BY JOHN M. WHALEN
Ted Kotcheff’s “Billy Two Hats†(1974) is one of those
off-beat kind of movies they made back in the mid-Seventies when studios still
believed in small, realistic films that focused on character more than shoot-outs,
believable story lines more than special effects and solid performances by seasoned
actors who knew their craft more than flashy histrionics by shiny boys and
girls who just stepped off the front pages of the supermarket tabloids. It’s not
a great film by any means. It’s slow, and a bit heavy handed in getting across the
themes contained in Alan Sharp’s (“Osterman Weekend,†“Ulzana’s Raidâ€) script,
but it’s worth watching, if only so you can say you’ve seen the only “Kosher
Western†ever made.
57-year-old Gregory Peck, speaking with a thick Scottish
accent, stars as Arch Deans, a bank robber on the run with his young Kiowa half-breed
sidekick Billy (Desi Arnaz Jr). Jack Warden is Henry Gifford, the sheriff who’s
tracking them down. Gifford is a man with no love for outlaws or Indians or
much else for that matter. He captures Billy early in the story and tells him
that he looks on him as the lowest of the low. He’s also a cynic. When they
ride out into the desert he tells Billy to stop looking for his compadre to
come to his rescue. Deans is half way to Mexico, he says, already spending the
measly $400 they stole from the bank. But out in the desert, Kotcheff gives us
a shot of Deans up in the hills watching them.
Gifford stops for the night at a general store/saloon out
in the middle of nowhere run by an old friend—an ex-buffalo hunter by the name
of Copeland (David Huddleston), who has settled down with an Apache woman. Copeland
shares Gifford’s views on Native Americans, even though he lives with one. He
tells Gifford he and his “wife†had a son but, says, he “made her give him to
her people.â€
In the morning, Deans comes down from the hills and rescues
Billy, wounding Gifford in the shoulder. While Copeland patches him up, Gifford
asks Deans why he came back for Billy and Deans just shrugs and says: “He’s my
partner.†After the outlaws have ridden some distance away, Gifford reminds
Copeland of his old buffalo gun hanging on the wall of the saloon. Copeland
takes it down, loads and sights it carefully, and shoots Deans’ horse out from
under him at a distance of over half a mile or more away. Deans suffers a
broken leg as a result and the fugitives double up on the remaining horse and
get away.
It takes Gifford a few days before he’s well enough to
ride. While he’s recuperating there’s the obligatory scene where Copeland and
Gifford remember the days when they could stand in one spot all day and watch
the same herd of buffalo pass from morning to night. But Gifford also tells
Copeland he just can’t figure why Deans came back for the boy. He was in the
clear. It just doesn’t make sense to him that anyone would do that, especially
for a “breed.†“I’m a reasonable man,†he says. “It’s important to me that
things make sense.â€
Meanwhile Billy has made a travois (an “Indian
perambulator,†Gifford calls it) for Deans and they try to get through the
mountains to Mexico, but in a canyon they run into a handful of Apaches. They manage
to scare them off without any loss or injury, but you know they’ll be back.
Their next stop is a small cabin inhabited by a settler
named Spencer (John Pearce) and his bought- from-St.-Louis- for-$100-wife
Esther (Sian Barbara Allen). Esther stutters and Spencer slaps her in the face whenever
she gets stuck on a word. “It shakes up her brain box,†he explains. Spencer
has a wagon and after some haggling agrees to drive Deans for $100 to a town
two days away where they have a doctor.
That night Deans and Billy sleep out in the barn and
Deans suddenly recalls how Gifford asked him why he came back for him. He tells
Billy he didn’t rightly know. But he asks Billy if he ever read the Bible. “Well,
there’s a bit in it,†he says, “from the Book of Ecclesiastes, that says `Two
are better than one because they have good reward for their labor. And if they
fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he
falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. And if one shall prevail
against him, two shall withstand him.’â€
“Billy Two Hats†is essentially a movie about loneliness,
loyalty, hatred and the need for relationships, all good ingredients for what
could have been a gripping drama of alienation and a search for meaning in a
meaningless world. But Kotcheff (“First Blood,†and “Weekend at Bernie’sâ€)
seems to lack the depth and sensitivity to bring out the themes and emotions
contained in Sharp’s screenplay. The film’s pace is slow and the tone so muted
that a lot of scenes fail to convey any convincing emotion.
Peck’s performance as Deans is solid and his Scottish
accent seems authentic—one of the many off-beat touches of the movie. Warden as
Gifford is as effective as ever at making his character look lived-in and
Huddleston provides good backup for him. Arnaz isn’t called on to do much, and frankly
his love scenes with Sian Barbara Allen are handled rather clumsily and are too
perfunctory to have much dramatic effect.
Despite these limitations, “Billy Two Hats†is worthy of
your attention, at least as a breather from today’s super violent comic book
movies and a reminder that they once made movies, even westerns, for grown-ups.
By the way, while it may look like the American
Southwest, “Billy Two Hats†was actually filmed in the Negev Desert in southern
Israel. Kotcheff explains in an interview included on the Blu-Ray disc that for
financial reasons they could not make the movie in the U.S. and both he and
producer Norman Jewison thought the Spanish locations used in Spaghetti
westerns had been overused. Jewison was filming “Jesus Christ Superstar†in
Israel at the time and suggested he film it there. Thus, Kotcheff says, was the
first “Kosher Western†born.
Kino Lorber has released
“Billy Two Hats†on An impressive 1920x1080p Blu-Ray that presents all the
desolate beauty of the location captured on film by cinematographer Brian West.
An interview with Kotcheff and three trailers for this film and two other
Gregory Peck movies are the extras.
John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon)
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