Coburn indicated he wanted to play Garrett. Peckinpah had already made two films that significantly revised perceptions of the western genre with Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch and this was going to conclude his thoughts on the subject. Wurlitzer’s feelings about the changes were revealed in a book about the making of the film and they were not kind to the director. Surrounding Kristofferson with western acting legends bolstered the cast which now boasted Dylan, included at Kristofferson’s request. Peckinpah had apparently never heard of him. You’re in poor company, Pat. Following a very troubled shoot in Mexico where MGM insisted local equipment and crew be used led to expensive reshoots with decent cameras and the soaring production costs and issues arising caused a serious blip in Peckinpah’s career and reputation. A chaotic edit using six different editors with Peckinpah’s 165 minute cut deemed unreleasable led to a second cut that was forty minutes shorter but wasn’t approved by the studio whose eventual 106 minute release version pleased nobody including most of the critics. Ten years or so later Peckinpah’s preview edition got a release on Laserdisc and eventually DVD which includes bits of every cut in yet another iteration and happily along with Peckinpah’s version is what we’ve watched again. I can assure you, Mr. Garrett, that Chisum and the others have been advised to recognize their position. And in this particular game, there are only a few plays left. I’d advise you to grab on to a winning hand while you have a chance. The texture of the film improves in the longer cut if only to enhance the leads’ characterisation – we literally see more of them as they develop through the framing story. It also lends a kind of poignancy that is otherwise elided in a more violent sequences of shoot-em-ups in the shorter version. I used to know when to leave. The question remains about the use of the Dylan song whether for aesthetic or narrative significance but its inclusion makes this stand out from the crowd. Kristofferson told Spencer Leigh in a 2004 interview, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door was in that scene where Slim Pickens was dying and it was the strongest use of music that I had ever seen in a film. Unfortunately Sam didn’t include it in his Director’s Cut. Sam had a blind spot there. He thought that the producer had forced Bob on him to make the film commercial and I don’t think he appreciated who Bob was. I thought Dylan was great in the film, he looked great and you couldn’t take your eyes off him, and his music was fantastic. There are showstopping images – to name but two, the opening shooting of the chicken which of course brings to mind Cockfighter (the next film that Hellman would make after he was supposed to make this) and when the kids play with the hangman’s noose which is shocking yet oddly pleasing only because it seems like something kids would do when they’ve nothing else to hand. The beating administered to Billy by religion-crazed Deputy Sheriff Olinger is properly shocking with the screams of Repent lingering in the air. This stops just short of great art but it is still a truly iconic western with moments of almost bucolic expressivity. When are you going to learn that you can’t trust anybody, not even yourself?
Flame follows that man around like a dog! Ben Quick (Paul Newman) is on trial for barn-burning but when no solid evidence is found the judge expels him from town. Ben hitches a ride to Frenchman’s Bend, Mississippi, with two young women in a convertible, Clara Varner (Joanne Woodward) and her sister-in-law Eula (Lee Remick). Clara’s father, Will Varner (Orson Welles) is the domineering owner of most of the town. Ben goes to the Varner plantation. Will is away, but his only son, Jody (Anthony Franciosa) agrees to let Ben become a sharecropper on a vacant farm. When Will returns from a stay in the hospital, he is furious at Jody for hiring a notorious barn burner but soon begins to see in Ben a younger version of himself and comes to admire his ruthlessness and ambition, qualities that Jody lacks. Will is also disappointed with the man that his 23-year-old daughter, Clara, has been seeing for five or six years: Alan Stewart (Richard Anderson), a genteel Southern blue blood and a mama’s boy. Will schemes to push his daughter and Ben together, to try to bring fresh, virile blood into the family but she is openly hostile to the crude, if magnetic, upstart. Will is determined to have his bloodline go on, so he offers to make Ben wealthy if he marries Clara. Meanwhile, Will’s mistress Minnie Littlejohn (Angela Lansbury) is dissatisfied with their arrangement and wants to get married. Jody becomes increasingly frustrated, seeing his position in the family being undermined. After Ben sells some wild horses for Will, he is rewarded with the position of clerk in the general store, alongside Jody. Will even invites him to live in the family mansion: this is the final straw for Jody … Most people say I’m fightin’ for the twentieth century. Adapted from William Faulkner’s stories Barn Burning, Spotted Horses and The Hamlet by husband and wife screenwriting team Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., who pick wonderful elements to highlight some indelible characterisation. It’s vivid, moody, atmospheric storytelling with a standout performance from Welles whose positively Falstaffian character is a riff on Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof the Tennessee Williams adaptation that starred Newman the same year and that story of familial vicissitudes, sex and power struggles is a companion piece to this, its spawn in theme and tone. Newman got the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his Quick – gorgeous, smooth, probably inherently wicked but persuasive and lovable. He’s quite the charmer. It’s great to see his work with Woodward, the first time the couple were paired onscreen – the chemistry is sparky and she is powerful in the role. Get out of character, lady. Get way off! The strong Freudian tropes are magnified by the Method performances from all these Actors Studio alumni – Franciosa is such a wimp but believably sympathetic as the son who can never measure up and does something unbelievable to earn Will’s respect when he’s usurped. Remick is a delight as the ballsy Eula. This is flavoursome, angst-ridden and sexy stuff with even Lansbury getting in on the illicit carry on. Directed by Martin Ritt who would team up with the screenwriters again to make the unforgettable Hud with Newman half a dozen years later. The year before this he shot No Down Payment with Woodward and after this he worked for a third time with her on another Faulkner adaptation, The Sound and the Fury. Then Newman-Woodward got together with him again for Paris Blues and Newman and he made The Outrage and later Hombre. Those were the days. It’s all beautifully shot in sunny Clinton, Louisiana by Joseph LaShelle where you can practically feel the rays bristle on your skin. There’s a sonorous jazzy score from Alex North and the title song co-written with Sammy Cahn is performed by Jimmie Rogers. I got me a son again
Aka The Marshal of Independence. Thee has to talk like them and don’t forget it. Captain Buck Devlin (Randolph Scott) and cavalry troopers Sergeant John Maitland (James Garner) and Private Wilbur Clegg (Gordon Jones) all recently mustered out of the army, head to Devlin’s brother’s homestead to settle down and arrive just in time to drive off an Indian attack but just too late to save his brother. Faulty ammunition cost him his life. The three men set out for Medicine Bend to find out who sold the ammunition. The community also gives them all their funds to buy badly needed supplies. On the way however, they are robbed of everything – the money, their horses, even their uniforms. Fortunately, they happen upon a local church (who have also been robbed), and are given spare clothing. Devlin decides it would be a good idea to pretend to be Brethren while in town. They quickly connect the robbers, and later the defective ammunition, to Ep Clark (James Craig). Clark controls the mayor and the sheriff, and has his gang attack wagon trains of pioneers heading west and forces other local traders out of business. The men are up against it in their pursuit of the ruthless town boss … I prefer sour ‘bosom.’ It’s more refined. Directed by Richard Bare and amusingly written by John Tucker Battle and D.D. Beauchamp, this is standard western fare but it’s more fun than most with our leads gussied up as Quakers sorting out the decent wheat from the villainous chaff and doing the Robin Hood act. Probably the only film you’ll ever see where that peaceable bunch do the necessary to end violence and it is of course interesting to watch Scott fulfill his contract at Warner Brothers while independently making classics of the genre under his own banner elsewhere. Garner says of the experience in his memoir, “It was always fun working with Dick Bare, and Randy Scott was an old pro, but the movie isn’t worth a damn. I was under contract, so I had to do what they put in front of me.” Angie Dickinson has a nice role as the storekeeper’s niece who is of course Scott’s love interest while Dani Crayne sings Kiss Me Quick in the saloon earning Garner’s attention. The title tells you all about how it ends. Get his partner. Give ’em a fair trial. Then hang ’em!
Come on – let me brand her! In the West, Davy Hackett (James Darren) and his hot-tempered, arrogant older brother Ed (Tab Hunter) are about to assist their rancher father Lee (Van Heflin) on a cattle drive to Wyoming. Lee has been trying to bring them up in his own image but has failed, with Ed determining to be a gunfighter. The brothers meet Cecily ‘Clee’ Chouard (Kathryn Grant [Crosby]) a beautiful half-French, half-Sioux woman, and when Ed makes unwanted advances toward her, Davy intervenes. Clee’s brother Paul (Bert Convy) is invited to join the cattle drive. Ed, obsessed with capturing a white mare, resents Paul’s interference and pushes him off a cliff to his death. It is witnessed by two Indians, but when the case comes to court, Ed is released because Lee has bribed a man named Jensen Sieverts (Ray Teal) to lie that the death was an accident. Lee learns that Davy is in love with Clee and disowns him. Sieverts is given ten horses in exchange, but when he selects the white mare, Ed shoots him. Jailed once again, Ed shoots a deputy and escapes. Lee is finally forced to hunt him down … Lee, you and I grew up in our own times – Ed’s got to learn to grow up in his, and times have changed! Phil Karlson’s immensely sympathetic directing benefits greatly from a wonderful, measured screenplay by Frank S. Nugent (adapting an original script by Ric Hardman), the veteran writer responsible for eleven of John Ford’s westerns. The complexities of race are simply expressed by dint of deception and the good son/bad son trope is effectively dramatised. It’s well played (even by Hunter!), with a standout performance by Heflin, finally forced to confront the fact that he has not managed to tame a bad ‘un. As a portrait of a society evolving it’s a surprise package. Beautifully shot by Charles Lawton Jr with a spellbinding score by George Duning. Hunter sings I May Be a Runaway, co-written by Hollywood director Richard Quine. Isn’t that an amazing poster?! Times don’t change in this country where you breed a man soft. Without any spirit, a man’s like a horse: if he don’t buck the first time you put a saddle on him he ain’t worth having – you know that!
Aka Return of the Magnificent Seven. We got to stand along side of ’em so that someday they can stand alone. Fifty gunmen force all the men in a small Mexican village to ride off with them into the desert. Among the captured farmers is love-smitten Chico (Julián Mateos), who three years before was one of seven hired gunslingers responsible for ridding the village of the tyrannical bandit, Calvera. Chico’s wife, Petra (Elisa Montés), looks for the only other members of the band to survive: Chris (Yul Brynner) and Vin (Robert Fuller). She begs them to save the village once again. To replace the deceased members of the group, Chris buys the release of a brooding gunman Frank (Claude Akins) and famous bandit Luis (Virgilio Teixeira), held in the local jail, and recruits two more: sharpshooting ladies’ man Colbee (Warren Oates) and young cockfighter Manuel (Jordan Christopher). The men discover that the missing villagers are being used as slave labor to rebuild a desert village and church as a memorial to the dead sons of wealthy and psychotic rancher Francisco Lorca (Emilio Fernándes). In a surprise attack, the six gunmen force Lorca’s men to leave and prepare for a counterattack with Chico. The cowed farmers offer no help but the seven defenders successfully repel Lorca’s initial attack. Lorca then gathers all the men on his land to rout the seven men. The situation seems bleak until Manuel discovers a supply of dynamite which the seven use in a counteroffensive… Sure Chico is a friend of mine. But, hell, I don’t even know his last name. The first sequel to The Magnificent Seven is written by one (future) auteur, Larry Cohen and directed by another, Burt Kennedy, who already had form with a series of superb screenplays starting the previous decade. This is his fourth film as director and unfortunately he does not marshal the drama in the exciting way you’d hope. Part of the miracle of the legendary first film was the spot-on casting but only Brynner makes the cut here, and despite more or less the same premise and setting, with location shooting in Spain, Fernando Rey as the priest, and a rousing score – a re-recorded version of the original from Elmer Bernstein – this never hits the same notes of empathy or sheer bravado even with a wealth of decent banter and action. The avengers may have reassembled, but Fuller is no Steve McQueen and Mateos is no substitute for Horst Buchholz. What they really need is Eli Wallach to return as the consummate bad guy. In all the years I made my way with a gun, I never once shot a man just to see him fall
He handles himself very well. Unemployed rodeo rider Lonnie Beale (Elvis Presley) arrives in the desert town of Zuni Wells looking for work on the recommendation of a friend who is nowhere to be found so he starts singing at a club where Vera Radford (Julie Adams) offers him a job handling horses at her Circle-Z ranch. It’s actually a fitness spa filled with young women shaping up and Lonnie follows one of the girls, Pam Merritt (Jocelyn Lane), to a ghost town called Silverado where one of her relatives allegedly buried a treasure. At the Circle-Z she suffers repeated attempted kidnappings when word of her inheritance gets out. She, Lonnie and ranch hand Stanley Potter (Jack Mullaney) re-enact western characters in a parody sequence and Lonnie goes back on the road but his phone calls to Pam go unanswered and his letter is Returned to Sender. Stanley locates Lonnie and they follow Pam to Silverado and a storm ensues and they are pursued by supposed ghosts who really want the treasure … I can see it now: cowboy marries millionaire divorcee. An unusually playful Elvis comedy thanks to Three Stooges scribes Edward Bernds and Elwood Ulman who apply the rule of slapstick to half the scenes in a film that feels like it’s a year long instead of its sprightly 91 minute running time. Luckily the last third strays into amusing haunted house territory at least making an attempt at a genre workout in a story that suffers from a plethora of studio-bound outdoor scenes which is a pity because when they get into those Jeeps and cut a swathe through the desert it’s quite tolerable fun. Otherwise it’s refreshing in the #MeToo era to see The King being sexually harassed by his lady boss Adams. The songs are all old recordings and the film saved Allied Artists from bankruptcy. Directed by Norman Taurog. I’ve heard of this happening to secretaries before but this is ridiculous
We just be. We just let things happen. Years after the shocking murders that made the name Charles Manson (Matt Smith) synonymous with pure evil, the three women who killed for him – Leslie ‘Lulu’ Van Houten (Hannah Murray), Patricia ‘Katie’ Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon) and Susan ‘Sadie’ Atkins (Marianne Rendon) remain under his spell. Confined to an isolated cellblock away from the rest of the prison population, the trio seem destined to live out the rest of their lives under the delusion that their crimes were part of a cosmic plan, until empathetic graduate student Karlene Faith (Merritt Wever) attempts to rehabilitate them ... We all belong to Charlie. If you’re lucky he’ll pick you next.Every girl should have a daddy like Charlie. There are two issues of cinematic representation that come into play in this particular film: the question of charisma; and that of empathy. The peculiarly horrific episode that was the slaying of nine-months pregnant Sharon Tate and her friends exhibited none of the latter; while the questionable personality of Charles Manson only reinforces our impression of the blind stupidity of people who permit themselves to be manipulated into performing mindless and heinous acts of murder in the first place. But what we know and see of them is that it’s mostly about sex. So far, so bad: you’ve lost your audience right away. Writer/director Mary Harron has been here before with American Psycho, an ingenious work of satire by Bret Easton Ellis: it needed someone funny and sexy, it got Christian Bale. It’s hard to make a humorous film if you as a filmmaker are devoid of that sense. Here the figure of the grad student stands in for the audience but people on this side of the pond are only too aware that in the last couple of weeks two such individuals were murdered by the Moslem terrorist they were attempting to rehabilitate. I digress. It’s structured as a series of flashbacks in a perverse take on the rites of passage story. The ongoing cultural mystery (maybe) is why a slew of teenage girls became feral monsters living in drug-addled sexual squalor and why communes attract people. Perhaps there’s no real mystery: starve people, ply them with drugs and nonsense and perform sex acts on them and you’ve got a Grow Your Own Perverted Killer scheme in progress. The film’s first half addresses this through the governing flashback structure of Van Houten’s experience: we see how Charlie reels people in. (How on earth did he persuade grown women that they were going to turn into winged elves? Years later, this is what they tell Faith in prison. They still believe it.) The film pivots at its midpoint when in a flashback record producer Terry Melcher (Bryan Adrian) visits Spahn Ranch and the freaks strip to Charlie’s dreadful wailing which passes for his big showbiz audition. They’re like Dracula with his succubi. Awkward. We don’t hear Melcher’s discreet dismissal of Charlie’s woeful effort but he hands him money and speeds off with his sidekick. This is the real Helter Skelter moment. It segues into Karlene’s realising in conversation with Virginia Carlson (Annabeth Gish) that as long as the women are sequestered together they are just repeating Manson’s brainwashing; as soon as she starts educating them about their crimes they will be forced to confront the horror of what they have done. Thus the second half of the film dramatises with bloody fervour the ensuing murders which are Manson’s supposed revenge following their group sex idyll BC (or Before the Crimes, the girls say, when they were all about love!). You can practically taste the stench of gristle when it hits the noses of the protein-deprived vegetarians as they stab their victims indiscriminately. Interestingly, and like Tarantino’s Hawksian fairy tale swerve on the same material, Charlie is shown at Melcher’s house where he is greeted by the lovely and heavily pregnant Sharon Tate (Grace Van Dien), clarifying step by step the trajectory of Mason’s bloody mission. It’s as if we were taken to the the art dealers that rejected Hitler (oh, I think we saw that one actually). Smith just has to shrink his shoulders, sing dreadful songs (Cease To Exist, indeed) and perform cunnilingus in an unenlightening impersonation; it’s the girls and Tex Watson (Chace Crawford) who do the heavy lifting here. Guinevere Turner adapted Ed Sanders’ book The Family and Faith’s memoir. There is a twist ending, but even if it had panned out there’s no indication that it would have changed anything for anyone except Van Houten in this coda of wish fulfillment. The story to know is that of Linda Kasabian (India Ennenga) who ran away from the Tate murders and has lived her life in witness protection in exchange for informing on the dreadful cult. Perhaps not. How many more films do we need to see about these credulous disgusting hippies? The new iteration of their type are now running the world from Northern California through their tech cult. Preserve us all from people who want to be loved. We didn’t have to do any of it
Aka Roughshod. I’ve seen a man take two drinks of that stuff and go out and hunt bear with a willow switch.Wandering hired gun Reb Kittridge (Audie Murphy) is hired to get the deed of the last remaining ranch not owned by local boss Matt Telford (Donald Randolph) that is owned by former outlaw Dan Saxon (Paul Kelly). Though Reb has not yet accepted the job he is ambushed by Saxon’s ranch foreman Curly Mather (Jack Kelly) and challenged to a gun fight by Saxon, both attempts to kill him being unsuccessful. Saxon senses Reb has good in him and when he hears Reb’s goal in life is to own his own ranch he loses the deed of the ranch to Reb in a card draw. Reb takes over the ranch and moving its cattle herd to a railhead for sale to the workers. Telford hires Reb’s fellow gunslinger Johnny Lake to stop the herd and Reb. Reb has also fallen in love with the rancher’s daughter (Susan Cabot) who currently is in love with Mather … You had twelve reasons… each one of ’em had a gun in his hand. I understand you got run out of Wyoming, too. With Cora Dufrayne (Mary Castle) pulling a Marlene and singing The Boys in the Back Room with a troupe of showgirls in the saloon; and cult fave Cabot as the other woman, this has a lot going on besides the quickfire banter and genre action antics. It has no connection with the legendary TV show of the same name but it does have Audie, and that’s a lot. Fun and fast-moving. I never did like to shoot my friends
We’ve either got to run this country with our guns or without ’em. We can’t go on with this halfway thing. In Texas, gunfighter Brazos Kane (Randolph Scott) decides to lay down his guns and rides out to visit his best friend only to come across the aftermath of his murder. When Brazos takes the body to the nearby ranch of the powerful Banner (Griff Barnett), the rancher accuses him of the murder and he is saved from hanging by diner proprietor Uncle Joe/Jose (Steven Geray) who remembers him from way back. He passes the murderer’s bullet to a beautiful ranching woman Jane Banner (Dorothy Hart). Banner’s other daughter, Bess (Barbara Britton), takes the vital piece of evidence, leaving Brazos to evade Banner and a crooked Sheriff Kiscaden (Charles Kemper) as he reluctantly takes up arms to prove his innocence discovering that Bess’ real love interest Banner ranch foreman Bard Macky (Bruce Cabot) is the likely culprit … I believe I’m more interested in you than anything that ever wore boots. This fine adaptation of Zane Grey’s 1941 novel Twin Sombreros has a zesty approach and a liveliness that reverberates through a cast well served with sharp writing from the pen of Alan Le May, the writer of The Searchers. Scott is dependable as the decent guy wrongly identified as a killer and then facing corruption and he has some excellent setpieces in a screenplay that’s filled with smart lines (including a running joke about food) and good character roles. Charley Grapewin is fun as Rancher Inskip and Geray as Uncle Joe/Jose is particularly well used to fill in the backstory on Brazos. The tension arises from Brazos’ refusal to wear guns but we know it’s only a matter of time and when it happens, gosh darn it, if he doesn’t go and say, Any time you feel lucky! like a prototype for Dirty Harry. He has a nice ruminative voiceover to top and tail the movie. It’s beautiful to look at too, with CineColor cinematography by Fred Jackman Jr. It was shot in Andy Jauregui Ranch and Monogram Ranch in Newhall, California, Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park in Agua Dulce, California, and Sedona, Arizona. One can only pray the horses were well treated because they are worked hard in this story. Hart and Britton are delectable as lookalike sisters: Wonder what she wants?/Depends on which one it is! It’s an interesting narrative development to have Scott’s affections apparently transfer from one to the other, although Hart is utterly luminous like a fashion plate come to life in her feature debut, Britton served as the love interest in a lot of westerns of the period and the tussle between them is highly entertaining and more inventive than good twin/bad twin. Now you’d even ride off with a different man if you thought that would help. It’s produced by Harry Joe Brown with whom Scott would make a cycle of great films in the Fifties but this era is intrinsic to understanding how that one came about. Directed by George Waggner . I sure rode the heck out of that wild bunch
mondomovies 