By John M. Whalen
It’s a story line that’s been used in dozens of Western
films. Two long-time friends who grew up together, later split up and take
different paths—one follows the straight and narrow and becomes a lawman and
the other turns into an outlaw. Fate decrees that one day they will have to
meet in a showdown. It usually ends with the outlaw lying face down in the dirt
and the sheriff sad and bitter about it all, wondering if it was all really
worth it.
In 1973 two films with that plot were released within a
month of each other. In May, Universal released “Showdown†starring Rock Hudson
and Dean Martin, the last film directed by veteran helmsman George Seaton
(“Miracle on 34th St.,†“Airportâ€) and the last western that Martin
(“Sons of Katie Elder,†“Rio Bravoâ€) would star in. A month later, in June, MGM
released “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid†directed by Sam Peckinpah, starring
Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn. It would be Peckinpah’s last turn at a
western. While the two films have similar stories, they couldn’t be more
different in tone, style, and execution. “Garrett†is a revisionist masterpiece
that, along with Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch,†changed the western forever. “Showdown,â€
on the other hand, is a remnant of, and a kind of elegy for, a bygone era of Hollywood
moviemaking. Kino Lorber has released a Blu-Ray edition of the film.
“Showdown†tells
the story of Chuck Jarvis (Rock Hudson) and Billy Massey (Dean Martin), two
guys who grew up together in Cumbres, New Mexico. Chuck is the straight and
narrow one, and Billy is something of a gambler and a pretty fair hand with a
gun. He likes to play the ocarina too. They get along fine until Kate (Susan
Clark), who runs an eatery in town, enters the scene. Screenwriter Theodore
Taylor throws a touch of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid into the mix by
showing them in a series of flashbacks as three good friends, hanging out,
enjoying each other’s company, just like Butch, Sundance and Etta. But when
Chuck and Kate decide to get married, Billy packs up his ocarina and splits the
scene, eventually winding up on the old Outlaw Trail. Chuck and Kate settle
down on the ranch that they bought with money Billy won in a sharpshooter
contest, and Chuck eventually becomes the sheriff in Cumbres.
Years later, unaware that Chuck is now the Sheriff in
Cumbres, Billy rides back into the territory as part of a gang that robs a
train. There’s trouble when the gang divides up the loot and they try to cheat
Billy out of his fair share. Billy is forced to kill the brother of gang leader
Art Williams (Donald Moffett) and rides off with all the loot. Williams vows to
track him down. Back in Cumbres, when Chuck is told that Billy has robbed a
train he reluctantly sets out with two Indian guides to track him down. While
he’s gone, Billy shows up at the ranch. Kate still has a warm spot for old
lovable Billy, and she hides him from the Williams gang until Chuck gets back.
In an odd bit of dialogue for a western, at one point Billy tells Kate he
thinks she thinks that he doesn’t like her. Kate winces a bit.
“It isn’t that,†she says. “I just stepped in between Damon
and Pythias.â€
“Who are they?†Billy asks.
Kate replies: “A vaudeville act. They play the better
saloons.â€
The reference to the Greek legend about two friends who
face the ultimate test of friendship seems to go over Billy’s head, but given Dean
Martin’s own personal experience of a long term friendship with a certain
famous comedian, and the rumors that the reason they split up was because their
wives didn’t get along, the theme strikes a strange chord. When Chuck tracks
Billy back to his own ranch, the friends are briefly reunited. They concoct a
half-baked plan that they think will keep Billy from going to prison and the
next morning Chuck takes him to town and locks him up temporarily. Things might have worked out except for an
ambitious prosecutor (John McLiam) who is determined to see Billy hang.
“Showdown†wasn’t very well received when it was
released. Most critics wrote it off as a tired, cliché-ridden western with two
stars who had seen better days. It’s true that both Martin and Hudson are a
little long in the tooth for their parts, and they don’t seem to put much
energy into their performances. But Martin, at least, had excuses. He was going
through a painful divorce during the filming and one of the beloved Andalusian
horses that he raised had recently died. So who could blame him if he wasn’t up
to par in this film? Hudson was busy with his “MacMillan and Wife†TV series.
(He actually filmed an episode of the series on the “Showdown†location with director
George Seaton playing himself.) The weariness of the two leads actually gives
“Showdown†weight and significance.
It’s like witnessing a Tinseltown version of the twilight of the gods, the end
of the old way of making movies and telling stories. This was the end of an era
when we had movie stars and big lavish productions in widescreen and
stereophonic sound playing on huge neighborhood movie screens all over the
country—big movies filmed in real places, not a special effects factory.
Lazlo Kovacs’s cinematography is magnificent. Using
Todd-AO 35 cameras, he fills the screen with wide vistas, bright, colorful
sweeps of the northern New Mexico scenery, with the Sierra Madre Mountains
looming in the distance. Every frame, except some interior shots, is in deep
focus with distant mountains and foreground figures in clear, sharp detail. The
2.35:1 aspect ratio makes you feel like you can breathe deeper just looking at
it. This is why Blu-Rays matter. This film plays quite often on the Encore Westerns
Channel. But it is cropped to 1.85:1. In that format, it makes no impression at
all.
The climax of the film is set in a forest fire, with
Chuck and Billy and the outlaw gang in pursuit of each other, finally ending in
a totally burnt-out, black and charred landscape. What more fitting setting for
the death of a genre? It can be argued that the traditional western declined and fell during this period of filmmaking. “Showdown†was one of the final casualties of the genre, however there would still be a few classics released including "The Outlaw Josey Wales and "The Shootist".
Kino Lorber’s transfer of “Showdown†to Blu-Ray is
excellent. This is a disc you want to own if you just want to show off what
your big-screen 4k High Definition TV can do. Colors are rich. None of that
monochrome palette that Ridley Scott is so fond of. The sound on the disc is
mono, which is too bad. David Shire’s score, featuring a repeated theme played
on an ocarina, is wistful, alternately peppy and lonesome. Extra features
include an informative audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and
Steve Mitchell, and a trailer for “Showdown†and half a dozen other features
available on KL discs.
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John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon)