BY LEE PFEIFFER

Many fans of John Wayne's 1960 epic "The Alamo" have visited the massive movie set in remote Brackettville, Texas, over the decades. The land was owned by "Happy" Shahan, a prominent rancher from whom Wayne and United Artists leased the land. Shahan and his wife had one caveat: that the family would be allowed to keep the magnificent sets operating as a tourist attraction and filming location for other movies. The plan worked very well and over the years many prominent westerns were shot there even as thousands of fans attended "Alamo" events and festivals on the site. But now, the Shahan family is no longer operating the property as a viable attraction and the buildings sit unattended and deteriorating, though still intact and boasting a host of on-site props and memorabilia. It had been hoped that a Texan with deep pockets or the state itself would finance the preservation of the village, but to date this has not occurred. The sets from John Wayne's most personal film seems destined to remain a genuine ghost town.... This video by a visiting fan and historian presents a landscape that is both fascinating and bittersweet.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

In 1971, director Blake Edwards took a career diversion by venturing outside the comedy genre into Westerns with the release of "Wild Rovers", for which he also authored the screenplay. The film was a highly personal project for Edwards who had earlier in his career made some effective non-comedies that included "Experiment in Terror" and the highly acclaimed "Days of Wine and Roses". The film marked a brief and unhappy two-picture association with MGM, which was then under the control of the universally despised James Aubrey, who was nicknamed "The Smiling Cobra". Aubrey had a habit of second-guessing esteemed directors in an era in which few filmmakers retained the right of final cut. Consequently, Aubrey was known to eviscerate films to conform to his personal views regarding their commercial value. The year before, he took the scissors to "Kelly's Heroes" and cut out what star Clint Eastwood felt was the emotional heart of the film. (The missing footage has never been found and Eastwood never made another film for the studio.) Aubrey would do the same to "Wild Rovers", which had a leisurely-paced running time of 136 minutes that included an intermission. Aubrey had it cut to 106 minutes, thus outraging Edwards, who was known for his mercurial temper. Making matters worse, Aubrey also cut Edwards's follow-up film for MGM, "The Carey Treatment". Edwards had suffered a similar fate when Paramount chief Robert Evans had made cuts to Edwards's 1970 big budget musical "Darling Lili". Ultimately, Edwards sought revenge with his 1981 film "S.O.B." a scathing take-down of studio executives who interfere with the artistic visions of film directors.

"Wild Rovers" is lyrical and at times tender story that depicts the unlikely friendship between two ranch hands: middle-aged Ross Bodine (William Holden) and Frank Post ((Ryan O'Neal), a young twenty-something upstart with a cocky manner. They are both employed by Walter Buckman (Karl Malden), a stern but honorable rancher who owns an impressive cattle empire. Ross is getting weary of a back-breaking life and Frank fears following in his footsteps. Impulsively, they decide to rob the local bank which they manage to do successfully by holding the bank manager's family hostage. Not exactly a noble act, but Edwards mitigates the moral consequences by having Ross leave enough money to be given to Buckman to pay his ranch hands. It's a sign of sentiment on Ross's part but upon his departure, the banker and his wife decide to not tell Buckman about the gesture and keep the money for themselves. The script finds the outraged Buckman sending his sons (Joe Don Baker and Tom Skerritt) to raise a posse and relentlessly pursue the robbers. The film then morphs into a road trip story with Ross and Frank bonding and learning to respect each other. Ross is inspired by the younger man's zest for life and Frank learns to control his impulsiveness. The nagging flaw with Edwards' script, however, is that while Ross retains a sense of nobility and decency, Frank is trigger happy and occasionally cruel, a fact that Edwards attempts to mitigate by showing us Frank's sentimental attachment to a puppy, a plot device that plays out as pretentiously as it reads. Although "Wild Rovers" never achieves the classic stature that Edwards had envisioned, it is a very good film that has many attributes, not the least of which is a very fine performance by William Holden, who- like most actors- became more interesting as he aged. As for O'Neal, he was always competent as an actor but not very compelling. This is one of his better performances because Edwards provides him with an interesting character to absorb. Malden is always very good but his screen time in "Wild Rovers" is frustratingly limited. The film boasts superb cinematography by Philip Lathrop and a great score by Jerry Goldsmith, filling in for Edwards' usual composer-of-choice, Henry Mancini.

The film tanked at the box office and with critics. Edwards blamed it on MGM's virtual destruction of his vision for the final cut. Not helping matters was the bizarre ad campaign that featured O'Neal and Holden on the same horse with O'Neal giddily embracing a rather uncomfortable looking Holden. For a hard-bitten, action-filled Western, it was all wrong and implied a "Brokeback Mountain"-like relationship in an era that was far less enlightened, to put it mildly. Happily, the Warner Archive has released a restored version of the film and provided a gorgeous transfer. They've even included the original intermission and entr'acte so you can appreciate Jerry Goldsmith's score even more. Bonus extras include a very good vintage "making of" documentary that makes it clear how Holden and O'Neal did a lot of impressive stunt work and wrangling themselves. There is also a rather murky trailer that will make you appreciate how good the main feature looks on Blu-ray.

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(For full analysis of the making of "Wild Rovers", see Frank Aston's article in issue #40.)

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

I love European genre cinema. For example, the Spanish horror films of Paul Naschy and Amando de Ossorio, the British Hammer and Amicus films; not mention the many British, French and Italian Eurospy films, and, of course, the Italian giallos and spaghetti westerns, just to name a few. In Italy, directors such ase Sergio Leone, Dario Argento and Mario Bava are legends. However, there were several Italian directors who may not have been as well-known as these three artists, but who still created many entertaining and worthwhile films. One of these directors was Antonio Margheriti, who dabbled in various genres including spaghetti western, peplum, Eurospy and horror. Some of his well-known horror films are The Long Hair of Death, Seven Death’s in the Cat’s Eye and the beloved Cannibal Apocalypse. But in 1971, Margheriti directed a film that some horror fans may not be familiar with. Others may have heard of it, but may not have ever seen it. That film is Web of the Spider.

Directed with style by Margheriti, here using his American-sounding pseudonym Anthony M. Dawson, Web of the Spider revolves around journalist Alan Foster who accepts a bet from legendary author Edgar Allan Poe to spend one night in Blackwood Castle; a structure that Poe believes to be haunted, but Foster does not. Moments after arriving at the dusty, cobweb-covered Victorian castle, Foster begins hearing and seeing strange and frightening things. Is it a hoax perpetrated by Poe or is Blackwood Castle really the home of something supernatural?

Written by Bruno Corbucci (James Tont operazione U.N.O. aka James Tont-Operation Goldsinger), Web of the Spider is a color remake of Margheriti’s and Corbucci’s 1964 black and white, gothic horror film Castle of Blood which starred the legendary Barbara Steele (Black Sunday, The Pit and the Pendulum). Due to Castle performing poorly at the box office, Margheriti decided to remake it six years later; this time in color. The director would later say that this was a mistake as he felt that the color robbed Web of the Spider of its atmosphere. Although I somewhat agree with him, I still think it’s an interesting film and I’m glad that it was made. Clocking in at 93 minutes, Web moves along at a fast enough pace (for me, anyway), and, although it would have been more atmospheric in glorious black and white, conjures up quite a bit of gothic mood. The sets are wonderful and are dressed beautifully and the look of the movie reminds me very much of a Night Gallery episode crossed with a Roger Corman Poe film. The period costumes are also quite lovely looking and the eerie musical score, by prolific Italian composer Riziero Ortolani (The Valachi Papers, The House on the Edge of the Park), adds immeasurably to the film.

The movie also features two very well-known actors. The first is Anthony Franciosa (A Hatful of Rain, Tenebrae) who stars as Alan Foster and convincingly shows us a man who goes from happy confidence to frightened madness. The second is Klaus Kinski (For a Few Dollars More, Slaughter Hotel, Nosferatu the Vampyre). Although Kinski’s role as Edgar Allan Poe is brief, it is also extremely memorable and one of the highlights of the film.

We also have lovely French actress Michèle Mercier (Black Sabbath, Angélique, Marquise des Anges) who does well with her role of the seductive Elisabeth Blackwood while recognizable faces such as Peter Carsten (Mafia Connection, Mr. Superinvisible), Silvano Tranquilli (The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, Castle of Blood), Karin Field (Cave of the Living Dead, The Mad Butcher) and Raf Baldassarre (A Fistful of Dollars, Eyeball) only add to the well-made movie.

Web of the Spider has been released on Blu-ray in region 1, 2 and 3 from the fine folks at Garagehouse Pictures. The film, which is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, looks gorgeous. The audio is also superb and the disc is overflowing with special features such as the German theatrical trailer, a deleted scene, an art gallery, the German Super 8 movie digest, and the uncut Italian version in standard definition which is also presented in its 2.35:1 aspect ratio and runs over seventeen minutes longer than the American version. We are also treated to not one, but two audio commentaries. The first is by George Reis, the editor of DVD Drive-in and writer/director Keith Crocker. These knowledgeable guys tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Web of the Spider while, in the second commentary, screenwriter Stephen Romano, who is also a crazy talented artist and contributed the beautiful, eye-catching artwork featured on the Blu-ray sleeve, provides much info about the film, as well as about extremely interesting subjects such as filmmaking and pre-home video film distribution. Rounding out these excellent special features are fifteen minutes of Antonio Margheriti trailers. If you’re a fan of 1970s Euro horror films, Klaus Kinski or Antonio Margheriti, this disc is an absolute joy.

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(Ernie Magnotta is the author of "Halloween: The Changing Shape of an Iconic Series"). Click here to order from Amazon.)

BY FRED BLOSSER

As a new Arrow Films Blu-ray edition of his 1972 Italian Western “The Grand Duel” reminds us, Lee Van Cleef was once a familiar screen presence. In the 1950s you could hardly watch TV or go to the movies without seeing his hawkish face, usually peering out venomously from under a stetson as a Western heavy. Following personal setbacks and changes in industry trends, Van Cleef’s roles became fewer, slighter, and harder to land in the early 1960s. And then Sergio Leone came calling. Leone wanted to pair Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name with a second American actor in “For a Few Dollars More” as a rival bounty hunter named Colonel Mortimer. Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, and Lee Marvin all turned down the role. By default, Leone approached Van Cleef. It was a providential choice for both men. “For a Few Dollars More” was a smash hit in Europe on its December 1965 release, and Italian producers quickly queued up to offer Van Cleef starring roles in other Spaghetti Westerns while Leone brought him back for another high-profile part as Angel Eyes, the “Bad” one in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

After the Leone films opened with stunning success in the U.S. in 1967 and the other Spaghettis followed on the lucrative drive-in circuit a few months later, Van Cleef was a highly bankable star and American producers made their own overtures. For a time, Van Cleef pursued a transatlantic career in Westerns, starring in further Italian pictures like “Sabata” (1969) and “Return of Sabata” (1971) and international co-productions like “Bad Man’s River” (1971) and “The Stranger and the Gunfighter” (1974), while filming three American movies: “Barquero” (1970), “El Condor” (1971), and “The Magnificent Seven Ride!” (1972). The American pictures were dull and talky, and even though they gave Van Cleef star billing, shared with Jim Brown in “El Condor,” the roles were lackluster. In “The Magnificent Seven Ride!”, he’s stuck with a bad toupee and looks so disinterested that you expect him to fall off his horse from boredom any minute.

Ironically, through big studio backing, the dismal American productions received healthy advertising play, while “The Grand Duel” from the same period barely registered in the U.S., although it was greatly superior. Directed by Giancarlo Santi and scripted by the prolific Ernesto Gastaldi, it passed quickly through drive-ins and second-run theaters in 1974. Theoretically “The Grand Duel” wasn’t a bad handle as a literal translation from the Italian title, “Il grande duello.” The phrase suggests both the battle of wills between the good guys and the bad guys that drives the plot. and in a literal sense the shootout that decides the contest in the end. Still, the picture might have had more attention here under a catchier, more clearly Western title. With the advent of VCRs a decade later, its home-video visibility was a little more robust if comparably underwhelming. The movie appeared on the collectors‘ market and budget VHS shelves under several titles: “The Grand Duel,” “The Big Showdown,” and “Storm Rider.”

Santi had worked as Leone’s assistant director on two films, and like most of Leone’s other Italian successors and emulators, he had absorbed a lesson from “For a Few Dollars More” that the American filmmakers apparently failed to recognize. The ideal starring role for Van Cleef was the “man in black” template embodied in Colonel Mortimer, that of an aging, almost superhumanly proficient gunman, usually dressed in formal, funereal attire. The character is defined by steely authority, a mysterious history, an elusive sense of sadness, and an air of menace. Circumstances throw the character into partnership or rivalry with a younger, more impetuous man who may become either his protege or his prey -- the outcome hangs in the balance until the final reel. The contrast with the headstrong, less seasoned younger partner underscores the wisdom, experience, and patient cunning of the Van Cleef character.

BY FRED BLOSSER 

I saw many, many Italian-made sword-and-toga movies as a kid in the early 1960s at the Kayton, my neighborhood movie house, where they usually played on mismatched double-bills with B-Westerns, British “Carry On” comedies, low-budget noir dramas, and fourth-run Elvis movies. Many of these Italian epics were simplistic and formulaic, as if the producers figured that people had come to see spectacle, sex, and sword-fights, and never mind anything else. Regardless, more ambitious productions occasionally surfaced with slightly more dramatic substance and marginally higher production values. One such entry was “The Colossus of Rhodes” (1961), Sergio Leone’s first acknowledged directorial credit preceding his breakthrough success with “A Fistful of Dollars” in 1964. The Warner Archive Collection has released the 1961 movie on Blu-ray with audio commentary by Sir Christopher Frayling, Leone’s biographer and longtime critical champion.

The script co-written by Leone has plenty of plot -- almost too much, when one development begins to get in the way of another. As the film opens, an aristocratic Athenian war hero, Dario (Rory Calhoun), comes to Rhodes to kick back on vacation and ogle the ladies. Meanwhile, rebellion is brewing against tyrannical King Serses, who secretly schemes with Phoenicia to use Rhodes as a base for piratical raids against their mutual rival, Greece. As part of the deal, Phoenicia has agreed to provide Serses with a huge contingent of slaves to complete the 300-foot Colossus of Rhodes that straddles the harbor. The king needs the free labor to finish the construction after losing many of his initial workers -- starved and beaten political prisoners -- in a mass escape. The imposing statue of Apollo symbolically honors “the strength and power of our King Serses,” says the unctuous prime minister, Thar, but the two men also plan to use it to pour burning oil and molten lead on unsuspecting Greek warships when the enemy attacks in reprisal for Serses’ piracy. In the meantime, Thar schemes to depose Serses and make himself ruler. With the connivance of the Russian – oops, Phoenician – ambassador, the “slaves” imported to work on the Colossus are actually foreign mercenaries in disguise, sneaked in to support Thar’s coup. Got that? I haven’t even mentioned that Carete, the elderly, idealistic engineer who designed the monument, is unaware that the king is reconfiguring it as a war machine. Mirte, the sister of one of the freedom fighters opposing Serses and Thar, hopes to sway Dario over to the side of the rebels, while Thar’s mistress Diala (Lea Massari), who also happens to be Carete’s niece, welcomes the Athenian’s romantic advances for her own purposes. The royalists suspect Dario of being a rebel sympathizer. The insurrectionists eye him as a spy for Serses as he cozies up to Diala.

Cineasts today will recognize several familiar faces in the cast, including the wistfully beautiful Lea Massari from “L’avventura” and “Murmurs of the Heart,” and several actors who would later become Spaghetti Western regulars, including Roberto Camardiel (Serses), Antonio Casas (the Phoenician ambassador), and Nello Pazzafini (uncredited as a soldier in one fleeting scene). Back in 1961 on a Saturday night at the Kayton, Rory Calhoun’s would have been the only familiar face on the screen. The movie’s vintage trailer added as a supplement to the Blu-ray identifies Calhoun as “the star of ‘The Texan’,” as if audiences might be slow to remember that they had seen Calhoun on TV as “The Texan” the night before. As Leone’s token American star, Calhoun is dark, good-looking, and up to the physical demands of the chase and swordplay scenes, but his character is more passive than the usual toga heroes played by Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott. Where Hercules and Goliath usually led the revolts against evil kings in their movies, Dario is swept up in a plot hatched by others. Frayling says that Leone modeled the character on Cary Grant’s urbane Roger Thornhill in “North by Northwest,” to tease the usual conventions of the genre. Just as Grant’s accidental spy was trapped on the giant Presidential heads of Mt. Rushmore, Dario scrambles around on the Colossus to evade pursuing enemies, in what appears to be an impressive matte effect. The 220 B.C. costuming requires Calhoun to wear a short skirt and white sandals that Frayling likens to “Go-Go socks.” In fairness to the actor, he doesn’t look much sillier than Brad Pitt or Colin Farrell in similar garb in the more recent epics “Troy” and “Alexander” (both from 2004). There’s plenty of wrestling and hand-to-hand fighting in the story, with choreography only a little phonier than the average WWE smackdown, but except for one prolonged scuffle, it’s mostly executed by the Italian actors and stunt men who play the rebels and not by Calhoun.

BY FRED BLOSSER

Mill Creek Entertainment has released a double-bill of “Fort Yuma Gold” (1966) and “Damned Hot Day of Fire” (1968) in a Blu-ray + Digital edition. Mill Creek notes that the films are two of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite Spaghetti Westerns -- a shrewd strategy to attract fans who may be interested in sampling the same, often hard-to-find genre movies that Tarantino devoured in his formative years. Both pictures are above-average Italian Westerns.

In “Fort Yuma Gold,” directed by veteran Italian filmmaker Giorgio Ferroni as “Calvin J. Padget,” outlaw chief Nelson Riggs schemes with renegade Confederate Major Sanders to steal a million dollars in gold from Fort Yuma, a Union outpost, in the last days of the Civil War. While Sanders orders his troops to make a diversionary, suicidal attack on the fort, he and Riggs will sneak into the post through an abandoned mine and grab the loot. When a Union commander some days’ ride away learns about the plot, he dispatches two of his soldiers, Captain Lefevre and Sergeant Pitt, to warn the fort, guided by Lt. Gary Hammond, a Confederate prisoner of war. As a native Westerner, Hammond knows the safest route to Fort Yuma. The two Northerners don’t. Secretly, Hammond hopes to elude the two Yankees en route, locate Sanders‘ detachment, and avert disaster by warning his friend Lt. Brian, one of Sanders’ adjutants, about the Major’s treachery.

The movie’s traditional plot is reminiscent of Hollywood’s Civil War Westerns like “Escape from Fort Bravo” and “Alvarez Kelly,” reflecting the strategy generally used by Italian studios in the early days of the Spaghettis to make their films look as much like American productions as possible. The actors billed as “Montgomery Wood” (Hammond), “Red Carter” (Sgt. Pitt), and “Benny Reeves” (Juke, Riggs‘ henchman) were actually Italians Giuliano Gemma, Nello Pazzafini, and Benito Stefanelli. Gemma also used the “Montgomery Wood” alias in three other Italian Westerns, and his resemblance to American leading man and future best-selling novelist Tom Tryon may have helped further the impression that “Fort Yuma Gold” was an import from America. The deception probably worked as long as ticket-buyers failed to recognize Ferroni, Gemma, Pazzafini, Stefanelli, Dan Vadis (Riggs), Jacques Sernas (Sanders), and Antonio Molino Rojo (Brian) as homegrown veterans of the Italian sword-and-toga epics of the late 1950s and early 1960s. When the popularity of the toga spectacles waned with the rise of the Italian Westerns, many writers, directors, and actors transitioned easily from one genre to the next. The hammy, WWE-style melees between gladiators and centurions in the Hercules and Samson movies became the saloon brawls of the Spaghettis, with athletic actors like Gemma, Pazzafini, and Stefanelli doing their own stunts. By 1966, in turn, public tastes in the Italian Westerns had begun to favor the cynical, down-and-dirty violence of Sergio Leone’s massively successful Spaghettis over the American model. In Italy, “Fort Yuma Gold” opened as “Per pochi dollari ancora” or “For a Few Extra Dollars.” The moviemakers were clearly hoping to ride the recent smash success of “For a Few Dollars More,” even if Ferroni/Padget’s style bears little likeness to Leone’s. If you don’t expect a polished American picture on one hand or a nihilistic Leone clone on the other, you might enjoy “Fort Yuma Gold” on its own terms as a mostly fast-paced, sincere B-Western.

BY TODD GARBARINI

Film historian Douglas Dunning has informed Cinema Retro that Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 and Ahrya Fine Arts will be presenting the 50^th anniversary screening of Sam Peckinpah’s influential 1969 film The Wild Bunch and special guests are scheduled to appear at both locations. The film stars William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmund O’Brien, Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones, Jaime Sanchez, Bo Hopkins, Strother Martin, Albert Decker, Emilio Fernandez, and Alfonso Arau and runs 145 minutes.

PLEASE NOTE:

Screening #1 is on February 26^th at the Playhouse 7 at 7:00 pm, and at press time W.K. Stratton, the author of a new book, The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film, will participate in a discussion after the screening. He will also sign copies of his book at the theater.

Screening #2 is at the Ahrya Fine Arts on March 2^nd at 7:30 pm. Mr. Stratton is also scheduled to be on hand. In addition, screenwriter Walon Green is scheduled to appear. He won an Academy Award in 1971 for directing the documentary, The Hellstrom Chronicle. He went on to write such films as Sorcerer and The Brinks Job for director William Friedkin and The Border for Tony Richardson.

Actor L.Q. Jones is on the list, too. He worked on several other Peckinpah movies, beginning with Ride the High Country, along with Major Dundee, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He co-starred in Hang ‘Em High, Hell Is For Heroes, and Martin Scorsese’s Casino.

Actor Bo Hopkins is also scheduled to appear. He co-starred in Peckinpah’s The Getaway and The Killer Elite, and he also appeared in such films as The Day of the Locust, American Graffiti, Midnight Express, and The Newton Boys.

From the press release:

The Wild Bunch

Part of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: laemmle.com/ac.

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the iconic and groundbreaking movies of the '60s, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. This graphically violent and poetic film exploded the very concept of the traditional Western by focusing on a brutal group of outlaws trying to survive at the dawn of the 20th century. Featuring four Oscar-winning actors—William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, and Edmond O’Brien—along with a startling supporting cast, the film clearly established Peckinpah as one of the top directors of the era.

The director’s classic 1962 Western Ride the High Country had demonstrated his talent, but he ran into conflicts with producers on subsequent projects in the '60s. The Wild Bunch marked his triumphant return to filmmaking. He wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay with Walon Green, from a story by Green and Roy N. Sickner. It is set in 1913, on the eve of World War I and in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. A botched robbery in the opening sequence leads the outlaws to seek refuge in Mexico, where they continue to be pursued by a group of bounty hunters hired by the railroad company they have robbed. Robert Ryan, cast as a former friend of Holden’s character, leads the pursuers.

The supporting cast includes Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones, Jaime Sanchez, Bo Hopkins, Strother Martin, Albert Decker, Emilio Fernandez, and Alfonso Arau. Lucien Ballard provided the rich cinematography, and Jerry Fielding wrote the Oscar-nominated score. But perhaps the most crucial creative collaborator was editor Lou Lombardo, who worked closely with the director to perfect an innovative editing style that incorporated quick, almost subliminal cuts masterfully interspersed with slow motion shots.

The film’s violence was shocking to many viewers at the time, and some critics denounced the film. Others, however, saw the violence as reflecting the disruptions in American society, along with the chaos of the Vietnam War. Life magazine’s Richard Schickel called the film “one of the most important records of the mood of our times and one of the most important American films of the era.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby hailed the film as “very beautiful and the first truly interesting American-made Westerns in years.” When cuts that had been made shortly after the film’s release were finally restored for a 1995 reissue, critics were even more ecstatic. Writing in The Baltimore Sun, Michael Sragow declared, “What Citizen Kane was to movie lovers in 1941, The Wild Bunch was to cineastes in 1969.” The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1999.

The Playhouse 7 is at 673 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91101.l The phone number is (310) 478 – 3836.

The Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre is located at 8556 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211. The phone number is (310) 478 – 3836.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Andrew V. McLaglen was almost predestined to be a movie director. The son of the legendary character actor Victor McLaglen, Andrew came of age on movie sets. His father often appeared in John Ford Westerns and Andrew developed a passion for the genre. He ultimately gained a foothold in the television industry during the late 1950s and early 1960s when TV Westerns were all the rage. He proved himself to be a capable and reliable director and eventually moved on to feature films. McLaglen scored a major hit with the rollicking Western comedy "McLintock!" starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in 1963.  Two years later, he teamed with James Stewart for the poignant Civil War drama "Shenandoah". The film was a big success with both critics and at the boxoffice. Thus, Universal, the studio that released "Shenandoah", hoped to capitalize on the film's success and re-teamed McLaglen and Stewart for a Western, "The Rare Breed". Adding to the reunion aspect of the production, it co-starred Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith. O'Hara had co-starred with Stewart in the 1962 comedy "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" and Keith was O'Hara's leading man in the Disney classic "The Parent Trap". Got all that? The script by Ric Hardman takes an unusual aspect of the Old West for its central plot line. Martha Price (O'Hara) and her daughter Hilary (Juliet Mills) have arrived in Texas from their home in England. They are bringing with them their prized Hereford bull, a breed not known in America. Their hope is to sell the animal at auction so that cross breeding American cows will eventually result in superior stock. The prim and proper upper-crust British ladies have endured a tragedy that isn't depicted on screen: the death of Martha's husband on the ship en route to America, although they seem fairly unperturbed, as they only fleetingly reference the dearly departed in the course of what follows. The Hereford is mocked by the cattle barons because it lacks the signature horns of traditional Texas steers. In a convoluted plot device,  a smarmy rich man (David Brian) with an obsession for seducing Martha,  bids on the Hereford to impress her. When his awkward attempts to bed her fail, somehow another unseen buyer steps forward and the beast must be transported to him via the efforts of a wrangler named Burnett (James Stewart). At this point, the story becomes difficult to follow. Suffice it to say that Burnett agrees to escort Martha, Hilary and their prized bull to the far-off destination to conclude the deal. Along the way, they are ambushed by Simons (Jack Elam), a greedy crook who causes a stampede of another cattle herd being escorted by Burnett's friend Jamie (Don Galloway.) In the resulting chaos, Simons intends to steal the Hereford as well as the money Martha has been paid to deliver the bull. If all of this sounds confusing, watching it unfurl on screen makes the plot even more fragmented when Martha accuses Burnett of also trying to swindle her. Ultimately, they all wind up at the outpost of the new owner, Bowen (Brian Keith), a Scottish eccentric who runs his own cattle empire and sees the possibility of crossbreeding the Hereford with his own herd.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Those of us who share the rather unusual- and sometimes bizarre-profession of reviewing films for a living all share a nasty little secret: there are countless classic movies that we haven't seen. I'm not alone in making this mea culpa. No less than the late, great Robert Osborne, whose insightful introductions on Turner Classic Movies helped launch that channel's success, once confided in me that even he could list numerous classic movies that he had yet to catch up with. When he confessed this to Lauren Bacall, she told him that she envied him because she wish she could recapture the sheer joy of seeing a great film for the first time. I've never seen the 1942 musical "Holiday Inn". I can't say why but perhaps it's because that as a boy growing up in the Sixties, such productions seemed quaint and unappealing when I had a celluloid tidal wave of WWII flicks, Westerns and Bond-inspired spy movies. After all, John Wayne and Steve McQueen never danced on film, so why bother watching anyone else do so? Thus, when I attended the Papermill Playhouse's stage production of the much-beloved Irving Berlin song fest, I was in the unique position of not being acquainted with the property at all. At the risk of invoking the names of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the corn is as high as an elephant's eye, to be sure. However, the Papermill has outdone itself in presenting the ultimate "feel good" production for the holiday season.

The story is as sappy and sentimental as I suspected when I was a kid, but with the passing of decades, I've warmed to sappy and sentimental musicals and "Holiday Inn" turns the old concept of "Hey, kids- we can put the show on in the barn!" into a slight variation that boils down to "Hey, kids- we can put the show on right here at the inn!". The story opens with a song and dance trio just finishing a successful engagement. They are Jim Hardy (Nicholas Rodriguez), his girlfriend and dance partner Lila Dixon (Paige Faure) and Ted Hanover (Jeff Kready). Backstage, Jim drops a bombshell by proposing to Lila and announcing that they can now leave show business and move to a farm he has just purchased sight unseen in rural Connecticut. Although Lila accepts the marriage proposal, she says she wants to continue the act on the road for another six months with Ted while Jim prepares the farm for her to move in following their marriage. Jim agrees but when he gets to the historic Mason Farm that he has purchased, he discovers he's been snookered. The place is run down and he is immediately served with demands to pay back taxes and assorted other staggering debts he didn't know existed. While he struggles to cope, he is visited by Linda Mason (Hayley Podschun), the previous owner the farm, which had been in her family for generations. Seems Linda couldn't afford the upkeep and had been evicted, thus allowing Jim to secure the place while in foreclosure. In a coincidence that only occurs in musicals of this type, she is attractive and has a talent for performing on stage, though she gave up her career to become a teacher when sufficient opportunities didn't appear for her to make a living in show business. Jim imposes on her to sing a bit and he recognizes she has star power. Meanwhile, Lila makes a surprise visit and confesses she is so caught up in her own thriving career that she is calling off the marriage and going back on the road with Ted.  You don't have to be the kind of person who wears a deerstalker hat and smokes a pipe to detect what happens next: Jim falls head over heels for Linda and they devise a plan to transform the failing farm into a hotel that presents musical productions.  The plan proves to be an immediate success, drawing crowds from far and wide but things unravel when Ted turns up and announces that Lila has kicked him to the curb and broken up their act when a millionaire proposed to her. Desperate to jump start his career, Ted worms his way into the inn's revue, in the process falling for Linda, who is clearly smitten by Ted's talents as well as he egotistical self-assurance which is in contrast to Jim's modest nature.

The well-oiled plot device of a city slicker finding himself hapless as a farmer must date back to the invention of celluloid but it persists because it's a genuinely funny one, as evidenced by films such as "The Egg and I", "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House", "The Money Pit" and the still amusing "Green Acres" 1960s TV series. The fish-out-water concept provides some genuine laughs but it is the wealth of Berlin songs that elevate "Holiday Inn" to a special status. Just consider all of these classic numbers in one show: "Heat Wave", "Blue Skies", "Happy Holiday", "Cheek to Cheek", "Easter Parade" and a little number called "White Christmas" that might actually catch on. All of them are superbly performed by a flawless and talented cast under the outstanding musical direction of Shawn Gough with equally impressive choreography by Denis Jones. Gordon Greenberg is the director of the overall production which practically had the enthusiastic audience dancing in the aisles. Kudos to costume designer Alejo Vietti for providing some eye-popping creations and especially to scene designer Anna Louizos, whose creative sets are not only impressive but are miraculously changed literally in the blink of an eye without the slightest interruption. The four leads in the show illustrate the Papermill's painstaking casting process pays off. Rodriguez, Podschun, Kready and Faure are delightful to watch throughout. Each of them has the ability to knock 'em dead during the musical numbers but they also deliver the witty bon mots in a style that ensures big laughs. There is also a spot-on supporting performance by Ann Harada as a local handywoman who finds plenty of work repairing Jim's dilapidated inn. The book has been tweaked a slight bit to make the dialogue more relevant for today's audiences but there are some quaint references to Connecticut as a dull, largely rural state, which gets big laughs from tri-state audiences who have suffered the endless traffic jams on the I-95 corridor.The film version was released in 1942 during the early days of WWII, which accounts for the sentimental success of "White Christmas", but for reasons unknown, the stage production takes place in 1946. A notorious blackface musical number in praise of Abraham Lincoln that appeared in the film has also been mercifully left out of the stage production. 

The Papermill's presentation of "Holiday Inn" illustrates why the venue is the gold standard of regional playhouses. The show delighted the audience so much that even the rude nitwits that generally walk out before the show ends in order to get a head start on reaching the parking lot seemed transfixed by all the talent on stage and remained to join in the roaring standing ovation. It's the perfect holiday show and runs through December 30. Don't miss it.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Kino Lorber continues its welcome habit of unearthing cinematic rarities and making them available to retro movie lovers. Case in point: "Tiger by the Tail", a long-forgotten crime thriller filmed in 1968 as an independent production but not released until 1970. The film is the epitome of a good "B" movie from the era: lean, fast-moving and efficiently made with an impressive cast. The movie is typical of low-brow fare from the 1960s. It's primary purpose was to shot quickly and turn a modest profit. Many of these films, which often played as the second feature on double bills, had the asset of affording leading roles to actors and actresses who rarely had the opportunity to get top billing. Such is the case with this film which features Christopher George in the leading role. He plays Steve Michaelis, a recently discharged U.S. Army Vietnam War veteran who is returning home to New Mexico. However, he makes a nearly fatal pit stop in Mexico and the opening scene is a bit of a shocker.  He's a about to bed a local beauty when two thugs enter the room and a brutal fight ensues that he barely escapes. This seems like an irrelevant scene, given all that follows, but we find out later its pertinent to his fate. Steve arrives in New Mexico where he reunites with his older brother Frank (Dennis Patrick), who raised him after their parents died. While Steve is down-and-out and broke, Frank has prospered as the majority share holder in the local horse racing track which fuels the local economy. The two men have a frosty reunion that is strained even further when Steve discovers that his former girlfriend Rita (Tippi Hedren) is now romantically involved with Frank. Nevertheless, the two men reconcile and things appear to be heading in the right direction. However, fate takes a tragic turn when the racetrack is robbed and Frank is murdered in cold blood. This sets in motion a complicated series of events. Steve learns he will inherit his brother's share of the racetrack stock, something that doesn't sit well with Frank's partners who inform Steve they intend to use a legal loophole to pay him off at a bargain basement price and assume total control of the operation. Steve soon discovers that he may not even get that money, as it becomes apparent someone has ordered him to be killed. Worse, he is being framed for the murder of his brother. The film follows the formula of old film noir crime thrillers and that isn't a bad thing. We see him use his wits and considerable fighting ability to thwart attempts on his life as he tries to find out who is out to get him. The logical suspects are the racetrack shareholders, a group of greedy elitists who don't want to be in business with him. Red herrings abound and Steve learns he can't trust anyone including Rita who informs him she wants them to resume their relationship now that Frank is in his grave.

"Tiger by the Tail" feels and looks like a TV movie of the era and that isn't a coincidence. Director R.G. Springsteen was best known for his work in television where he excelled in directing episodes of classic western  series, and his colleague on those shows, writer Charles A. Wallace wrote the screenplay for the film. (This would prove to be Springsteen's final work in the film industry before his death in 1989.) Springsteen's direction is workmanlike in some areas but more inspired in others. He milks a good deal of suspense from the plot and keeps the action moving at a brisk pace across the movie's 99 minute running time. Springsteen, perhaps because of budget limitations, shoots virtually every scene in a real location which adds authenticity to the production. The film boasts a good cast of supporting actors, all in top form: Lloyd Bochner and Alan Hale as the greedy stockholders, Dean Jagger as a Scrooge-like banker and most intriguing, John Dehner as the local sheriff (in an excellent performance) with a penchant for using twenty dollars words in his vocabulary and who, along with his hot-headed deputy (Skip Homeier) may be complicit in working with the bad guys. Steve's only friends are Sarah Harvey (Glenda Farrell), the perky owner of a gun and souvenir shop who performs ballistics tests in the shop and New Mexico State Trooper Ben Holmes (R.G. Armstrong) who offers Steve whatever limited advice and support he can. The singer Charo (yes, that Charo) is cast in a superfluous role to provide a couple of songs in a local bar and to add a bit of additional sex appeal when we aren't gawking at Tippi Hedren sunning herself poolside in a bikini. As a leading man, Christopher George is top-notch. He's handsome, rugged and capable with fists and a gun as he takes on seemingly insurmountable odds. George should have been a success on the big screen. He was coming off a run in the hit TV series "The Rat Patrol" but never quite got his opportunity to shine on the big screen. "Tiger by the Tale" represents one of his few leading roles in a feature film, though he impressed as villains in the John Wayne westerns "El Dorado" (1967) and "Chisum" (1970). He died in 1983 at only 51 years of age from heart complications.

The Kino Lorber transfer is impressive, as usual, though there are some occasional speckles and artifacts. However, it's doubtful that there are many pristine prints of the film floating around, given its lowly stature. The Blu-ray features a very good commentary track by film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson, both of whom show a good deal of respect for the movie and all involved in its production. They are especially kind to Tippi Hedren, pointing out that she was long underrated as an actress. (She unfairly took most of the blame for the failure of Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" in which she starred.) The release also includes a gallery of other action films and mysteries available from KL, though no trailer is included for "Tiger by the Tail". I don't want to overstate the movie's merits. It certainly isn't a lost classic but I suspect you'll find it far more impressive than you might have suspected. Recommended.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

Kino Lorber Studio Classics has released “A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die!,” a 1968 Italian Western, in a Blu-ray edition. In the movie, Gov. Lem Carter (Robert Ryan) offers amnesty to outlaws in a bid to quell lawlessness in 1880s New Mexico. On the run from deputies and bounty hunters, desperado Clay McCord (Alex Cord) decides to seek the governor’s clemency. McCord suffers from paralytic spasms of his gun hand. The attacks have become more frequent and more severe, and he fears that they represent the onset of epilepsy, the malady that disabled and eventually killed his father. But enemies on both sides of the law make it difficult for him to go straight as he wishes to do. Bounty hunters surround the town of Tascosa, where McCord must go to sign the needed papers, and even if he can elude them, the cynical marshal, Roy Colby (Arthur Kennedy), is disinclined to give him a break. The gunfighter is equally unwelcome in nearby Escondido, a haven for fugitives, after antagonizing Kraut (Mario Brega), the brutal hardcase who controls the rundown settlement. It’s even money on who will bring McCord down first, Kraut’s pistoleros or Colby’s deputies. Although I can’t find any sources to either confirm or refute the speculation, I believe that Brega’s dubbed English voice as Kraut belongs to American actor Walter Barnes, who made several Italian and German Westerns in the 1960s.

With an American executive producer, three high-profile ‘60s American actors in starring roles, an Italian producer, an Italian director, and an Italian supporting cast dubbed into English, “A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die” straddles the divide between the earnest tradition of U.S. Westerns and the violent, anything-goes approach of the Italian kind. It opens with a long (actually, too long) outdoor sequence of McCord and a pal eluding a posse, like characters in “One-Eyed Jacks” and any number of other classic Westerns. Then follows a scene of two sadistic gunmen roughing up a frightened priest in front of an altar, and eventually shooting him in the back. Try to find a situation like that in a John Wayne or Roy Rogers movie. The two gunmen are played by Aldo Sambrell and Antonio Molino Rojo, who -- like Mario Brega, the Ernest Borgnine of Italian Westerns -- are instantly recognizable from Sergio Leone’s stock company of scruffy character actors. An unsympathetic critic might speculate that a respectable if unexceptional American Western could have resulted had the moviemakers tightened the script, dialed back the film’s high body count, and substituted homegrown character actors for Italian ones in the supporting cast. On the other hand, for those of us whose moviegoing tastes were formed in the Cinema Retro era, the manic unevenness of the picture as it exists has a certain freewheeling charm of its own.

Kino Lorber’s cover notes advertise the Blu-ray as a new high-definition master from a 4K scan of the original negative. Although the daytime scenes have some graininess, the nighttime lights and darks are clear and sharp. The label’s resident Spaghetti expert, Alex Cox, contributes an informative, droll, but respectful audio commentary. Those new to Italian Westerns will learn a lot about the genre from Cox’s remarks, while fans will have fun matching their knowledge against his in spotting familiar Italian faces in the movie’s supporting cast. As another supplement, the disc also includes the original ending from the European print of the movie, transposed from an old, overseas VHS tape. This bleak denouement is stronger by far than that of the U.S. cut.

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FRED BLOSSER IS THE AUTHOR OF "SAVAGE SCROLLS: VOLUME ONE: SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE HYBORIAN AGE". CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST OF THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

"THE SON-OF- A -BITCH CAN ACT!"

By Raymond Benson

It’s well-known that when John Ford, who had worked with actor John Wayne on a number of films prior to seeing him in Howard Hawks’ Red River, proclaimed that he didn’t know that “the son-of- a- bitch could act!”

His words were apt. Prior to the release of Red River in 1948 (it was shot in 1946 but didn’t appear in theaters until ’48), Wayne had mostly played the likable, stalwart “John Wayne” character that had first appeared in Ford’s Stagecoach (1939). But in Red River, Wayne plays a role that turned critical and public opinion of the actor’s thespian abilities. He pulls off a remarkable feat—Wayne’s character, Thomas Dunson, is a first-class S.O.B., a guy you really want someone to punch out throughout the movie; and yet, Wayne manages to make him likable. He carries an audience through over two hours of hardcore western, and he delivers one of his two or three best performances. It doesn’t hurt that Wayne is ably supported by Montgomery Clift, who plays Wayne’s adopted son. In many ways, it’s really Clift’s picture—he’s the protagonist, and the story is seen through his eyes. But wait—maybe it’s seen through Walter Brennan’s eyes in the original, rare theatrical cut, released here in a glorious 2K digital restoration on Blu-ray.

In fact, I had never seen the theatrical cut, the version preferred by director Hawks. A longer cut, by about six minutes, was the one that was shown on television and appeared on previous home video releases. The longer version was actually intended as a preview for studio execs; it utilizes on-screen textual transitions (as if the audience is reading from a book) and an extended final confrontation between Wayne and Clift. The theatrical cut dispenses with the textual transitions and instead substitutes sequences narrated by Walter Brennan, who then, arguably, becomes the character through whose eyes we see the story. Why this version, which originally played to audiences in 1948, didn’t become the standard edition after that is a mystery; in actuality, Hawks was quite right—the theatrical cut is the better one, except for the trimmed final fight between the two leads. As Hawks tells Peter Bogdanovich in an audio interview included as an extra in the Criterion Collection’s elaborate box set, the best way to watch Red River is to view the theatrical cut up until the last few minutes, and then change to the preview cut at the point when Wayne marches through the heads of cattle to confront Clift at the corral.

Another thing that is remarkable about Red River is that it was Hawks’ first western. He would go on to make a handful more (good ones, too!), and was known for making pictures in all genres, but the fact that he went out of the gate with one of the greatest westerns of all time is truly an achievement. Red River, without question, is one of the five best American films of the genre.

The story is a fictional account of the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail, the hardships the men overcome, and the battle of wills between Wayne, the tyrannical leader and father, and Clift, the calmer, perhaps smarter right-hand cowpoke and adopted son. Hawks manages to capture the perilous trek with uncanny realism, assured composition and tempo, and drama. Hawks once said that the key to a good film was “three good scenes and no bad ones.” Well, Red River has far more than three good scenes. The stampede sequence is nothing short of astounding.

Criterion went all out on this one. It’s a four-disk set—two Blu-rays and two DVDs containing identical material. Both versions of the film are included, along with a couple of interviews with Bogdanovich, who explains the difference between the two cuts and presents his views on the picture. Critic Molly Haskell talks about Hawks in a new video interview, and film scholar Lee Clark Mitchell tells us all about the western genre in an interesting piece. There are audio excerpts from interviews with Hawks and novelist Borden Chase, as well as a Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Red River featuring Wayne, Joanne Dru, and Brennan. Besides the usual essay-filled booklet, the box comes with Chase’s original novel, Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail, from which the film was adapted.

Great stuff, and worth every penny.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Despite having been a major star for decades and having a lead a life of controversy and personal obstacles and challenges, it seems surprising that there has never been a book about the films of Anthony Perkins that examined his work in detail. That dilemma has finally been resolved with the release of "More Than a Psycho: The Complete Films of Anthony Perkins" by husband-and-wife writing team of Dawn and Jonathon Dabell. The authors refreshingly concentrate on examining each of the actor's individual feature films and TV productions in detail, offering fascinating background information and astute evaluations of each title from classics such as "Friendly Persuasion" and "Murder on the Orient Express" to television fare such as "How Awful About Alan" There is a biographical section, to be sure, that provides meaningful details on Perkins' life and career but the primary emphasis is on the quality of his individual films. In this regard the book resembles those marvelous old Citadel Press "Films of..." titles that still adorn the bookshelves and libraries of movie lovers worldwide. The book is also profusely illustrated.

The Dabells succeed in their quest to prove that Perkins should be judged by other achievements that just his signature role as Norman Bates in "Psycho" but it's not without irony that the role that stereotyped him to a degree was one he would return to many years later to exploit in sequels based on Hitchcock's original premise. The book makes it clear that, for the most part, Perkins' considerable talents were generally under-utilized by the film industry. He would occasionally land a supporting role in an "A" list feature film but more of than not he top-lined a good deal of mediocre fare. Nevertheless, he always gave it his best effort and this very worthy book pays homage to his impressive achievements.

Here is an official announcement about the release of the book:

Anthony Perkins is best known for playing Norman Bates in Psycho. Its notoriety and success ensured he remained one of filmdom’s most recognisable faces for the rest of his life… and beyond. Yet there were those (Perkins included) who felt he never truly shook the screen persona of the knife-wielding, mother-obsessed, cross-dressing psychopath, and he was often labelled on the strength of his most notorious role – thus giving a distorted view of a career which spanned four decades and almost sixty movies.

In More Than a Psycho: The Complete Films Of Anthony Perkins, Dawn and Jonathon Dabell take a closer look at the actor’s entire body of work. Their book provides cast and crew details, an extensive image gallery, background information and considered critical analysis for every title. Perkins was, they argue, more than just a prominent screen villain – his talent and versatility went much further, his wider oeuvre encompassing everything from romance to comedy, from war to westerns, from musicals to sci-fi.

With a foreword by highly regarded film and pop culture historian Paul Talbot, this is the essential guide to the career of Anthony Perkins.

300+ images.

Specially commissioned cover by artist Paul Watts.

Proofed and edited by Darrell Buxton.

Cast and crew information on every film, including films where Perkins was screen-writer or director only.

Capsule biography.

Television work.

Theatre work.

Theatrical and TV-movies.

In-depth, balanced critical analysis of every film.

Foreword by Paul Talbot, author of Bronson’s Loose, Bronson’s Loose Again! And Mondo Mandingo.

Extensive bibliography.

Rarely written-about titles explored in never-before-seen detail.

The first -and currently only - book devoted specifically to an examination of Anthony Perkins’ filmography.

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ALTERNATIVELY, SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE DIRECT FROM THE AUTHORS (REQUEST A SHIPPING QUOTE FOR YOUR PART OF THE WORLD BY SENDING ENQUIRIES TO morethanapsycho@hotmail.com).

BY TIM GREAVES

The name Sergio Martino will strike a chord with anyone who has even a passing interest in Italian exploitation pictures of the 70s and 80s. Once seen, who can forget The Great Alligator or The Island of Fishmen – both of which are favourites of this writer in their showcasing of Barbara Bach at her most radiant – or premium Suzy Kendall giallo Torso, or for that matter once ‘video nasty’ and Ursula Andress headliner The Mountain of the Cannibal God? Marking Martino’s second giallo, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (o.t. La coda della scorpione), was released in 1971, sandwiched between a couple of his most highly regarded titles, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh and All the Colours of the Dark. Scorpion’s Tail isn’t quite on a par with either of those, but it’s still a respectable entry in the sub-genre.

When her husband is killed in a plane accident on a business trip to Greece, his unfaithful wife (Evelyn Stewart) is informed she’s beneficiary to a $1 million inheritance, with the one caveat that she has to travel to Athens to finalise her claim. However, there are a number of people intent on getting their hands on the not insubstantial sum, and at least one of them will remorselessly resort to murder to do so. A turn of events results in the arrival of an insurance investigator (George Hilton), who hooks up with a reporter (Anita Strindberg) to check out some irregularities, and they inadvertently set themselves up as targets for the killer.

An enjoyable enough, if not particularly remarkable giallo then, touting a convoluted plot loaded with sufficient a measure of misdirection to keep things unpredictable. Opening in a very clean looking London and moving on to various Greek locales, the travelogue location work certainly functions in the film’s favour, lending it production value that eclipses the slightly ponderous narrative of the screenplay (a collaborative affair from Eduardo Manzanos, Ernesto Gastaldi and Sauro Scavolini). Most of – if not quite all – the standard giallo trappings come into play, primarily there are a number of graphic murders perpetrated by a fedora-wearing, razor-wielding maniac attired in black (who’s not averse to donning a scuba wetsuit when the moment is propitious). Some of them are pretty nasty too, including a startling– if not particularly realistic – moment of eye-violence (squeamish viewers be warned!). However, there’s a conspicuous dearth of nudity, in fact it’s about as coy as they come that department; of course, nudity is seldom (if ever) pertinent, but it’s standard enough a constituent within this sub-genre as to be noticeable when it’s missing. The showdown on a forebodingly rocky stretch of desolate Grecian coastline is fantastic, combining vertiginous camera angles and suspenseful POV to maximum dramatic effect.

Heading up a strong cast – which includes Alberto De Mendoza, Ida Galli (aka Evelyn Stewart), Janine Reynaud and Luigi Pistilli – are George Hilton and Anita Strindberg. Hilton also starred for Martino in the aforementioned pair, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh and All the Colours of the Dark. His rugged good looks found him top billing in a slew of spaghetti westerns – he was a one-spin Sartana – as well as a run of crime and gialli pictures such as The Case of the Bloody Iris, My Dear Killer and The Two Faces of Fear... though 1965’s spoof Bond caper Due mafiosi contro Goldginger (in which he played Agente 007) can probably be safely disregarded! He’s on top form here and rubs along well with the very lovely Anita Strindberg. This writer first became aware of her in Who Saw Her Die?, in which she appeared alongside George Lazenby and Adolfo Celi. She didn’t enjoy as prodigious a career as Hilton, but she did score a lead role in Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key for Martino, as well as featuring in such renowned fare as Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Women in Cell Block 7. Her performance in Scorpion’s Tail is among her finest and there’s no denying that the scene she spends clad in a sheer, clingy wet shirt affords the audience a prurient bonus treat.

BY FRED BLOSSER

Kino Lorber has released the obscure 1969 Western “More Dead Than Alive” in a Blu-ray edition. Discharged from prison in 1891 after serving an eighteen-year sentence for murder, legendary gunslinger Cain (Clint Walker) determines to stay away from firearms, find honest work, and save enough money to buy a ranch. But his reputation as “Killer” Cain precedes him, and chances for employment are slim until he encounters conniving showman Dan Ruffalo (Vincent Price). “People would have something to talk about, if they could see you using this notched Colt of yours,” Ruffalo chortles. He encourages Cain to cash in on his notoriety and join Ruffalo’s traveling show as its star sharpshooting attraction, relegating the show’s current marksman, Billy (Paul Hampton), to a subsidiary role. Monica, a free-spirited artist (Anne Francis), strikes up a friendship with Cain and thinks it’s a bad idea for him to pick up a gun again, however limited his options. Meanwhile, the reformed pistoleer’s old enemies hope to see him dead, including outlaw Santee (Mike Henry), who carries a grudge from a botched jailbreak.

Given the sheer number of Westerns produced in 1969, it’s a sure bet that some pictures released in the shadow of that year’s Big Four -- “The Wild Bunch,” “Once Upon the Time in the West,” “True Grit,” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” -- deserve rediscovery and reappraisal. In the case of “More Dead Than Alive,” fans will welcome the chance to see Clint Walker, Vincent Price, Anne Francis, and Mike Henry again in prime form. Script and direction, not so much. The action-packed poster, reprinted as the sleeve art for the Kino Lorber Blu-ray, would lead you to expect a gritty, violent movie along the lines of “A Stranger in Town,” “God Forgives -- I Dont!,” and other Italian Westerns that were beginning to play widely that year in the U.S., following the breakout success of Sergio Leone’s three “Dollars” movies. Instead, the gunplay and blood squibs are confined to the opening scene and two sequences near the end. Otherwise, it’s a plodding, talky production that ambles from one situation to the next without building up much momentum, like an episode from one of the sedate television Westerns of the late ‘60s. The direction by TV veteran Robert Sparr is dutiful but listless. Characters are introduced whom we think will have major roles in the story (like a lady saloon owner played by Beverly Powers), only to have them soon drop out of sight, never to be seen again. Mike Henry’s Santee is a terrific bad guy who stacks up believably against big Clint Walker’s hero in size and macho presence, but he’s missing in action for most of the picture. Once the script remembers to bring him back, a well-staged, knock-down fistfight between the two characters near the end of the movie injects a welcome jolt of energy that the rest of the film could have used.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray offers “More Dead Than Alive” in an acceptable, 1920x1080p encoding. As a bonus feature, the disc includes an interview with the late Clint Walker, recorded in 2014. In discussing the film, his colleagues, and his career in Hollywood, Walker is modest, dignified, and thoughtful -- qualities sadly lacking in today’s media parade of rancorous politicians, Reality Show exhibitionists, and Internet provocateurs.

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EVE GOLDBERG presents an in-depth examination of the only film Marlon Brando ever directed: "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961)

"ONE-EYED JACKS: AMERICA AT THE CROSSROADS"

A new movie schedule arrived every few months. A two-sided paper treasure chest brimming over with promises of time travel, existential wisdom, and singing in the rain. Wild Strawberries, City Lights, Battle of Algiers, Belle de Jour.

We grabbed up the schedule and studied it with care, taped it to the refrigerator door, marked our calendars. The African Queen, Yojimbo, Rules of the Game.

We made cinema voyages all over town — to the Vista in Hollywood, the Nuart in West LA, the art deco Fox Venice. Before VCRs, DVDs or streaming, revival movie theaters were about the only place a film junkie could get a fix. We might find an occasional nugget on late night TV, John Ford’s Stagecoach, perhaps, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but for the most part, it was the revival house or nowhere. Citizen Kane, La Dolce Vita, Alphaville.

There was rumor of a weird Western called One-Eyed Jacks, starring and directed by Marlon Brando. Nobody we knew had seen it. The movie took on the aura of myth. Was there really a scene where Brando gets whipped? What had the famously iconoclastic actor done with the time-worn clichés of the horse opera?

Finally, I think it was 1974, One-Eyed Jacks arrived. We trooped down to the Fox Venice, waited in a long line, found seats in the filled-to-capacity theatre, and settled in for the ride. We were not disappointed. From the opening shot — Brando casually eating a banana during a bank robbery — the film was like no Western we had ever seen. Moody, psychological, ambiguous, it was awash in sadomasochism, with a brooding Brando in nearly every scene. And yes, the actor gets his whipping in a scene of perverse cruelty which sears into memory.

Back in 1974, we knew we had seen an odd, strangely subversive, one-of-a-kind film. We didn’t know, however, that this quirky little revenge gem would someday be considered an important (if flawed) masterpiece of cinema, and a fascinating link between two eras in Hollywood…and America.

The Western is a quintessentially American film genre. From its earliest days, the cowboy drama was about good guys (white lawmen) confronting bad (Indians, outlaws). Each movie was a tale of expansionist dreams and masculine aggression. Each was a saga of civilization triumphing over savagery. The Western was, to quote film critic J. Hoberman, “the way America used to explain itself to itself.”

Edwin Porter’s 1903 film, The Great Train Robbery, was one of the first Westerns. This 12-minute story in which bandits rob a train, only to be pursued by a posse of lawmen, revolutionized the art of cinema. Porter used ground-breaking techniques such as cross-cutting and close-ups to create a suspenseful, compelling narrative. The basic elements of the genre were set.

The Western remains instantly recognizable across more than a century of evolving media and myth-making. Gunfights, holdups, and massacres. Horses, trains, rustlers, and barroom brawls. School-teachers, stampedes, and six-shooters.

The Golden Age of the Western is often considered to be the years 1946-1973. Following World War II, with the Cold War blazing hot on the beaches of Korea, the U.S. declared itself the new global sheriff in town. At home, the Eisenhower Era earned a reputation as being a time of complacency and consumerism. But these were also the McCarthy years, when right-wing witch hunts against political progressives were ruining lives and careers. And, at the same time, the seeds of change were taking root. A young civil rights movement began asking America: What the hell are the good guys who fought Hitler doing about racial discrimination and bigotry at home?

I say what I think of a film and why, and my readers know my tastes by now. Some hate my taste, and so I'm reliable for them, too, since they know they'll like what I hate.

--Judith Crist, American film critic

BY JOE ELLIOTT

This month marks the 96th birthday of American film critic Judith Crist (1922-2012). Crist was one of the most influential and controversial movie reviewers of her day. She was a founding film critic for New York magazine and spent over two decades serving as the in-house movie reviewer for TV Guide. In addition, she was a frequent contributor to NBC’s Today show for many years. She was very much a tell-it-like-it-is kind of critic, totally unafraid to speak her mind even when this got her into hot water with powerful people in the industry, which it sometimes did. While it’s hard to believe today, back in the 1960s and 1970s a bad review from a prominent critic like Crist could help sink a multi-million dollar film project. Her panning, for example, of 1963’s Cleopatra starring show-biz celebrity couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, so upset executives at 20th Century-Fox they threatened to ban her from future screenings of new films.

Crist was equally unafraid to criticize films the public loved, such as the hugely popular The Sound of Music (1965), a feature she characterized as perfect “for the 5-to-7 set and their mommies who think the kids aren’t up to the stinging sophistication and biting wit of Mary Poppins.” Well-known Hollywood director and full-time curmudgeon Otto Preminger sarcastically nicknamed her “Judas Crist,” meant as an insult but also a sort of unintended backhand compliment to her sagacity and prestige as a critic. (An antediluvian alpha male type like Preminger likely would have been especially irked having a woman critique his films.)

Critic Roger Ebert, a great admirer of Crist, credited her for helping turn American film criticism into a popular art form, bringing to it both a sense of fun and seriousness. Her work in turn spurred readers to seek out the writings of other critics and reviewers, including Ebert himself. For this contribution alone we owe her a lot. Then there was the platform she helped create for other savvy women like herself who wished to have their own ideas and opinions taken seriously. In her 2012 New York Times obit it was erroneously reported that she was the first woman to become a full-time film critic at a major American newspaper.

She wasn’t the first, but certainly among the first, and probably the first female to gain real prominence in that position. As a result, she helped open the door for many who followed. In addition, she was an early vocal fan and supporter of such newcomers as Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen. Not a bad legacy.

However, what I personally remember most about Judith Crist was her work for TV Guide. Every week my mom would buy a copy of the guide, then one of the best-selling publications in America, at the local grocery. Each new edition brought the promise of some exciting new movies, either recent theatrical releases or those made for television. Crist reviewed many of these for the magazine. I especially remember the big fall preview edition that came out each year. This was the time when many of the movie blockbusters and Oscar winners of the previous season first came to television as the three major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) did battle during “sweeps week,” a four-week period of intense rivalry for viewer ratings. There was always a section by Crist, filled with pithy, often wickedly funny thumbnail reviews of many of the films. Since I couldn’t watch all of them, I trusted her to guide me in my viewing choices.

To this end, I would carefully read each review as if I were going to be tested on it the next day in school, taking special care to highlight those titles she liked best, along with their scheduled air dates. My rule of thumb was, if she liked it, I’d watch it: call her my first movie arbiter, my sovereign, my queen. If I had to have one, and I suppose I did at that early age, I could have done a lot worse. One of the few exceptions I made to this rule were the “Man With No Name” westerns starring Clint Eastwood. For me, these were entirely bullet-proof from criticism and I made it a summer ritual to see each one of them.

Crist's pan of "Cleopatra" outraged executives at Fox.

I wish when I was growing up I’d had a friend like Judith Crist. She said once in an interview that as an adolescent she sometimes skipped school in order to catch matinees of such film classics as The Grapes of Wrath and Grand Illusion. Doubtlessly she was absorbing everything she saw like a thirsty sponge. She watched movies where and whenever she could, not because she was necessarily planning to become a professional critic and writer one day, but simply because it was her passion and love. They entertained her and broadened her perspective. They opened her mind and heart to new people and places. They deepened her understanding of humanity and history. In a word, they brought her joy. Definitely my kind of girl.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

I have a weakness for any movie starring John Wayne- even the bad ones. If you can find something of merit in "The Conqueror", in which the Duke played Genghis Khan, then you've really crossed the Rubicon. "A Man Betrayed", made during Wayne's tenure with "B" movie studio Republic, has been released on Blu-ray by Olive Films. It isn't one of those aforementioned bad Wayne movies, but it's no more than a minor entry in his career.  Wayne had been toiling in the film industry since the silent era. His first big break came with the starring role in Raoul Walsh's massive western epic "The Big Trail", which was released in 1930. However, the film was released during the Great Depression and bombed at the boxoffice. For the next nine years, Wayne was starring in quickie westerns that were termed "One Day Wonders". John Ford came to his rescue by casting Wayne as the male lead in his 1939 classic "Stagecoach". It elevated Wayne to star status but he didn't fully capitalize on the opportunities that "Stagecoach" seemed to afford him. He slogged through starring roles in largely undistinguished productions for many years, interrupted by a few more ambitious productions (Ford's "The Long Voyage Home" and "They Were Expendable"  and DeMille's "Reap the Wild Wind"). It wouldn't be until the late 1940s that the plum roles finally came his way and Wayne was seen as something more than "B" actor. "A Man Betrayed", released in 1941, fits comfortably into the bulk of Wayne's work during this period of his career. It's a low-budget affair, unremarkable in every respect, but still reasonably entertaining.

The film opens in an unnamed city at a scandalous nightclub called Club Inferno, where all sorts of notorious practices take place. (The sign advertises "30 Girls and 29 Costumes!"). Inside, staff members dress as the Devil and exotic dance numbers take place amidst overt gambling. In the first scene, a young man stumbles outside the club and is seemingly electrocuted during a torrential rainstorm when the lamp post he is leaning on is struck by lightning. A closer examination, however, proves he had been shot. Shortly thereafter, we're introduced to Lynn Hollister (Wayne), an affable small town attorney who comes to the city to investigate the death of the young man, who was a close friend of his. In short order he arrives at the home of Tom Cameron (Edward Ellis), a local rich widower who lives in a mansion and who owns the Club Inferno (though is rarely seen there.) Turns out Cameron is the local crime kingpin who controls the political machine and employs an army of thugs and assassins to do his bidding. He presents an affable personality and pretends to cooperate with Lynn's investigation. Lynn meets cute with Cameron's daughter Sabra (Frances Dee), a frisky, witty beauty who takes to him immediately. Before long, Lynn is staying in the guest room and he and Sabra are a couple. Cameron tries to use the relationship to manipulate Lynn but the more Lynn probes into the murder, the more convinced he is that Cameron directly or indirectly was responsible. Cameron is about to run for re-election to political office and like all crooked elected officials, is impatient for Lynn to wrap up his investigation. However, Lynn has uncovered massive evidence of voter fraud with indigent men being paid to vote numerous times for the "right" candidates. As he gets closer to the truth he is also physically threatened by Cameron's thugs. All of this sounds very dramatic but, in fact, "A Man Betrayed" is actually a romantic comedy, with the exception of the dramatic murder scene. Director John H. Auer (who had directed another, unrelated film with the same title a few years before) keeps the mood light and pace fast and gets fine performances from Edward Ellis and Frances Dee, the latter especially good as the spoiled rich girl who learns the father she has idolized is, in fact, a crook. As for Wayne, he was somewhat victimized by studios who wanted to squeeze him into contemporary romances in the hopes he would emerge as the next Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper. But at this period in his career, Wayne looked like a fish out of water in such productions. He gamely goes through the motions but he appears to be a bit uncomfortable without a horse and saddle. As he matured, he got better, as evidenced by his fine work in "The Quiet Man" , his war-based films and his late career detective movies "McQ" and "Brannigan".

"A Man Betrayed" is fairly entertaining even by today's standards. It's a hoot seeing Frances Dee sporting the over-the-top high fashions of 1941 and there is a cryptic reference to the war in Europe months before anyone realized America would soon be part of it. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the early teaming between Wayne and Ward Bond, who would become close friends and occasional co-stars. Bond is cast against type as a mentally-challenged violent thug who has a knock-down brawl with the Duke. The resolution of the murder and corruption scandals are wrapped up in a rather absurd ending that seems to have been developed to ensure that audiences left the theaters smiling.(Incidentally, the film was also later released under the title "Wheel of Fortune" and was marketed as "Citadel of Crime" in the UK.)

The Olive Films Blu-ray is unremarkable. The transfer is reasonably good but the film lacks any bonus extras.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Steve McQueen's second-to-last feature film "Tom Horn" remains one of his least-seen. The troubled production was a long time in the making and was a personal obsession for McQueen, who was well-versed in the life of Horn, a celebrated frontier scout in the Old West who had reached legendary status, though his name doesn't resonate today the way Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok's have. Horn distinguished himself in the Apache Wars and played a role in the defeat of the fiercely independent tribe. Ironically, he met Geronimo at his surrender to the U.S. Army and befriended the great chief, who came to admire Horn. McQueen produced "Tom Horn" through his own production company, Solar, and the film was also released under the umbrella of First Artists, the company he had formed years before with Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Barbra Streisand and Paul Newman with the goal of giving actors more control over the final content of the movies they made. The production was a mess from day one. McQueen had last enjoyed a major hit with the 1974 release of the blockbuster "The Towering Inferno". He was one of the biggest stars in the world but his long-festering personal demons got the better of him. He went into semi-retirement, emerging only to release an art house film production of Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" in 1978 that barely saw release. At the same time, McQueen's personal appearance had changed radically. He grew a unkempt beard and long hair and began to resemble Grizzly Adams. Simultaneously, his reputation for being difficult and unpredictable alienated him from the major studios. By the time McQueen decided to make a comeback in mainstream films, the welcome mat was no longer out for him. Still, he succeeded in getting a distribution deal for "Tom Horn" through Warner Bros. 

Troubles began even before the cameras turned. McQueen had numerous directors involved with the project (including Don Siegal) but they found McQueen too demanding and impossible to work with. He wanted to direct the film himself but wasn't a member of the Director's Guild. As he did with his 1972 bomb "Le Mans", McQueen hired a director he felt he could manipulate. In this case it was William Wiard, a respected veteran of many well-known TV series but who had never directed a feature film before. (Rumors flew that McQueen actually "ghost-directed" much of "Tom Horn".)  McQueen also caused celebrated screen writer William Goldman to leave the project but he was replaced by Thomas McGuane, who was recognized as an expert on the life of Tom Horn. (The script was co-written by Bud Shrake, who only wrote a few little-seen films previously.) Just prior to filming, McQueen, a lifelong chain smoker, developed a bad cough that persisted throughout the shoot. It was an omen that bode ominously for McQueen.

The film opens with Horn arriving in Wyoming, already a celebrated legend of the west. He's low-key and lives on the hoof, traveling lightly with his beloved horse, whose ornery nature acts as a weapon for Horn when he finds himself in tight spots. He's approached by John C. Coble (Richard Farnsworth), representing the local Cattleman's Association. They are being robbed blind by rustlers and the local lawmen are either impotent or in on the robberies. Coble hires Horn to stop the rustling by whatever means necessary as long as the Association isn't tied to his actions. In short order, Horn sets to work, gunning down numerous cattle thieves even when he's outnumbered. Before long, the rustling stops but by then the carnage caused by Horn has instilled a backlash in the local population, who suspect he was working as a secret assassin for the Association- which, in fact, he was. The Association decides that Horn is now expendable. He is framed for a murder (though in real life, it was never proven whether he committed the crime or not), is arrested and sentenced to hang by a kangaroo court.

By the time "Tom Horn" opened in early 1980, word-of-mouth on the film was that it was a lemon. The arduous editing process increased the production costs and Warner Bros. was eager to simply be rid of it. Critics loathed the film and it bombed at the boxoffice, marking a major setback for McQueen's plans to re-establish himself as a major boxoffice star. A re-edited version fared no better and "Tom Horn" vanished from theaters quickly. Still, there is much merit in the film beginning with McQueen's low-key playing of Horn as a quiet, humble man. He even keeps his dignity on the scaffold when a new-style hanging device powered by water leaves Horn in the torturous situation of waiting patiently for the water to rise in a bucket in order to activate the trap door. The film is peppered with some wonderful character actors, the most impressive being Richard Farnsworth as Horn's only true friend. Farnsworth had been in so many westerns he practically looked like he walked directly out of a Frederic Remington painting. Also to be found: Billy Green Bush, Elisha Cook Jr, Geoffrey Lewis, Harry Northup and Slim Pickens (who had appeared with McQueen in the 1972 hit "The Getaway"). Linda Evans is cast as a schoolteacher with an exotic background (she immigrated from Hawaii) but her role seems to have suffered in the editing process. She has virtually nothing to do other than provide McQueen with an underwritten love interest. The film boasts great cinematography by John A. Alonzo and a fine score by Ernest Gold, who relies on drumbeats to provide an appropriate dirge-like quality. "Tom Horn" isn't a great western, but it's a very good one and it deserved a better fate. McQueen was already in the early stages of cancer when the movie opened. He managed to complete one more mainstream film before his death: the lightweight action comedy "The Hunter", also released in 1980. Ironically, it proved to be a modest hit and might have helped McQueen revive his career had he not succumbed to his increasingly serious health issues. 

The Warner Bros. DVD of "Tom Horn" has a very impressive transfer and includes the original trailer and a promo clip for the video release of McQueen's TV series "Wanted: Dead or Alive". Given the interesting background to the film, it calls out for a special edition.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

Sergio Leone’s “Giù La Testa,” later retitled not once but twice for American release, opened in Italy in October 1971 to great expectations by the director’s fans. According to the preeminent Leone expert Sir Christopher Frayling, in an informative audio commentary included in a new Blu-ray edition of the film from Kino Lorber Studio Classics under its second U.S. title, “A Fistful of Dynamite,” the Italian phrase meant something like “keep your head down.” In other words, in times of social convulsion like the bloody 1913 Mexican revolution portrayed in the movie, save yourself unnecessary grief and keep as low a profile as you can. Toshiro Mifune’s wandering samurai in “Yojimbo” offered similar advice: “A quiet life eating rice is best.” In Leone’s film, James Coburn and Rod Steiger starred as mismatched partners -- a fugitive Irish dynamiter and a volatile Mexican bandit -- who learn that you only bring sorrow and tragedy upon yourself when you leap into the whirlwind of political turmoil. When the picture reached the U.S. through United Artists in July 1972, the title was changed to “Duck, You Sucker,” a rough translation. In a literal sense, it’s the warning that Coburn’s character invariably utters just before he detonates his nitro charges. Leone thought it was a common colloquialism in America. Maybe he was thinking of “fire in the hole.” United Artists gave the release decent publicity, selling it as an action movie in a shorter (by half an hour) cut than the 157-minute Italian print. I remember seeing the ad art of Coburn and Steiger prominently displayed on a billboard in downtown Pittsburgh that summer, just before the picture opened. The ad extolled Leone as “the master of adventure.” Around the same time, United Artists Records released Ennio Morricone’s eclectic soundtrack on vinyl. The New York Times panned the movie, but Time Magazine offered a mostly positive review, one of the earliest to take Leone on his own terms instead of dismissing him as a passing curiosity.

However, audience turnout was sparse, and when the film reached smaller markets like the one where I saw it in early fall 1972, the studio had renamed it “A Fistful of Dynamite,” in an attempt to lure audiences who had flocked to Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars” and its sequels starring Clint Eastwood. The strategy gave the picture a second chance in movie houses in that era before home video and streaming video when movies had to make money at the box office or not at all. However, it didn’t do much to boost business. In the meantime, another violent drama about a fugitive IRA gunman in revolutionary Mexico, Ralph Nelson’s “The Wrath of God,” had opened in theaters. Nelson’s film had the added commercial advantage of a “Playboy” pictorial. For the record, it didn’t sell many tickets either despite the publicity afforded by Hef’s magazine. Later, TV and VHS prints of Leone’s movie retained “A Fistful of Dynamite” as the title, and their pan-and-scan format ruined Giuseppe Ruzzolini’s beautifully composed Techniscope photography. The first respectful home-video edition finally appeared in 1996 from MGM Home Video on laser disc. Remember that technology from the dawn of home theater, sonny? The 1996 laser disc retained “A Fistful of Dynamite” as the title, but restored the widescreen aspect of the image and much of the footage missing from previous U.S. versions. “Duck, You Sucker” ultimately resurfaced as the chosen title for its premier on U.S. DVD from MGM Home Video in 2007.

On the run from the British government during the Irish Rebellion, explosives expert John Mallory (Coburn) comes to Mexico to work for German mining interests. There, traveling through the desert on a vintage motorbike, he crosses paths with Juan Miranda (Steiger), a sweaty, hot-tempered bandit who leads a gun-toting gang of robbers. The gang consists of Juan’s elderly father and Juan’s six sons “by different mothers.” Miranda sees Mallory’s proficiency with explosives as the key to realizing his long-cherished dream of breaking into the fortress-like Bank of Mesa Verde. The loot will enable him and his family to leave Mexico and reach the U.S., where -- like the worst nightmare of a Trump supporter -- he expects to pursue an even grander career robbing American banks. After Juan deviously maneuvers Mallory into a partnership, the Irishman eludes him but the two reunite in Mesa Verde. There, Mallory has joined a cell of insurrectionists headed by the dapper Dr. Villega (Romolo Valli). Villega plots a series of diversions in Mesa Verde to support two imminent onslaughts by the rebel commanders Villa and Zapata. One diversion will be an explosion at the bank, dovetailing with Miranda’s own obsession of pulling his big heist. Once the building is blasted open, Juan will lead his kids inside and empty the vault. But things take a turn he doesn’t expect, and instead of getting rich from the break-in, he becomes an unwitting hero of the revolution. For the cynical Juan, who has no use for politics and no loyalties beyond his rough affection for his aged father and his sons, it’s a dumbfounding development. Moreover, his new-found notoriety puts him in the crosshairs of a punitive military expedition led by a ruthless officer in an armored transport, Col. Gunther Ruiz (Antoine Saint-John).

In retrospect, it’s easy to see why the film did poorly at the U.S. box office, first under an opaque title and then under, arguably, a misleading one. Leone enjoyed using an elliptical narrative style in which often, as a scene begins or unfolds, the viewer doesn’t quite know where the characters are or the point of what they’re doing. Eventually, with a visual or verbal cue, the meaning becomes clear. Fans enjoy this technique, similar to a stand-up comic preceding a punchline with an elaborate set-up. Leone trusts that you’re smart enough and curious enough to stay with him. But the technique was bound to frustrate 1972 moviegoers who expected a straightforward shoot-’em-up narrative, based on the poster art of Steiger firing a machine gun, Coburn displaying a coat lined with dynamite, and a military convoy being blown up. Some confusion also resulted from the cuts made for the U.S. release. What happened to the paying job that Mallory was hired for, and if he’s finished with rebellions as he had implied in one passing comment, why does he end up collaborating with Dr. Villega’s resistance movement? A scene in the overseas print explained that Juan had lured John’s employer and a military guard to a remote church, and then killed them with a blast of Mallory’s dynamite. Mallory, known to be a wanted Irish rebel, was blamed for the murders; presumably, as the authorities put out their dragnet, he had only one recourse to slip out of Miranda’s devious grip -- go underground, seek refuge with the Mexican revolutionaries, and resume his insurrectionary career.

By Don L. Stradley

The cataclysmic prison riot near the end of The Big House (1930) reaches such a fevered pitch that army tanks are called in to combat the inmates.  The tanks roll into the prison yard like armor-plated creatures,   and then, unexpectedly,   start rolling towards the screen, towards the viewer. What did movie audiences think in 1930 as these shiny, black, menacing machines moved towards them?  By the riot's end, a single tank crashes through a wall, its main gun slowly swiveling, as sinister anything in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. It’s impressive even now, watching on an Acer laptop in 2014. What was it like in one of the vaunted movie palaces of yesteryear?  Did audiences cheer because the army was going to save the day? Or was there some fear, too, fear that the machines were coming not just for criminals, but for everybody…

The Big House, now available on DVD as part of the Warner Bros Archive Collection, was a spectacular success for MGM, and ushered in the prison movie as a viable genre.  Films had been set in prisons before, but it was The Big House that established the characters and themes that would mark the genre forever (ie. the scared new guy, the crusty lifers, the conniving weasel, the kindly old guard, the dour but ineffectual warden, the inevitable jail break, etc.).  The film was also a marked contrast to the slick films made by MGM at the time, causing Chester B. Bahn of the Syracuse Herald to write that this "stark tragedy" was "so horrible, so devastating, that you don't want to think about it, don't want to talk about it."

Although prison movies weren't churned out the way westerns and horror movies were during the 1930s, the subject undoubtedly had legs.  We still see prison movies today, as well as TV shows (of both the scripted and “non-scripted” variety). But every prison movie or show we see now has something of The Big House in its DNA.  The Big House did it first, and I’m not sure if any modern prison movies have done it any better.  More explicit, perhaps, but not better.

For one thing, The Big House was unabashedly artsy. Directed by George Hill with photography by Harold Wenstrom, the film is framed by rich, deep blacks that gave the atmosphere a harder edge than most black and white films of the day. A more accurate description of the film would be “black & grey,” for there isn’t much white in it.  Grey is the color of the prison uniform, and grey is the color of the detainees’ pasty complexions. The prison is a murky place, and when a con is being marched into the “dungeon” to serve some time in solitary, it’s as if he’s being marched into the very wings of Hell. 

The opening scene follows a truck filled with new prisoners as it approaches the monolithic, unnamed building.  There’s something about the scene that looks like an illustration come to life, especially when the prisoners step out of the truck and appear incredibly tiny as they march into the prison. Kent (Robert Montgomery) is a newbie, sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter after killing a man in a car accident.  He’s thrown into a cramped cell with two legitimately bad men, Butch (Wallace Beery) and Morgan (Chester Morris).  One of the warden’s aids laments that a young kid doesn’t stand a chance in a cell with such hard cases, to which the warden agrees that overcrowding and idleness are the banes of the prison system.   Kent’s journey through prison life, though, is only part of the story.   The film's greatness comes from the interplay between Butch and Morgan, for they are two hardened criminals who lean on each other to get through their dreary days.

Butch is downright sadistic, the sort of brute who harasses people only to back off and say, “I was only kidding.” He’s allegedly murdered several people, including a few of his past girlfriends, but one never knows if he’s serious or not. He also lets his temperament get the best of him, even turning on his buddy Morgan more than once during the film. Morgan, meanwhile, falls for Kent’s sister (Leila Hyams) when he spots her during visiting hours.  

BY TIM GREAVES

My favourite Spaghetti Western theme song – and I stress theme song, not theme music – is Roberto Fia’s splendidly triumphant rendition of composer Luis Bacalov’s ‘Django’. The only one that comes close to challenging it for my affection is ‘Angel Face’, the opening credits ballad from A Pistol for Ringo (o.t. Una pistola per Ringo), Graf Maurizio’s silky vocal marrying up with Ennio Morricone’s passionate melody to forge a little scoop of sorrow-tinged nectar. And although I confess that my knowledge of Italian westerns is criminally deficient, of the titles I have actually seen I’d unhesitatingly cite A Pistol for Ringo among my favourites.

Released in 1965, the film was directed by Duccio Tessari, an uncredited co-writer on the previous year’s uber-classic A Fistful of Dollars. Part of the appeal of Tessari’s film is that the story takes place on the run up to Christmas, although being as sun-baked southern Spain is doubling for the Wild West it’s an exceptionally balmy one. Nevertheless, the inclusion of tinsel-decked trees, Christmas dinner and even a carol or two embroider the proceedings with a festive ambience conspicuously rare – perhaps even unique (I reiterate that my knowledge is lacking) – in Spaghetti Western terrain.

It’s a couple of days before Christmas in the town of Quemado and ruthless Mexican bandit Sancho (Fernando Sancho) and his gang have plundered the bank of its entire cash reserve. Their escape route to the border cut off by pursuing lawmen, the bandits hole up at the hacienda of Major Clyde (Antonio Hasas) where they take everyone hostage, including Clyde’s daughter Ruby (Hally Hammond), who also happens to be the fiancée of the Sheriff (George Martin). Under siege, Sancho threatens to kill two hostages a day until the law agrees to back off and let them ride away unhindered. Desperate for help, the Sheriff turns to scar-cheeked gunslinger Angel Face (Montgomery Wood) – Ringo to his friends – who’s currently locked up in the town jail on a quadruple murder charge. He makes Ringo a proposal: infiltrate the gang, eliminate them and rescue the hostages and he’ll be rewarded with 30% of the retrieved cash and exonerated of his crimes.

Duccio Tessari co-scripted A Pistol for Ringo, his fifth feature film, with Alfonso Balcázar. Casting Montgomery Wood in his debut starring role was a masterstroke; Wood is actually the nom de guerre of former stuntman Giuliano Gemma – all the better for performing his own gags, which include crashing through a ceiling to land upright on a grand piano and leaping from a galloping steed. Gemma has a scorching intensity about him and he gifts the self-serving Ringo with an affable personality and a cunning, cocksure attitude in the face of adversity. He also prefers milk to hard liquor and has a habit of dishing out pearls of wisdom at felicitous moments (“Never cry for a dead person – it’s pointless.”). He’s introduced playing hopscotch with some children, breaks off to take down a quartet of gunmen with the matter-of-factness of swatting flies, finishes up the game and strolls casually away. This is a guy who, with three bad guys still to be disposed of, realises he only has one bullet left in his gun and yet somehow still manages to pull it off. You’d really not want to be looking down the business end of Ringo’s six-shooter, but just the same he’s a very likeable anti-hero figure.

Fernando Sancho meanwhile makes for a nicely greasy villain, coincidentally also named Sancho. He shares some great scenes with Gemma, the best of which finds Sancho threatening to put a bullet through the bound Ringo’s head, only to find himself compelled to relent time and again as our unflustered hero convinces him he’s a valuable asset best kept alive – and what’s more his help is going to cost Sancho an ever-escalating cut of the booty! There’s even some gentle humour thrown in during a gathering ‘round the piano to sing carols, with Sancho awkwardly mumbling his way through “Silent Night”.

Hally Hammond is actually Lorella De Luca, director Tessari’s wife, and she brings a measure of prim sex appeal to the show, although beyond playing vulnerable she isn’t given too much to do – at least not until the finale when she finally gets her hands on a shotgun. Meanwhile Nieves Navarro (wife of the film’s co-producer Luciano Ercoli) fills the role of sultry bad girl rather deliciously; despite the fact she’s one of the intruders in wealthy landowner Antonio Hasas’s home, he has an amorous eye on her – and who can blame him? Amiable Manuel Muñiz is in situ primarily for light relief. 

Speaking of light relief, in my limited experience of Italian westerns they generally tend to be more brutal than their American counterparts, but A Pistol for Ringo is a bloodless, pretty frivolous affair, more mischievous in tone than one might expect from the sub-genre. That tone is established in the first few seconds as two unsmiling gunslingers stride towards each other and then, as opposed to drawing their weapons as anticipated, wish each other a Merry Christmas. To be fair the story itself is no great shakes, I can’t defend it, but regardless of any shortcomings this is very respectable fare that gallops along at a lively pace and – as do the best of them – leaves you wanting more.

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

“Junior Bonner,” (1972) may not be director Sam Peckinpah’s greatest film, but in many ways it’s one of his most honest. There are no outlaws with guns blazing in a suicidal battle with the Mexican army (“The Wild Bunch”) . No down and out tough guys scrounging their lives away in Mexican dives on a quest to get the head of a dead man worth $1 million (“Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”). No CIA contractors skulking around San Francisco’s Suisan Bay with telescopic rifles (“The Killer Elite”). None of that. Instead “Junior Bonner” is the story of a modern day, every day rodeo cowboy fighting an honorable and impossible battle against the forces that are changing the people and the land that he knew—changing them for the worse.

Steve McQueen, in one of his most realistic, understated performances, plays the Arizona cowboy who’s been riding the rodeo circuit a little too long, and he knows it. He’s the son of former rodeo star Ace Bonner, and he returns to his Prescott, Ariz., home in time for the town’s annual Fourth of July rodeo festival. At the last stop on the circuit he got “throwed” by a bull named Sunshine and his goal is to have a rematch with Sunshine in front of his home town crowd. In a way he’s fulfilling one of the precepts of the Peckinpah canon laid down in “Ride the High Country,” in which Joel McCrea, as an aging former lawman, says “All I want to do is enter my house justified.”

Peckinpah rather brilliantly presents the theme of changing times in the early scenes of the film, when JR drives his big old white Cadillac convertible and horse-carrying trailer to his father’s home and finds it is now a tumble-down shack about to be demolished by a wrecking crew. The land it is on is being bulldozed into a gravel pit. After going inside the house and finding nothing but an old picture in a busted frame of Ace in his heyday, he drives out to the pit and asks if they know where Ace is. “Never heard of him,” they tell him. And, in a scene reminiscent of “The Grapes of Wrath,” when he tries to drive out of the pit he gets into a head-to-head confrontation with a bulldozer operator who won’t let him pass. For a minute it looks like JR might take him, but instead he’s forced to back up.

We next meet JR’s young brother, Curly (Joe Don Baker), a real estate developer who’s selling off his father’s land to build a trailer park. When JR finds out he only paid $15,000 for four sections of land, he’s not too happy about it. And when Curly offers to bring him into the business because he doesn’t want his older brother to “end up like the old man,” JR does what any good Peckinpah cowboy would do. He knocks him through a picture window.

The film features two veterans playing JR’s parents, Robert Preston as Ace and Ida Lupino as Elvira Bonner. Ace in his old age, is something of a clown, a dreamer and the town drunk. His current ambition is to go to Australia to punch cows. Elvira is the disillusioned wife and mother who knows the best days of their lives are over and is just trying to hold on to what’s left. Preston had just the right amount of charm and personality to make Ace a convincing character and Lupino, who had been working steadily in TV after years as a successful actress and director, is both touching and beautiful in her return to the big screen. Also on hand are Ben Johnson as Buck Roan, the man who runs the rodeo, as well as familiar faces such as Bill McKinney (“Deliverance”) and Don “Red” Barry (in westerns too numerous to mention).

Peckinpah filmed the movie on location during the actual Prescott Rodeo event, utilizing the local color and many non-actors, giving the picture an authenticity that can’t be duplicated on studio sets. It’s that direct simplicity that makes “Junior Bonner” work. In the end, it’s the story of people coming to terms with the truth of who they are and facing the consequences without compromise.

BY FRED BLOSSER

Kino Lorber has released Mario Bava’s “Roy Colt and Winchester Jack” (1970) in a handsome, restored Blu-ray edition as part of its extensive “Mario Bava Collection.” The disc will please devotees of the late Italian director, whose wide range of genre work is evident in this and the fifteen other Blu-rays that Kino Lorber has released in its series, from the celebrated Gothic trappings of “Black Sunday” (1960) to the Bond-era burlesque of “Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs” (1966). Bava is revered by his enthusiasts as one of the pre-eminent directors of horror and giallo in the 1960s Italian cinema, but like other workaday filmmakers in the busy European studios of the time, he made pretty much every kind of picture there was to make, riding successive surges of popularity for horror, sword-and-toga epics, westerns, thrillers, and sex comedies. “Roy Colt and Winchester Jack” was the third of Bava’s three Italian Westerns -- a genre that paid the bills, but one that Bava wasn’t especially fond of, as Tim Lucas notes in his audio commentary for the Blu-ray. Of Bava’s approach to “Roy Colt,” Lucas relates: “On the first day of shooting, when he learned that no one was particularly enamored of the script, Bava threw his copy into the nearest mud puddle and said, ‘Screw it, let’s have fun instead’.”

In the film, Roy (Brett Halsey) and Jack (Charles Southwood) are leaders of an outlaw gang. The two partners split up when Roy decides to try his fortune on the right side of the law. Going straight, he pins on a sheriff’s badge and agrees to retrieve a cache of buried gold for Samuel (Giorgio Gargiullo), a devious banker. In the meantime, Jack continues to rob stages and saves a pretty Indian woman, Manila (Marilu Tolo), from bounty hunters after she kills her abusive husband. Manila encourages Jack’s romantic advances but shrewdly charges for her favors. Another outlaw, the Reverend (Teodoro Corra), follows the trail of Samuel’s gold, and the storyline eventually settles into a familiar Spaghetti Western pattern. The three rivals -- Roy, Jack, and the Reverend, with Manila as a fourth wild card -- alternately help and double-cross each other to reach the promised riches first.

Lucas‘ commentary suggests that “Roy Colt and Winchester Jack” began as a straightforward action script by Mario di Nardo, and then turned into a comedy when Bava suggested that he and the actors “have fun instead.” Bava’s decision to send up his material may have been partially influenced by the success of 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” but it also coincided with a fundamental change in the genre itself. With the success of another 1970 Italian Western, Enzo Barboni’s “Trinity Is My Name,” the genre began to skew from violent, sometimes operatic stories of revenge and betrayal to lowbrow farces that were geared (it’s said) to the tastes of working-class audiences in the poorer sections of Italian cities and towns. The staple elements of these Spaghetti lampoons included slapstick brawls, rather cruel visual jokes ridiculing physical and mental infirmities, childish sexual innuendo, and infantile delight in gastric embarrassments. Dubbed prints of Barboni’s movie, its sequel, “Trinity Is Still My Name,” and other comedy Spaghettis traveled overseas to drive-ins and small-town theaters in the U.S., arguably preparing the way for Mel Brooks‘ wildly popular, fart-laden Western parody, “Blazing Saddles,” in 1974. “Roy Colt and Winchester Jack” incorporates the usual characteristics of the comedy Spaghettis, notably in a rudely gratuitous scene built around a gunslinger’s extreme facial and verbal tics. More sophisticated audiences are likely to squirm, but at that, thanks to Bava’s sure visual sense and a capable cast, his film is easier to bear than most Spaghetti farces. Pictures like “It Can Be Done, Amigo” (1972), “Life Is Tough, Eh Providence” (1972), “The Crazy Bunch” (1974), and “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later” (1975) are guaranteed to try the souls of all but the most dedicated genre fans.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray edition of “Roy Colt and Winchester Jack” features a superlative 2K restoration from the original 35mm negative. Other extras include the original Italian voice track with English subtitles, a partial English track, and the aforementioned commentary by Tim Lucas with a wealth of information about the film, Bava, and Italian cinema in general.

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

In the opening scene of Republic Pictures “The Man Who Died Twice,” (1950) a car drives along a mountain road and two cops in a patrol car remark that it’s nightclub owner T. J. Brennon (Don Megowan) passing by. Next thing you know the car goes off a cliff and explodes in flames. Then a woman (Vera Ralston) gets out of a cab in front of her apartment building and looks up at the balcony where two men are fighting. She shrieks in horror as one of the men comes plummeting down and lands on the sidewalk at her feet. Splat! She watches as the other man climbs up a fire escape ladder to the roof. But not before a third man appears on the balcony and the guy on the fire escape shoots him. Vera Ralston faints from all the excitement and falls on the pavement next to the fallen corpse. 

The cops show up almost immediately, revealing that the two dead men are members of the narcotics squad and the unconscious woman (whom they just leave lying there on the concrete until the ambulance arrives) is none other than Lynn Brennon, wife, now widow, of T. J. Brennon, the guy who went over the cliff. All this in just the first few minutes of this low-budget 70-minute crime movie directed at a frantic pace by Joe Kane, veteran of countless Roy Rogers and Gene Autry movies., and penned by Richard C. Sarafian, who would later be best known as the director of “Vanishing Point” (1971), the ultimate car-chase movie.

“The Man Who Died Twice” is a pulpy story that borrows a lot from other crime and gangster movies of that era. It’s a coincidence, I suppose, that this film was released the same week as Don Siegel’s “The Lineup,” but the similarities in the two films are pretty striking. The McGuffin (Hitchcock’s term for the thing everybody’s after) in both films is a missing stash of heroin. In both films, dangerous drug dealers want their drugs back and will stop at nothing to get them. In both films two of the more interesting characters are a couple of gunsels who arrive from out of town to get the goods back for their employers and in both films the heroin is stuffed inside a doll. It makes you wonder if Serafian and Stirling Silliphant, who wrote “The Lineup,” had some kind of competition going to see who could turn out the better script using the same story elements. Silliphant wins that one hands down.

The gunsels In “The Lineup,” are played by Eli Wallach and Robert Keith. Gerald Milton and Richard Karlan handle the roles of Hart and Santoni in “The Man Who Died Twice.” While not quite on a level with Wallach and Keith, they do a good job as the two killers. Milton is particularly nasty in a casual kind of way in a scene in their hotel room when he hears a cat meowing outside the door. He goes out in the hall, picks it up and puts out on the window sill and then shuts the window. Karlan yells, “Hey, what’s the matter with you. It’s three stories down.” Milton keeps calling his wife back home only to be disturbed by the fact that she’s never there when he calls. He tells Karlan that one time a bartender pal gave him the number of a hot babe, if he ever wanted a good time. Half-drunk he put the number in his pocket and didn’t look at it until the next day and found it was his home phone number!

Vera Ralston as Lynn Brennon was only 35 at the time this film was made but she looks tired and bored. She was an ice skating star back in her native Czechoslovakia when Republic Studios chief Herbert J. Yates brought her to the U.S. and tried to make her a star. She made over 20 features for Republic but despite Yates’s efforts audiences did not really accept her, and she quit acting after “The Man Who Died Twice.”

The leading man in this B-movie extravaganza is Rod Cameron, who has about as much charisma as a side of beef. Better known for his westerns, he plays Bill Brennon, T.J.’s brother, who had sent him a telegram asking for help, which was unusual because he and Bill hadn’t spoken in 15 years. But you know how it is, when your brother sends you a wire saying he’s in trouble, you gotta do something about it. Right?

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” is an often-quoted line from John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” And if director Walter Hill had stuck to that idea, his “Wild Bill” (1995) would be a great movie, instead of a near miss. Unfortunately, he mixed legend with pure hogwash and the result is a confusing hodgepodge of scenes connected only by the fact that James Butler Hickok (Jeff Bridges) hated it when somebody messed with his hat.

You know a director intends to make a “serious” western when he starts the film out by showing the central character’s funeral. “Wild Bill” begins not only with a funeral, but a funeral shot in high-contrast, grainy black and white. In fact the film keeps switching from color to black and white for numerous flash back scenes, depicting “events” from Bill’s early life, some of which are complete fiction.

Attending the funeral are his on-again-off-again sweetheart Calamity Jane (Ellen Barkin) and Charlie Prince (John Hurt), an Englishman who has drifted out West for the excitement. Prince narrates the story. The first act of “Wild Bill” is the most interesting section of the film—a series of famous episodes from Hickok’s life shown very briefly in quick tableau. We see Bill shoot it out with half a dozen buffalo hunters intent on robbing him of his hides. The fight is triggered when he steps up to the bar and one of them lifts the hat off his head. He turns and smashes him with the back of his hand and next thing you know, guns are blazing. When it’s over and the buffalo hunters are all dead Bill goes back to the bar and says: “They need to understand. You never touch a man’s hat.”

Another scene depicts the famous incident in Abilene, Kansas when Hickok as sheriff tried to stop roundup revelers from tearing up the town and accidentally killed his own deputy. (For a nice treatment of that true incident check out the half-hour “Gunsmoke” episode called “The Roundup,” with Matt Dillon killing an old friend who had substituted for an ailing Chester). Another scene shows Hickok giving an embarrassing performance in Buffalo Bill Cody’s (Keith Carradine) Wild West show.

Problems with the story really start soon after Hickok arrives in Deadwood Gulch, Dakota Territory, where, as we all know, it’s just a matter of time before he stares down at those aces and eights (the Dead Man’s Hand), and gets shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall. In Deadwood he’s reunited with his old flame Calamity, Charlie Prince and an old traveling companion named California Joe (James Gammon). The reunion with Calamity is a sad one, however. Bill no longer has any interest in rekindling the flame. In another flashback we learn he is going blind from glaucoma that was probably caused by syphilis. Their relationship is a portrait of sadness, anger and frustration.

Hill’s screenplay is based on Pete Dexter’s “Deadwood” (the basis of the HBO series) and “Fathers and Sons,” a play by Thomas Babe. Where it goes wrong is in the fabrication that Jack McCall (David Arquette) was the son of a woman named Susannah Moore (Diane Ladd), whom Hickok had loved and abandoned. McCall wants to kill Hickok out of revenge for his cold-hearted treatment of his mother. There are more flashback scenes showing what happened between Bill and Susannah, but none of it ever happened in real life. It makes for interesting, if sentimental, drama but it’s unnecessary and only muddles the story. The fact is that McCall was just a tinhorn drunk who had lost all his money to Wild Bill in a poker game and was humiliated when Bill took pity on him and gave him some money to get something to eat. The next day he came back in the saloon in a drunken rage, called him a name and shot him from behind. McCall, in one of two trials that were held on the case tried to argue that Wild Bill had killed his younger brother, but the truth of that allegation was never verified.

BY DEAN BRIERLY

There are countless film noirs meriting Blu-ray treatment, but perhaps none so deserving as T-Men (1947), arguably the best of the documentary-style noirs of the late 1940s, distinguished by its uncompromising tone, stylish direction and brilliant cinematography. While many individuals contributed to its success, the film was above all a triumph of creative collaboration between two of Hollywood’s greatest visual artists: director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton. The two capitalized on the film’s narrative—government agents infiltrating a counterfeiting ring in an underworld of sudden cruelty and shifting allegiances—to push the noir/crime film to new extremes of stylized violence and subjective intensity.

Although better known for his dark psychological westerns of the 1950s, Mann honed his craft in the even darker waters of forties film noir. Like many directors of his generation, Mann cut his teeth in the demanding arena of B movies, churning out a dozen bottom-of-the-bill programmers for Republic, RKO and PRC between 1942-1947. Although he made several musicals during this period, Mann was much more at home directing noirish films like The Great Flamarion (1945) and Strange Impersonation (1946), which gave scope to his thematic obsession with conflicted, desperate characters navigating through a world of moral ambivalence and extreme violence.

Mann was the thinking man’s director par excellence, equally adept at staging dynamic set pieces as probing his protagonists’ inner responses to narrative stimuli, usually in the same scene. His sensitivity to characters better able to cope with physical rather than psychological roadblocks made him right at home in the existential uncertainties of noir. Relentless pacing, kinetic visuals and an intense focus on the emotional and psychological dissonance of his characters were among his hallmarks. T-Men, made for Eagle Lion Films, was the fullest realization of his aesthetic to date.

Helping Mann transfer his dark vision to the screen was legendary cinematographer John Alton, whose chiaroscuro photography recalled the glory days of German film expressionism. The Hungarian-born Alton was among the most daring and experimental of Hollywood cameramen. His work sometimes bordered on the abstract, but only when it served the needs of the story. Often stuck with directors unreceptive to his ideas, his pairing with the open-minded Mann was a match made in noir heaven. Alton’s shadowy, half-lit urban environments provide the perfect visual correlative to Mann’s thematic emphasis on paranoia and emotional crisis. Known for his minimal use of lights—he got better effects with a handful of lights than cameramen who used dozens—Alton succinctly summed up his photographic philosophy: “It’s not what you light, it’s what you don’t light.”

T-Men also marked the appearance of another significant creative partner for Mann in the person of John C. Higgins, who had penned the director’s previous film, Railroaded (1947). Higgins was one of noir’s more prolific and dependable screenwriters. In addition to the five films he did with Mann, he also scripted the iconic noirs Shield for Murder (1954) and Big House, U.S.A. (1955). While T-Men’s accolades are typically reserved for Alton’s chiaroscuro and Mann’s nerve-shredding mise en scène, Higgins’ tough, pungent dialog shouldn’t be overlooked. He was arguably the first quality screenwriter Mann worked with.

Higgins’ tight scenario centers on treasury agents Dennis O’Brien (Dennis O’Keefe) and Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder), who go undercover to break up a counterfeiting operation working out of Detroit and Los Angeles. Posing as members of a once-prominent Detroit gang (O’Brien adopting the moniker Vannie Harrigan, Genaro becoming Tony Galvani), the pair gain conditional access to the organization through a low-level middleman called The Schemer (Wallace Ford), offering as bait an engraving plate of exceptional quality. Having fallen from favor with his employers, the Schemer hopes to redeem himself by brokering a deal between his felonious new pals and the organization’s top brass. The latter are interested but wary, and as negotiations proceed keep O’Brien and Genaro under close surveillance by the gang’s enforcer Moxie (Charles McGraw).

BY FRED BLOSSER

The stylish Western “Da Uomo a Uomo” (“Man to Man”), written by Luciano Vincenzoni and directed by Giulio Petroni, opened in Italy in 1967.  Two years later, it reached American theaters as “Death Rides a Horse.” In the film, bandits attack a relay station at the Mesita Ranch where an express wagon carrying $200,000 has stopped for the night to wait out a pounding rainstorm. After killing the guards, the four leaders of the gang glimpse two women -- the ranch owner’s wife and daughter -- inside the house. They invade the home, gun down the rancher, rape and shoot the two women, and set fire to the place before riding off with their loot. The only survivor of the massacre is the family’s eight-year-old son, pulled from the burning wreckage of the house by an unknown benefactor.

Fifteen years later, now grown, the orphaned Bill (John Philip Law) lives alone at the rebuilt cabin and practices obsessively with six-guns and rifles, hoping for a chance to find the murderers and settle the score. Meanwhile, released from prison after completing a fifteen-year sentence, an ex-convict named Ryan (Lee Van Cleef) rides into the territory. He encounters Bill, briefly, when he stops by the ranch to pause over the graves of the three people buried there. “I heard about it some time ago -- I’m sorry,” he tells the young man mysteriously. Afterward, in town, two gunmen try to ambush Ryan in his hotel room, but the ex-convict outwits and outshoots them. The sheriff, investigating, recognizes the spurs worn by one of the dead men: they match one that hangs in Bill’s cabin, lost by one of the outlaws outside the burning ranch years before. “Fifteen years, there’s been no new track, only a spur,” Bill tells Ryan. “Then you come along, and there’s three spurs.” It transpires that Ryan is chasing his former partners in crime, who double-crossed him and left him to serve time at hard labor. When he leaves town, Bill follows, suspecting that his prey and Ryan’s are the same.

“Death Rides a Horse” follows the template of Sergio Leone’s “For a Few Dollars More” or “Per Qualche Dollaro in Più” (1965), which was also written by Luciano Vincenzoni, in its structure of an older gunman and a younger one who form a mutually respectful but shaky partnership to chase a common quarry. The teamwork has its advantages, but each character has his own motivation for the chase, and ultimately each one strives to reach his objective first, before the other. Vincenzoni’s script even recycles several other characters and situations from his earlier storyline for the Leone movie, including Bill’s fragmented, red-tinged flashbacks to the massacre. But the key differences between the two pictures are as striking as the similarities, and “Death Rides a Horse” stands nicely on its own merits. Like Clint Eastwood’s bounty hunter Manco in the Leone film, John Philip Law’s Bill is blond-haired and fast on the draw, but he’s also younger and less experienced -- an amateur at manhunting, not a professional. This places him in stronger contrast to Van Cleef’s steely and vaguely tragic rival and mentor, underscored by Ennio Morricone’s signature themes for the characters: a mournful dirge that represents the lingering trauma of the Mesita murders, a measured guitar and drum tune symbolizing Ryan’s determination to find his former partners, and a dissonant “vengeance” theme with a tortured flute solo. Where the enemy in Leone’s film was an outsider on the American frontier, a depraved, dark-skinned bandit of mixed Mexican and Indian parentage, the masterminds sought by Ryan and Bill have burrowed into polite society and have become outwardly respectable business and political leaders. Cavanaugh (the wonderfully sleazy Anthony Dawson) runs a popular saloon and gambling house. Walcott (Luigi Pistilli) is a trusted town father. Ryan’s reappearance inspires Walcott to use this advantage to pull off an even bigger score than the Mesita Ranch heist. The conceit of criminals masquerading as civic leaders would reappear in many later Italian Westerns. In real life, as we all know, crooks and opportunists rarely wind up as figures of power in commerce or government.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray edition of “Death Rides a Horse” presents Petroni’s film in a sharp 1.85:1, 1920x1080p edition. The image isn’t perfect (some graininess is apparent, especially in the dark nighttime scenes); nevertheless, it relegates decades of substandard TV and budget-video prints to the trash heap. The bonus features include English and Italian language options, subtitles, perceptive running commentary by filmmaker and critic Alex Cox, and trailers for other Italian Westerns from Kino Lorber, including a forthcoming, remastered BRD of “For a Few Dollars More.” While we’re on the subject, here’s hoping that someone will produce comparably good widescreen, hi-def U.S. editions of Petroni’s somber Zapata Western “Tepepa” (1969) and Vincenzoni’s playful gangster film “Mean Frank and Crazy Tony” (1973), with Lee Van Cleef as a seasoned mafioso and Tony LoBianco as his admiring, younger disciple.

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FRED BLOSSER IS THE AUTHOR OF "SAVAGE SCROLLS: VOLUME ONE: SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE HYBORIAN AGE". CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

"THE MILD, MILD WEST" 

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Warner Archive has released the 1965 comedy "The Rounders" on Blu-ray. The film is primarily notable for the  teaming of Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda, two estimable Hollywood stars who could be relied upon to play convincingly in both dark, somber dramas and frolicking comedies. "The Rounders" was directed and written by Burt Kennedy, who adapted a novel from by Max Evans. Kennedy was a veteran of big studio productions who worked his way from screenwriter to director. If he never made any indisputable classics, it can be said that he made a good many films that were top-notch entertainment. Among them: "Support Your Local Sheriff", "The War Wagon", "Hannie Caulder" and "The Train Robbers". While Westerns were Kennedy's specialty, he did have a prestigious achievement with his screenplay for Clint Eastwood's woefully underseen and under-praised 1990 film "White Hunter, Black Heart". It's not an insult to state that most of Kennedy's directorial efforts could be considered lightweight. They were not concerned with social issues and generally had a Hawksian emphasis on heroes who engaged in good-natured bantering ("The War Wagon" is the best example of this.) Those elements are in full display in "The Rounders" but the film never rises above the status of resembling an extended episode of a TV sitcom from the era. That isn't meant as a knock, considering how many good TV sitcoms were on the airwaves in 1965, but there is a rather lazy element to the production and one would be suspects that an old pro like Kennedy probably knocked off the script over a long lunch. 

The film, set in contemporary Arizona, finds Ford and Fonda playing Ben Jones and "Howdy" Lewis (his real name is Marion, but he's too ashamed to admit it, which is a nice inside joke aimed at Fonda's old pal John Wayne, whose real name was Marion Morrison.) The two are middle-aged wranglers  who make ends meet by "breaking" and taming wild horses. It's a rough-and-tumble profession that inevitably results in them being tossed around like rag dolls as they ride atop bucking broncos. However, Ben and "Howdy" are still the best in their profession, although their meager wages have left them with no tangible assets beyond a beaten-up pickup truck. Local land baron Jim Ed Love (Chill Wills) hires them to spend the winter in a dilapidated cabin in the mountains in order to round up stray horses and keep them safe until spring. The assignment means enduring harsh weather and complete isolation, but the pair need the money so they accept. Since Fonda and Ford are the stars, there's no chance of this evolving into a "Brokeback Mountain" scenario and the two spend time gazing at a poster that depicts a ridiculously sanitized hula girl, a symbol of Ben's long-time dream of moving to a tropical island. Much of the script centers on their trials and tribulations in attempting to break a particularly rebellious roan horse that defies conforming to their commands. It gets personal with Ben, who decides that at the end of winter, he will buy the horse from Love for the simple pleasure of taking him to a soap factory. The two men survive the winter and head off (with roan horse in tow) to the big rodeo, a stop they make every year in order to supplement their income by winning bucking bronco riding contests. Along they way they have a chance encounter with two sisters who happen to be exotic dancers (Sue Ane Langdon and Hope Holiday). They are amiable bubbleheads but after the men have been in the mountains sans female companionship for many months, they can't resist attempting to woo them. The family-friendly  screenplay is quite timid when it comes to depicting adult sexual behavior. Ben and "Howdy" are understandably enticed by the vivacious sisters but they seem satiated by inducing them to join them in a moonlight skinny-dipping session, which is interrupted by a police raid. The climax finds the two partners attempting to use the unbreakable roan horse as a gimmick to lure local wranglers and riders to bet money they can best him. There's a bit of a con in their scheme, but as one might suspect, their plans go awry and they don't benefit from any ill-gotten gains. As you might also suspect, the roan horse earns Ben's respect and never makes it to that dreaded soap factory. 

That's pretty much the entire plot of "The Rounders", which is lightweight enough to resemble a celluloid wisp of smoke. If it's never boring, it's also never very engaging, as we keep expecting the script to provide some kind of creative or engaging plot device that never arrives. Still, it has its pleasures and Fonda and Ford exude real chemistry that elevates the proceedings substantially. There is also the wonder of the magnificent Arizona locations, a jaunty musical score by Jeff Alexander and a marvelous cast of reliable and familiar character actors that, in addition to the incomparible Chill Wills, includes Edgar Buchanan, Kathleen Freeman, Barton MacLane, Doodles Weaver and Denver Pyle. 

When the film was released, even MGM felt the production was rather lacking in commercial appeal. Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris, who gave the film some faint praise, justifiably took issue with the fact that the studio had buried "The Rounders" by placing it at the bottom of a double-feature with a forgettable teeny bopper musical, "Get Yourself a College Girl".  He said it must have been depressing for all involved to have a film headlining Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda play second fiddle to a movie that starred Mary Ann Mobley and Nancy Sinatra. He also praised Burt Kennedy, acknowledging that his often estimable contributions to the film business were generally overlooked. Unexpectedly, however, "The Rounders" proved to be a hit in its own right. It drew devoted fans in rural areas and on the drive-in circuit and ended up overshadowing the top-of-the-bill feature. It would even later be made into a television series starring Patrick Wayne, Ron Hayes and Chill Wills, reprising his role from the film. 

The Warner Archive Blu-ray does justice to Paul Vogel's impressive cinematography by providing a truly impressive and all-around gorgeous Blu-ray transfer. The release also includes the original trailer.  

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

When it was released in 1971, director Michael Winner's "Lawman" was regarded as just another western. It did well enough, if unremarkably, at the boxoffice thanks to the drawing power of star Burt Lancaster, but in the end, "Lawman" came and went rather quickly in an era in which the genre was starting to wane a bit. The film represented a new direction for Winner, who had gained attention in the mid-1960s with several quirky comedies that captured the mood of London's emerging "mod" scene. In 1969 Winner landed his first production for a major Hollywood studio with the offbeat WWII comedy/adventure "Hannibal Brooks". He was now mainstream and wanted to try his hands at a diverse subject matters. He proved surprisingly adept at directing at a western, as evidenced by his achievement with "Lawman", which has been released as a Twilight Time Blu-ray limited edition (3,000 units). Winner would seem an unlikely choice for the task. He was of the "To the manor born" crowd, an elitist who inherited enormous wealth and who hobnobbed with London's "A" list crowd. Yet, Winner had a reverence for the American west and captured as well as any other director the look, feel and sensibility of the types of characters who inhabited it. 

"Lawman" begins with a group of rowdy cowboys in the employ of  uber-rich cattle baron Vincent Bronson (Lee J. Cobb), returning from a grueling cattle drive and letting off some steam by raising hell in a small town they are passing through. Drunk and out-of-control, they supplement their horseplay by randomly firing their pistols, causing some damage to local buildings before returning to Bronson's massive cattle ranch empire. Bronson assumes his men did little more than disturb the peace and shoot out some windows. Neither he or his men are aware that in the confusion, a stray bullet mortally wounded an elderly bystander. They learn this with the arrival in town of Marshal Jarod Maddox (Burt Lancaster), a soft-spoken but fearless lawman empowered by the state to find and arrest the culprits and bring them back to stand trial. Bronson is genuinely disturbed to learn his men had inadvertently caused a death and his first inclination is to take responsibility for it. He is a local kingmaker and is used to writing his own code of justice since he virtually owns all the local townspeople and public officials, who he has appointed to office. He instructs his short-tempered business partner Harvey Stenbaugh (Albert Salmi) to meet with Maddox and offer to pay for all physical damages done as well as offer generous compensation to the victim's family. Harvey is also instructed to blatantly bribe Maddox, who refuses the offer and makes clear he intends to arrest four men he has warrants for. Harvey is one of them and he draws on Maddox but dies in the ensuing gunplay. This sets in motion a war of wills between Maddox and Bronson who makes it clear no one will be standing trial for what he considers to be an innocent mistake. Maddox is determined, however, and begins to track down each of the four men, one of whom is Bronson's brother. Along the way, he reunites with Laura Shelby (Sheree North), a former lover who is now living with one of the wanted men, a coward named Hurd Price (J.D. Cannon), who takes flight upon Maddox's arrival. Laura tries unsuccessfully to persuade Maddox to spare Price and even beds him in an attempt to dissuade him, but Maddox fearlessly and relentlessly pursues his prey. 

The most striking aspect of "Lawman", which bore a bland title and uninspired advertising campaign, is the intelligent script by Gerald Wilson. He presents fully-fleshed characters who could easily have been made into caricatures of western movie villains. The unique aspect of the script is that there aren't any traditional villains. The men who committed the crimes are honest, hard-working cow hands who are ashamed and appalled that they have killed a man. Even though Maddox assures them they will probably get a light sentence, they can't spare the time to be away from their ranches because it would cause them financial ruin. As for Cobb's Vincent Bronson, he is not the typical mustache-twirling western bad guy. He's a dictator who buys people's allegiance, but he is a benevolent dictator who has provided good wages and ample respect to the locals and people in his employ. Maddox meets the local sheriff, Cotton Ryan (Robert Ryan), a once-esteemed lawman who has fallen into disgrace and now shamefully acts as a flunky for Bronson. He attempts to persuade Maddox that pursuing his goal of arresting men at the risk of his life will be a fool's errand. Even if he succeeds in bringing them to court, Bronson will bribe the judge and jury. Maddox is about to be won over by this cynical view of life when an unexpected development leads to a violent showdown. 

"Lawman" boasts an outstanding cast that includes Robert Duvall, John McGiver, Richard Jordan and Ralph Waite, to name but a few. The performances are all outstanding, as is Winner's direction. The three leads- Lancaster, Cobb and Ryan (reunited with Lancaster after "The Professionals") - are superb. Cinematographer Robert Paynter, a longtime collaborator of Winner's, captures the dust and dry prairies with such skill that you'll feel like having a tall, cold drink mid-way through the movie. (One gripe, though: Paynter has an amateurish fixation on playing with the zoom lens.) The movie also has a typically fine score by Jerry Fielding. The Twilight Time Blu-ray is sans any special features except the trailer, an isolated music score track and the usual excellent collector's booklet with informative notes by Julie Kirgo. The transfer is on par with the usual high quality standards associated with Twilight Time. 

"Lawman" may not rank with the great westerns of Ford, Hawks and Sturges but it resonates today as an excellent film in all respects. Highly recommended. 

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

German actress Karin Dor has died at age 79. She had been in a nursing home since suffering the severe aftereffects of a fall last year. Dor was a popular presence in European cinema. She began acting in the 1950s and became a well-known star in the 1960s. She frequently collaborated with her husband, Austrian director Harald Reinl. She appeared in several of the popular German "Winnetou"  westerns and well as German crime programs on television. In 1967 she achieved a new level of fame when she was cast as Helga Brandt, the sultry SPECTRE agent who seduces Sean Connery's James Bond before attempting to kill him in the 1967 blockbuster "You Only Live Twice". Dor's character suffered a memorable fate when her employer, SPECTRE chieftain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) ensures she drops into his piranha-filled moat. She later had a leading role in Alfred Hitchcock's 1969 spy thriller "Topaz". Dor continued to act until recently, with her last screen credit in 2015. She was also a frequent presence on European television programs. 

In what may have been her last interview, Dor discussed the making of "You Only Live Twice"  in-depth with Cinema Retro contributing writers Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury. The interview appears in the latest issue, #39.  

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN 

In MGM’s 1958 Western “The Law and Jake Wade,” Robert Taylor rides down from the Sierra Nevada mountains early one morning into a small town and busts his old partner-in-crime, Clint Hollister (Richard Widmark), out of the hoosegow. Hollister is a nasty guy. Not satisfied with escaping a hanging, to Jake’s dismay, he clubs the sheriff and shoots a couple of people out in the street while he and Jake make their getaway. Jake has to take his rifle away from him to keep from killing more people.

Back up in the mountains Clint wants to ride on with Jake but Jake says no. He busted Clint out of jail because he figured he owed him for doing the same thing for him once. Now they’re even. Clint doesn’t agree. There’s that matter of the $20,000 they stole on their last job together. He wants his share. Jake tells him he buried the money and never touched it and advises Clint to forget about it. “Don’t try to follow me,” he tells him. “I’m still pretty good with this,” he says, patting his holstered gun. They go their separate ways and Jake rides down on the other side of the mountain into another town where he pulls up in front of a marshal’s office. Two men inside welcome him back. He takes his coat off and surprise! There’s a tin star pinned to his shirt.

It’s a shocker. He’s a law man, and he just broke a convicted killer out of jail. It seems while Clint continued his career as an outlaw, Jake reformed and became a town marshal. He’s an upstanding citizen now and even has a lovely fiancé named Peggy (Patricia Owens) he’s going to settle down with. Now you might ask yourself why a guy in Jake’s position would risk everything to save his old partner from a noose. It would be somewhat unbelievable if veteran screenwriter William Bowers (The Gunfighter), adapting a novel by Marvin H. Alpert, didn’t provide some background indicating that Jake is not only a guy with a conscience, Clint has some psychological hold over him that he uses to his own advantage.

It helps that “The Law and Jake Wade” is directed by John Sturges (Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Magnificent Seven). Sturges sets a steady, understated, no-nonsense tone to the proceedings that makes everything credible and authentic. His directorial skill is nowhere more evident than in the way he handles a cast made up in part by some familiar Hollywood bad asses. After Jake gets home Clint shows up with some mutual friends—members of the old gang. The first is Rennie, a young psychopath played by Henry Silva (Manchurian Candidate). Silva affects a weird way of talking and looking like he’s about to draw on anyone who looks at him crossways. Next up, Robert Middleton as Ortero, a hulking, cold-blooded gunman with a big belly and a nasty disposition. And last but not least, a pre-Star Trek DeForest Kelly as Wexler, who would almost rather kill Jake than try to find the money. (I know it’s hard to think of Dr. McCoy as a bad ass but actually he played that role in several westerns back in the fifties). Sturges provides each of the heavies enough screen time and action to establish their bonafides.

The story heats up when Clint and his Merry Men kidnap Jake’s fiancé and force him to take them to the hidden loot. Sturges was not only good at getting great performances from his cast, he was also one of the best at filming in rugged locations. A lot of “The Law And Jake Wade” was shot in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Lone Pine and down in Death Valley, an area of the American landscape so often used in westerns that it has long since become part of our national dreamscape. Even movie goers who are not particularly fans of westerns can immediately recognize the mountains and deserts of this stretch of ruggedly beautiful country. Budd Boetticher was perhaps the director to make the best use of this scenery in the films he made with Randolph Scott, but Sturges and his cinematographer Robert Surtees almost surpass him in this film. The movie not only provides compelling drama, it’s also gorgeous to look at.

On top of all this, Taylor and Widmark are at the top of their game. Taylor was 58 at the time he played Marshal Wade, a little long in the tooth, perhaps, to be paired with the 33-year old Owens, but he was still in shape, and age had only added a bit of gravitas to his classic good looks. He spends a lot of time in the film riding along the high passes of the Sierras with his hands tied behind his back, which must have been difficult. One of the biggest marvels in the movie is the way his hat stayed on while they rode over one of those passes where the wind was blowing so hard Widmark and the others all had to hold on to their lids to keep from losing them. But not Bob Taylor. When you’re a star, baby, the hat stays on, even if you have to glue it on.

Widmark has one of his best sadistic psycho-killer roles as Clint Hollister. It’s as though his notorious Tommy Udo from “Kiss of Death” had donned gun belt and spurs and headed west. Henry Silva was plenty creepy as Rennie, but one twitch of Widmark’s snarling upper lip quickly resolved any doubt about who was deadlier or meaner.

The Warner Archive Collection has released “The Law and Jake Wade” on a decent, if somewhat unspectacular, Blu-ray with no bonus features other than the original theatrical trailer. The film lacks an original soundtrack score because it was made during a musicians’ union strike. Thus, the music heard in the movie was lifted from previous features. Despite the lack of special features, this is a solidly entertaining film and this Blu-Ray disc is highly recommended. 

John M. Whalen is the author of "This Ray Gun for Hire...and Other Tales." Click here to order from Amazon. 

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BY FRED BLOSSER

José R. Larraz’s 1982 film “Black Candles” -- original title, “Los Ritos Sexuales del Diablo” -- has been released on Blu-ray by the specialty label Code Red. Carol (Vanesa Hidalgo) and her boyfriend Robert (Jeffrey Healey) fly to the U.K., where they accept an invitation by her widowed sister-in-law Fiona (“Martha Belton,” aka Helga Liné) to stay at Fiona’s country estate. As the viewer already knows from a pre-credit sex scene, Fiona and virtually everyone else on and around the estate are members of a devil-worshipping orgy cult. But Carol and Robert are clueless, even after they see satanic lithographs on the wall and Carol experiences bad dreams. Fiona seduces Robert into the coven, while the coven’s master, the sinisterly goateed Reverend Hübner, decides to initiate Carol at the cult’s next satanic ceremony . . . And that’s probably all anyone needs or wants to know about the plot, which unabashedly copies “Rosemary’s Baby” and adds all the nudity and simulated intercourse that Euro-movie fans would expect from the relaxed censorship of early 1980s, low-budget sexploitation cinema. Like Larraz’s marginally more famous “Vampyres” (1974), it’s probably better judged against the criteria of Joe Bob Briggs, “The Bare Facts Video Guide,” and “Mr. Skin” than by mainstream critical standards. That is: How many skin and sex scenes are in the film? Where do they occur? How long, umm, do they last? And how much skin do they show? By those benchmarks, Larraz delivers the goods. And for the record, his film at least is more honest in meeting the viewer’s baser expectations than any of the terrible sequels and remakes of “Rosemary’s Baby,” not least the now mercifully forgotten 2014 TV miniseries. The only actors in the cast likely to be recognized by anyone are Helga Liné, the foxy leading lady of countless 1960s and ‘70s Eurospy films, spaghetti westerns, giallo thrillers, and gladiator movies -- yes, she’s frequently nude in “Black Candles,” and in sleek form at almost 50 -- and Carmen Carrión, a familiar supporting actress in Jess Franco’s Eurotrash soft-core sex movies.

BCI Eclipse released “Black Candles” on DVD in the U.S. in 2007 as part of a “Welcome to the Grindhouse” double feature. Before that, there was a DVD-R pressing from Midnight Video under Larraz’s original Spanish title. The Code Red hi-def Blu-ray in anamorphic, 1.78:1 widescreen is far superior to either in sharpness and clarity, and likely the best home video edition we’ll ever see. The BCI Eclipse DVD lists an 85 minute running time, and Code Red lists 82 minutes for its Blu-ray. Based on a comparison viewing, however, the two editions seem to be substantially the same. The opening credits of the Code Red print give the title as “Hot Fantasies,” once used for late-night cable showings. The only extras are other Code Red trailers. The Code Red Blu-ray, which retails for $24.95, is available from Screen Archives Entertainment HERE.

FRED BLOSSER IS THE AUTHOR OF "SAVAGE SCROLLS: VOLUME ONE: SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE HYBORIAN AGE". CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

In Raoul Walsh’s “Gun Fury,” a 1953 Columbia western, Donna Reed plays genteel southern belle, Jennifer Ballard, who is traveling west by stage to meet her fiancé, Rock Hudson, who plays a former confederate soldier by the name of Ben Warren. Warren now owns a ranch in California and all the two of them want to do is forget the war and settle down near the ocean. Also on the stage is Phil Carey (you remember him as Asa Buchanan on “One Life to Live;” and years earlier as Philip Marlowe on an ABC TV series). Carey plays Frank Slayton, an “unreconstructed” Southerner who’s pretty ticked off on the way the war turned out. He’s immediately attracted to Donna Reed, though. She represents the kind of southern woman of good breeding he’d always hoped to settle down with some day. He tries to ingratiate himself with her but she gives him the cold shoulder.

Also on the coach is the lantern-jawed Leo Gordon, who has played bad guys in more westerns than you can shake a stick at. He plays Jess Burgess, Frank’s partner. The stage stop for the night at a relay station with a hotel and Ben arrives to claim his bride-to-be, much to Slayton’s chagrin. At dinner we have some character development in which we learn Ben had enough social interaction during the war and now just wants to mind his own business and settle down with Jennifer and ignore the rest of the world. After spending the night in the hotel (in separate rooms, of course) they climb back on the stage next morning, only to be attacked by an escort of Union troops, who shoot the driver and shotgun. Turns out Frank and and Jess are stage coach robbers and the soldiers are really members of Slate’s gang. They killed the real soldiers and took their uniforms. There’s some gun fury action and Ben is shot and left for dead. Slayton and his gang run off with the gold and the girl.

So far, not a bad set up. The first cliché’d plot twist comes right after that, however, when we see Old Ben isn’t as dead as Slayton thought he was. It’s the old “merely a nick on the side of the head” routine. He’s pretty upset, though, when he finds his fiancé has been kidnapped and he takes out after them. Meantime Slayton and his gang reach a hideout and Slayton and Jess get into a fight over the girl. Jess wants her left behind, otherwise she’ll cause trouble. Slayton wins the argument and Jess ends up left behind and hog-tied to a fence. Ben shows up a bit later and frees Jess and they make a deal to ride together. Ben wants his girl and Jess wants revenge and his share of the fortune he helped steal. It’s an unlikely alliance, but given that neither one of them have any alternative but to work together, it’s more or less believable.

They ride on and stop to the next town and ask the sheriff there for help. The lawman says it’s none of his concern; the robbery happened outside his jurisdiction. Rock’s isolationist philosophy of just minding his own affairs comes back to bite him in the butt. But he’s determined to get Jennifer back and Jess still wants his money. So they move on and there’s a lot of riding and some nice views of the Red Rock country around Sedona, Arizona, where the movie was filmed. Ben and Jess are soon joined by an Apache who wants revenge on Slayton and his gang for killing some of his people. The three of them eventually catch up with the gang, who have also kidnapped a Mexican girl that gang member Blackie (Lee Marvin) took a shine to. When Slayton realizes he’s being hunted not only by Ben Warren, (who he thought he had killed), but also by his old buddy Jess (who he’d left hog-tied to a fence), and an unknown Indian, well, it shakes him up.

Slayton and his gang are only a few miles from the Mexican border, he’s got to decide what to do fast. He comes up with the idea that they’ll trade Jennifer for Jess and everyone will go on his merry way. Whaaaat?? Make a deal with the guy you left hog-tied to a fence, and then suddenly give up your yen for the genteel southern belle you’ve always dreamed you’d settle down with, and gone to so much trouble to get? Just like that? And what about Jess? Does he really think he can get back in the gang and get his share of the loot, after Phil was so ticked off at him that he left him for dead, hog-tied to a fence? It’s obvious Slayton only wants to get Jess out in the open so he can plug him. How stupid is Jess to think it’s possible to make a deal like that? What kind of crazy deal is this anyway?

“Gun Fury” was not only directed by the legendary Raoul Walsh, who made many great films, the screenplay was written by two well-known pros—Irving Wallace and Roy Huggins. Are you telling me that these three couldn’t have come up with a more believable finish to this sagebrush potboiler? Couldn’t they see, when they got to shoot the final scenes, that the story was going off the rails? Couldn’t one of them have come up a more believable finish than the laughable prisoner exchange at the end? Hard to believe. But they totally wrecked what could have been a good action western. Was cocaine already that big a problem in Hollywood in 1953?

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

The stars must have formed a fortuitous alignment. Somehow, a great wrong has been righted and order has been restored to the universe. Kino Lorber, under its KL Classics brand, has just released “Sunset in the West,” the first-ever high definition Blu-Ray edition of a Roy Rogers Trucolor western. This may not sound like a big deal to some people, but for the initiated—those who grew up watching Roy on the big screen at countless Saturday matinees in the 1950s— it is monumental. Because, until now the only Roy Rogers movies available for home viewing were dark, faded, and badly edited transfers released first on VHS and later DVD by Republic Studios. Republic treated Roy’s movies with criminal disrespect. The studio let the movies fade away with in their vaults, and then sold them to TV where they were butchered to fit time slots. By the time they got to home video there were a mess. For Roy’s fans, it seemed a hopeless situation that would never be corrected. But now, thanks to a first class restoration by Kino Lorber, you can see what John McClane was talking about in “Die Hard,” when he told Hans he was kinda partial to Roy Rogers more than John Wayne, because: “I really like those shirts.”

Color was an essential component of the Rogers westerns. In addition to the western-style shirts he wore, there was the bandana around his neck, the silver studs on his holster and gun belt, the hand-tooled boots with touches of turquoise on them, all of which combined to make Roy practically a living work of art. Even Trigger, his golden Palomino, billed as “The Smartest Horse in the Movies” was outfitted with handsomely a burnished leather saddle festooned with silver doo-dads and a Mexican-style saddle blanket. But you could hardly see any of that on home video. Part of the problem was the Trucolor process itself. Republic invented its own cheaper red and green two-strip color process to save money and still compete with Technicolor. The absence of the third blue strip resulted in more pastel shades than Technicolor with the picture emphasizing oranges and blues. The result was a special look that was immediately identifiable, and put Republic’s, and especially Roy Rogers, movies sort of in a class by themselves. But the big drawback was that Trucolor film faded quickly. Kino Lorber has done a praiseworthy restoration, remastering “Sunset in the West,” from a 4K scan, and the movie looks just about as good as it must have when it was first released. It’s a significant event in the history of film restoration.

“Sunset in the West” is a typical Roy Rogers movie. Certainly not the best he ever made, but a good one.
I would vote for “Bells of San Angelo” as the best, but I suppose it’s all a matter of opinion. When you’re talking about the King of the Cowboys what can you say? They’re all great. In this one Roy finds himself involved in a plot involving gun runners. The script by screenwriting veteran Gerald Geraghty starts with a train hijacking. (That’s another plus right there. Roy Rogers and trains! There are several steam locomotives in the story, although it’s likely there was only one that was used and made over to look different each time.) The bad guys drive the trains to isolated areas, dump out the freight, and replace it with guns to be smuggled across the border to a foreign power. The trains are found later wrecked somewhere along the track. Roy finds out about it when the train he was expecting to pick up the cattle he had driven to Bordertown races right on by without even stopping. Not a man to let a thing like that go by, Roy jumps on Trigger and races after the steaming locomotive. He overtakes the train, jumps aboard and is immediately punched out by the engineer and knocked off the speeding locomotive.

And that’s just the first reel of this action-packed movie. Directed at a frenetic pace by the legendary William Witney (one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite directors), “Sunset in the West” packs a slew of galloping horse chases (Roy takes down two baddies riding double in one scene), numerous fist fights (including a barroom brawl that must have used half of Republics fabled team of stunt men), several gun fights, four or five quick musical numbers, and a finale that takes place along the crashing waves of a deserted beach. And all packed into a dizzying 67 minutes.

The cast includes Penny Edwards, playing the niece of Sheriff Tad Osborne (Will Wright), an old timer who’s about to chuck his 30-year career because he can’t solve the mystery of the highjacked trains. The plot gets moving when Roy, is deputized and helps find out who’s behind it all. Also on hand for comedy relief is Gordon Jones as “Splinters” a hiccupping barber/deputy sheriff. Pierre Watkin appears as Gordon McKnight, a leading citizen of Bordertown who seems kind of shady, and Estelita Rodrigues, who plays Carmelita a Mexican gal singer who doubles as a spy for Deputy Splinters. Foy Willing and the Sons of the Purple Sage are on hand to provide some of the music.

Kino Lorber presents the movie in a 1920X1080p transfer and in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, slightly wider than the standard 1.33:1. Bonus features include audio commentary by Western film historian Toby Roan, who provides interesting info on the cast, the locations, and, just about anything else you’d want to know about the movie. There are also previews of other westerns in the KL catalog. There’s no question. This is one Blu-Ray you have to own. Let’s hope there are more restorations of these classic films to come. Until then, Happy Trails, partner, and may the Good Lord take a liking to you.

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John M. Whalen is the author of "This Ray Gun for Hire...and Other Tales." Click here to order from Amazon. 

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVE.

“GHOSTS OF MONUMENT VALLEY”

By Raymond Benson

The great John Ford made many outstanding westerns, and My Darling Clementine (1946) is certainly one of them. I would argue that not since Stagecoach (1939) had there been as good a picture in the genre, and it didn’t even star John Wayne.

Purportedly the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, the Clanton Gang, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the film is hogwash as far as the truth is concerned. But as pure entertainment, it’s right up there with the best of the classic westerns that have given us stylistic and physical imagery that is today considered cliché. And in order to become cliché, whatever it is has to have been great to begin with. It must be a trend setter, a groundbreaker, an artistic decision that resulted in an iconic piece of celluloid. Much of what John Ford did accomplished just that. My Darling Clementine has it all—the dumpy saloon with the honky tonk piano player and free-roaming prostitutes, “Injuns,” cattle rustlers and thieves, stagecoaches and horses, ornery villains, and, most of all—the scenery of Monument Valley, Utah.

The landscape of Monument Valley is a character itself in Ford’s westerns. Even though we’ve seen the same buttes and rock formations dozens of times, we always buy that we’re somewhere in the “west,” in that mythical land of Hollywood archetypes. And what better archetype is there to play our hero, Wyatt Earp (the film was loosely adapted from Earp’s autobiography), than the inimitable Henry Fonda. Walter Brennan makes a surprisingly nasty villain as Old Man Clanton. Linda Darnell, as saloon girl Chihuahua is a stand out. More problematic is the casting of Victor Mature as Doc Holliday. While the actor displays the requisite angst in the character, he plays Holliday with no humor whatsoever, and it doesn’t quite work. After a while he just becomes annoying for being grumpy and moody all the time.

Nevertheless, this is one of the classics, folks. And, if you study it closely, there is a singular darkness in the hearts of the characters—even the “good” ones—that suggests these historical figures are now nothing but ghosts of a tall-tale-past where life is cheap and death comes unexpectedly. Monument Valley, for all its beauty, is fairly spooky at night—and much of Clementine is shot at night. Even the blowing dust during the climactic gun battle creates an eerie, ghost town effect. Clementine is one of Ford’s blackest, most cynical films, but it’s cleverly disguised as mainstream Hollywood entertainment. The picture has great atmosphere and action, gorgeous black and white cinematography by Joseph MacDonald, and that infectious song, “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” which I believe I first heard sung by Huckleberry Hound. And while it might offend nitpicky historians as to its accuracy... who cares? Legend is myth and vice versa. Clementine doesn’t possess the originality of Stagecoach nor the sucker punch that is The Searchers, but it definitely stands as one of Ford’s essential pictures.

Criterion’s new 4K digital restoration of the theatrical release version looks terrific—I must say that I am very impressed with Criterion’s handling of black and white films made prior to the sixties. As with the earlier Fox release on DVD, the disk includes the early “pre-release” version of the film, a work-in-progress as producer and studio boss Daryl F. Zanuck re-cut Ford’s original submission. Further cutting ensued to create the theatrical release version, and it is most interesting to explore the differences in the two cuts. Another port over from the Fox disc is the excellent comparison of the two versions by film preservationist Robert Gitt.

New extras include a video essay by Ford scholar Tag Gallagher; a new interview with western historian Andrew C. Isenberg about the real Wyatt Earp; Bandit’s Wager—and early silent short directed by Ford’s brother Francis, and featuring John as an actor in a supporting role (!); television documentary excerpts about Monument Valley and Tombstone, Arizona; and a Lux Radio Theatre adaptation from 1947 featuring Fonda and Cathy Downs (who plays Clementine in the film).

Excellent stuff.

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BY ADRIAN SMITH

“Only one thing counts: either you have money and you’re someone, or you don’t have any and you’re a doormat.” So states Giulio Sacchi (Tomas Milian), as he plans to kidnap the beautiful young daughter of a wealthy business-owner. Together with two small-time hoods, who are more accustomed to snatching purses than snatching rich girls, Sacchi hopes to take 500 million lira, enough never to have to work again. Having grown up on the streets with no parents or opportunity, Sacchi constantly rails against the system. He believes he is a genius and can commit crime because the world owes him a living; in reality he is short-tempered, dangerous and cowardly, as he proves when he guns down a traffic officer whilst acting as getaway driver for a bank robbery. This hasty murder brings swift police attention and the gang are nearly caught, leading them to beat Sacchi and reject him from their organised crime ring. This spurs him on to plan his perfect big score, but his short temper causes him to leave a string of dead bodies in his wake, which soon brings tough cop Walter Grandi (Henry Silva) hot on his trail.

Almost Human fits what the Italians called the poliziotteschi, a genre which depicted corrupt or inept cops and violent criminality. The 1970s was an incredibly violent period in Italy’s history, often referred to as Anni di piombo, or the Years of Lead, when both left- and right-wing extremists engaged in acts of terrorism including bombings and political assassinations. The authorities seemed unable to bring any form of control to this unstable and terrifying situation and the Italian films of the period charted this chaos and mistrust through explicit depictions of crime and horror. Although Milan is now a popular tourist destination for its important art and architecture, Almost Human depicts it as a city which looks more like the mean streets of 1970s New York, filled with crumbling buildings, ugly apartment blocks, abandoned quaysides and patches of rubbish-strewn wasteland. This comparison is surely no coincidence, as the poliziotteschi, as well as addressing issues of contemporary Italy, borrows heavily from the tough American crime thrillers of the period like The French Connection (1971) and Dirty Harry (1971). The film’s original Italian title, Milano odia: la polizia non puo’ sparare, translates as “Milan hates: the police can’t shoot”, which sounds as if it is criticising the targeting abilities of the local constabulary. What is actually implied by this is that the bureaucracy means that the police are powerless to stop the criminals. Even if they are caught and arrested, as Grandi complains, they are released again twenty-four hours later to go out and steal and kill again. Sacchi is so blasé about killing people because he believes no one will notice another body in Milan.

Almost Human may be derivative of the American cop thriller, but it is also an exciting and shocking political critique of Italian society, where women and children can be gunned down in cold blood and the police are powerless to stop it unless they step outside the law they are sworn to protect.

Director Umberto Lenzi is a legend of Italian cinema. Like many who worked outside the arthouse or neo-realist traditions of Visconti or Fellini, Lenzi made films within every popular genre from sword-and-sandal to giallo, from sex comedies to cannibal horror. Like his contemporaries he made whatever was popular, whether for the local or international audiences, so his name can even be found on spy films like 008: Operation Exterminate (1965), spaghetti westerns such as Pistol for a Hundred Coffins (1968) and zombie splatterthons like the deliriously ridiculous Nightmare City (1980). Shameless sat him down for an exclusive interview for this new Blu-ray, which features an HD restoration from the original negative. He is a fascinating figure whose career spans over fifty years and he has plenty of stories to tell about his time in the film industry. Also included are some archival interviews with Lenzi, co-star Ray Lovelock and writer Ernesto Gastaldi, himself legendary in the Italy with over 100 film credits. Tomas Milian, a Cuban-American who had a tremendous career both in Europe and in the U.S, and who passed away earlier in 2017, is also interviewed and proved himself to be equally entertaining as he was in his movies.

The Blu-ray comes in the traditional Shameless yellow case with both original and alternative artwork. With a terrific heavy-rock score from none other than Ennio Morricone, Almost Human is an exciting film from the golden period of Italian exploitation cinema and is not to be missed.

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BY HANK REINEKE

Though heavyweights Columbia and Universal produced as many serials as Republic Pictures from 1929-1956, the latter studio is generally best known for its exciting sound-era chapter-plays.  Universal and the less widely known Mascot Pictures were in the game the earliest; both studios began releasing their sound serials in 1929. Mascot would only last six years or so. Universal – choosing to concentrate exclusively on the production of feature films – effectively got out of the serial business in 1946. Republic and Columbia hung on to the production of chapter-plays the longest; they released their final serials in 1955 and 1956, respectively.

Republic wasn’t only a serials factory. The studio was in the low budget feature filmmaking business as well, busily churning out a dizzying array of westerns, adventure pictures, and mysteries. They would test the box-office potentials of the horror film market during the 1940s with limited success. As a second-tier “Poverty Row” studio, Republic would enjoy a less distinguished track record in the horror film realm than, say, Monogram Pictures. The latter studio would occasionally tap the talents of such moonlighting film ghouls as Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, George Zucco, and Lionel Atwill. Dutifully exploiting the popular culture trends of the day, Republic would soon move into the production sci-fi serials beginning with King of the Rocket Men (1949). In the next five years the studio would knock out a number of similar themed serials with The Invisible Monster (1950), Flying Disc Man from Mars (1951), Radar Men from the Moon (1952), and Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952).

Lee Sholem’s Tobor The Great (1954), now out on Blu Ray from Kino-Lorber Studio Classics, was one of Republic’s earliest non-serial feature films of the “Silver Age” of Sci-Fi. Though more of a timepiece curiosity than a great film, old-school sci-fi fans – at least those with long memories - will welcome Tobor The Great as a valuable addition to their private collection. The year 1954 was, to be sure, a good one for devotees of sci-fi cinema. Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea managed to garner the studio two Academy Awards. Universal unleashed The Creature from the Black Lagoon in glorious 3-D and, not to be outdone, Warner Bros. released a swarm of giant radioactive ants collectively known as Them! on the city of Los Angeles. Tobor The Great is not even remotely as entertaining nor well crafted as the three above mentioned films, but it’s arguably no better or worse than such other 1954 efforts as Devil Girl from Mars or Roger Corman’s Monster from the Ocean Floor.

It’s obvious that Republic’s target audience for Tobor The Great was the juvenile market. We’re introduced early on to Brian “Gadge” Roberts (Billy Chapin), a ten year old whiz kid who is a prodigal student of mathematics and the sciences. We soon learn that young Brian’s proclivities for the disciplines are at least partly inherited. The boy and his mother Janice (Karen Booth) have been living comfortably in the home of his maternal grandfather ever since the boy’s father had been killed while serving in Korea.

Gadge’s grandfather happens to be the kindly Professor Arnold Nordstrom (Taylor Holmes), a research scientist working for the C.I.F.C., an acronym for the Civil Interplanetary Flight Commission. The commission’s principal concern is with helping guarantee America’s front-runner status in space travel, rocketry, and guided missile launches. The professor, an expert in astrophysics and aerodynamics, studiously labors away in a secreted wine cellar repurposed as a modern subterranean experimental laboratory.

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

By Lee Pfeiffer

Vinegar Syndrome (we love the name) is a DVD label that specializes in preserving and restoring vintage cinematic erotica and other cult films. Their most recent coup is the release of a double feature on Blu-ray consisting of Russ Meyer's 1964 adaptation of Fanny Hill along with Albert Zugsmith's bizarre 1967 Western comedy The Phantom Gunslinger. The dual package generously provides both films on DVD as well as their Blu-ray editions. Russ Meyer was already well-known as both a cheesecake photographer for "men's magazines" as well as a director of soft-cover sex films that generally showcased young women who were super-amply endowed. Ever the opportunist, he teamed with producer Zugsmith in 1964 for Fanny Hill, which was based on a notorious 18th century novel that chronicled the sexual escapades of a promiscuous young woman. Such was the book's controversial impact that when it was reprinted in the early 1960s it was banned in some quarters for obscenity. The publisher and civil libertarians contested the ruling and the subsequent court battle put ol' Fanny right in the midst of the contemporary news cycle. Zugsmith, who was a producer of some repute (The Incredible Shrinking Man, Touch of Evil) had by this point concentrated on low-brow exploitation fare. He reasoned that if the country was up in arms over a two hundred year old book, audiences would go wild over a film adaptation of the story. The plot centers on Fanny (Leticia Roman) as a buxom blonde farm girl who arrives in London, naive and clueless about the ways of the world. She is quickly "adopted" by Mrs. Brown (Miriam Hopkins), a seemingly benevolent older woman who is, in fact, a madame who wants to exploit Fanny's innocence by turning her into a prostitute. What she doesn't count on is just how naive Fanny is. Even when residing with numerous other ladies of the night, she fails to catch on to the fact that the place is a bordello. Mrs. Brown tries on several occasions to financially benefit from renting the young virgin to any number of eager patrons, but fate always intervenes before the act can be consummated. When Fanny falls in love with Charles (Ulli Lommel), a dashing and chivalrous young sailor, Mrs. Brown arranges for him to be kidnapped and taken out of the country. Thinking her lover has abandoned her, Fanny becomes despondent and out of grief agrees to marry a loathsome nobleman. As the ceremony begins, Fanny's betrothed manages to escape and make his way to the wedding where the film climaxes in a crazy, slap-stick filled brawl.  Viewers may be puzzled by the almost complete absence of eroticism in the film, along with relatively few lingering shots of semi-dressed young women. The whole enterprise is so chaste it could be shown today on the Disney Channel. This was due to the fact that Zugsmith and Meyer clashed over the content of the film, with Zugsmith insisting that comedy should be emphasized over sexual content. Meyer finished the film but justifiably regarded it as a low-grade entry on his list of cinematic achievements. What emerged is a Jerry Lewis-like farce with zany sequences in which people swing from chandeliers, cross dress and engage in various forms of mayhem. In retrospect, it seems inconceivable that the film was deemed controversial even in 1964. Zugsmith filmed the movie in West Germany using local actors for supporting roles. Although the three leads-Roman, Hopkins and Lommel- perform admirable given the circumstances, the supporting cast is encouraged to play even the most minor moments in absurd, over-the-top manner. The result is that the film's primary legacy is as an interesting relic of a bygone era when "naughty" films could still raise eyebrow without delivering much in the way of genuine eroticism. 

The second entry on the DVD "double feature" is even more bizarre and makes Fanny Hill look like Last Tango in Paris in comparison. The Phantom Gunslinger was shot in Mexico as a vehicle for Albert Zugsmith to prove he was a triple threat talent, with the erstwhile fellow producing, co-writing and directing the resulting disaster. It's clear that without someone like Russ Meyer to at least try to restrain Zugsmith's instincts for broad slapstick, the project was doomed from the start. The plot, such as it is, finds a small Western town taken over by a gang of notorious outlaws. They cause some mild mayhem but mostly seem content to gorge themselves on sumptuous feasts in between flirting with the local saloon girls. The local sheriff is terrified and runs away, turning his badge over to Bill (Troy Donahue), a hunky dimwit who sets about trying to wrest control of the town from the raucous outlaws. That's about as deep as the story line goes. Zugsmith pads the film with so much slapstick it makes the average Three Stooges skit look like the work of Noel Coward. The film is certainly one of the most bizarre of its era and its hard to know whether it was ever even released theatrically in America. There is a painful element to watching Troy Donahue at this stage in his career. Only a few years earlier, he was deemed a bankable star by major studios. Whatever desperate measures persuaded him to be involved in this enterprise will probably never be known but perhaps he was inspired by the success of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns. Eastwood went to Spain and collaborated with a genius named Sergio Leone. Donahue went to Mexico and was saddled with Albert Zugsmith. Such are the cruel ironies of fate. The Phantom Gunslinger is so repetitive in its gags that one is reminded that this is the kind of film they invented the fast forward remote control feature for.  

BY DOUG OSWALD

Charles Bronson portrays a veteran secret service agent tasked with protecting the First Lady in “Assassination,” now on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Jill Ireland is Lara Royce Craig, the First Lady under the protection of Jay “Killy” Killian (Bronson). His assignment to protect her is a bit of a demotion and a disappointment for Killian, but he makes the best of it along with his partner, agent Charlotte Chang (Jan Gan Boyd), who also happens to have a serious crush on Killian.

Killian believes someone is trying to murder the First Lady, but nobody believes him, including Lara. She takes an instant dislike to “Killy” in spite of his saving her life on several occasions, one of which results in her suffering a black eye after a would-be assassin disguised as a motorcycle cop tries to shoot her. Making matters worse for Killian is Lara’s habit of trying to slip away from his protection. Veteran TV and movie actor Michael Ansara is on hand as Senator Bunsen, who may be able to help Killian find the killers.

Killian and Charlotte find time to rendezvous, but their love affair is brief as they continue their search for those trying to murder the First Lady. Eventually Lara comes around and starts to trust Killian after it becomes obvious her life is in jeopardy and the clues may lead all the way to her husband. She departs with Killian to hide out in the country in order to buy a little time and ferret out the killers who also happen to be part of a terrorist conspiracy. The mayhem that ensues includes a motorcycle chase, a helicopter and surface- to- air missiles. In the end, the head of the conspiracy is revealed and the movie comes to a satisfying, if predictable conclusion.

“Assassination” may not be one of the classics in Bronson’s long list of movie credits, but it is typical of the movies that would define the later part of his career in the 1980s. Bronson is unique among movie actors in that he represented his own genre. It must be said, however, that prior to being an action movie icon, he distinguished himself as a supporting actor in prestigious productions such as “The Magnificent Seven,” ,“The Great Escape,” “Battle of the Bulge,” “The Dirty Dozen” and “Once Upon a Time in the West”.

Thankfully, Bronson was busy throughout the 70s, 80s and into the 90s making dozens of action and crime thrillers starting with “Rider on the Rain” (1970) and continuing through the final movie in the "Death Wish" series, “Death Wish V: The Face of Death,” in 1994. Many of these movies- “Chato’s Land,” “The Mechanic,” “Mr. Majestic,” “Death Wish,” “Hard Times” and “Breakout Pass” (to name just a few highlights)- defined action thrillers and westerns during this period and continue to do so to this day, while cementing Bronson’s reputation as one of the actors of the period whose movies garner repeat viewing and discussion.

Bronson also worked with several great and often overlooked directors during this period including Michael Winner, J. Lee Thompson, Peter Hunt, Richard Fleischer, Walter Hill, Richard Donner and Don Siegel. Bronson and the filmmakers he worked with proved to be the right combination for his fan base during this prolific period, even if critics rarely saw much merit to these populist productions.

“Assassination” is the final feature film by Peter Hunt, director of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and “Shout at the Devil,” who also worked with Bronson and Lee Marvin on “Death Hunt.” This is also the last of 14 movies Jill Ireland co-starred in with her real life husband, Bronson. Sadly, she died three years later in 1990.

The Kino Blu-ray looks and sounds very good with an 88 minute running time. The disc features trailers for this and three other Bronson titles. “Assassination” is comfort food for Charles Bronson fans and is recommended for fans of 80s action movies.

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Director Sofia Coppola's revisionist version of the 1971 production of "The Beguiled" is winning critical raves.This has inspired writer Mike Scott of the Times-Picayune to look back at the original version of the film which was shot at a historic plantation near Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1970. The film marked the third collaboration between newly-minted superstar Clint Eastwood and his mentor, director Don Siegel. The article provides some very rare on set photos and an overview of the gothic Civil War drama that bombed when it was first released, though its stature has increased among film scholars in the ensuing decades. Eastwood fans who have never seen the movie are advised to do so. It represents a major achievement in his early acting career and he also plays an unsympathetic character, a rarity for him. Click here to read. 

For an in-depth look at the film, order Cinema Retro's special issue "The American Westerns of Clint Eastwood" by clicking here.

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

Legendary filmmaker Sam Peckinpah was one of the true believers—one of the last of the diehards. He believed that a man was only as good as his word, and if he couldn’t keep his word, he was no good at all. Just about all of the 14 films he made during his short career centered around that idea. In most of them there is the man who stays loyal to his friends and true to his code, contrasted with his opposite, the man who sells out. “The Wild Bunch” told the story of an outlaw and his gang being pursued by a posse led by a former friend turned Judas goat. “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” recounts Garrett’s betrayal of his former saddle mate, William H. Bonney, to the Santa Fe Ring. Even the spy thriller, “The Killer Elite,” is about a security agent whose friend sells him out for a price.

For Peckinpah, it was more than just a good theme for a movie. It was a way of life. Oddly enough, the tough-talking, hard-drinking brawler, who earned the nickname “Bloody Sam,” because of the bloodshed and violence in his films, was often labeled a cynic. But as somebody once observed, a cynic is just an idealist who’s had his teeth kicked in too many time. Peckinpah’s filmmaking career was one long kick in the teeth. He battled with the suits, the studio execs, who didn’t like him or the way he made movies. They didn’t like the way he defied them by going over budget and schedule, or shooting scenes that they thought weren’t necessary (but which Sam believed were the heart of the story); and they didn’t like the way he wouldn’t buckle under. He was a man with a vision, and he would not compromise that vision, no matter what they did to him. His films were often cut and butchered after he finished them. Nevertheless, he persevered on, bloodied, battered, and, in the end, clutching self-destructively at alcohol and drugs to keep going. He came to an early end in Mexico at age 59 after suffering a heart attack.

Peckinpah started in television. He cut his teeth on TV westerns, writing 11 half-hour episodes of “Gunsmoke,” creating “The Rifleman,” and “The Westerner” series and contributing scripts for “Trackdown,” “Tombstone Territory,” and other shows of that era. Even in those early efforts you could see the embryonic formation of his thematic ideas. In one “Gunsmoke” episode, Matt Dillon grieves after accidentally killing a friend in a gunfight. His friend had told him that he didn’t think much of a man who notched his gun after a shooting. At his gravesite, Matt notches his own gun for the first and only time, as a reminder.

“Ride the High Country,” freshly released on Blu-Ray by the Warner Archive Collection, was Peckinpah’s second feature film. “The Deadly Companions” had preceded it, but suffered from a low budget and the heavy-handed influence of an amateur producer. “Ride the High Country” was the first movie where he had control over the material and could shape it the way he wanted. It also had the added plus of having two western film legends in the cast—Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott. McCrea is Steve Judd, former lawman of some note in his earlier years, now an old man who hires on to guard a gold shipment from the Coarsegold Mine. He may be on in years, but he’s still the same ramrod straight man he’d always been. He teams up with his old friend Gil Westrum (Scott), who, in contrast, has let time bend his principles a bit. When we first see him he is running a phony Wild West shooting gallery, posing as a Buffalo Bill-type character. When Steve tells him about the shipment of gold and asks if he knows anybody who’d like to sign on with him for the job, dollar signs light up in Westrum’s eyes. He joins Judd, bringing along Heck Longtree (Ron Starr), his young sidekick, telling him he’s pretty sure he can convince Judd to go along with his plan to steal the gold rather than deliver it to the bank. It’s the classic Peckinpah set-up. During the ride to the mine, Westrum keeps working on Judd, dropping hints about how little money they had made as lawmen. Judd admits he doesn’t have much to show for all those years. He even has a hole in the sole of his boot to prove it. But when Westrum keeps at him, asking him what keeps him going, Judd utters the line that everybody quotes when they talk about this movie: “All I want is to enter my house justified.”

In Nick Redman’s excellent featurette, “A Justified Life: Sam Peckinpah and the High Country,” included as a bonus feature on the disc, Peckinpah’s sister, Fern Lee Peter, provides some insight into Peckinpah’s upbringing and the hidden, more sensitive side of his personality. Sam’s father, a lawyer and later a judge, was a huge influence on him, and there is a lot of his father in the Judd character—a man of uncompromising moral rectitude. Sam grew up with his brother, Denver, who was eight years older, and used to tag along with him and his older friends, trying to put on a tough front. But he was smaller than the other boys and more sensitive, more like his mother, to whom he was closer. According to Peter, like her, he “was able to tell when someone hurt.”

There’s a subplot in “Ride the High Country,” that reveals that hidden, sensitive side. A young girl, Elsa Knudson (Marriette Hartley), rides with the bank guards up to the mountain camp to meet her fiancé, Billy Hammond (James Drury), one of the miners. Billy has three brothers (Warren Oates, John Davis Chandler, and L. Q. Jones), and a father (John Anderson). A scruffier, more depraved bunch of characters, you’ve never met. (All the members of the Hammond clan, by the way, were played by actors who had appeared in various TV episodes Peckinpah had written—an informal Peckinpah stock company.) A nightmare wedding scene presided over by drunken Judge Tolliver (Edgar Buchanan) is shot entirely from Elsa’s point of view, and anyone who says Peckinpah was misogynistic and insensitive to women, should watch to see how sympathetically he portrays Elsa’s predicament.

The trajectory of the plot follows Judd’s ultimate clash with Westrum and a final confrontation between them and the Hammonds. The climax is both redemptive and apotheotic. The final shot of “Ride the High Country” is, perhaps, one of the simplest and yet most moving images ever put on film.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray presents the film in 1080p High Definition with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Sound is DTS-HD Master Audio Mono. George Bassman’s somber score sounds good. Picture quality is first rate and Lucien Ballard’s cinematography of locations in and around Inyo National Forest never looked better. The disc also includes audio commentary by the Peckinpah Peckerwoods (Paul Seydor, David Weddle, and Garner Simmons), all of whom possess extensive Peckinpah knowledge, but tend to go overboard ooh-ing and ahh-ing over every little thing the director did. It’s a tad annoying but informative.

“Ride the High Country,” is a classic that every fan of westerns must see and see again. The Warner Archive Blu-Ray is a “must have” for the true believers out there. 

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John M. Whalen is the author of "This Ray Gun for Hire...and Other Tales." Click here to order from Amazon. 

BY DEAN BRIERLY 

For a film director with such an iconic resume, there’s a surprising scarcity of scholarly books devoted to Robert Wise, the man who directed such classics as  "West Side Story" (1961), "The Haunting" (1963), “The Sound of Music” (1965), “The Curse of the Cat People” (1944), “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951), “The Sand Pebbles” (1966) and many other critical and commercial successes. To say nothing of his stature as the man who edited “Citizen Kane” (1941) and “The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942) before taking up decades-long residence in the director’s chair.

Wise brought a self-effacing approach to directing, one that never drew attention to itself. He may have had the most “invisible” style of all the major directors from Hollywood’s Golden Era, which no doubt helps explain why he never had the auteur imprimatur conferred upon him by French critics who swooned over Welles’ baroque visuals, Douglas Sirk’s melodramatic excess, and Howard Hawks’ male-bonding thematic.

The identifiable characteristics of a Wise film were subtler, if no less crucial: the ability to advance the narrative through visuals, seamless editing, an unfailing command of pace, the ability to draw consistent performances from his casts. His adaptability and mastery of all aspects of filmmaking helped him excel across every genre. Noir, sci-fi, horror, westerns, musicals, romances—Wise made outstanding films in each of these categories.

In what is surely good news for fans of Robert Wise and classic films in general, Joe Jordan, film historian and author of “Showmanship: The Cinema of William Castle,” has filled an important gap in film scholarship with his new book, “Robert Wise: The Motion Pictures.” As the title implies, this is not a biography, but an in-depth study of Wise’s films. The book’s length, 500 pages, testifies to the prodigious research Jordan conducted on his subject.

Jordan’s approach is rather unique. He provides an extended synopsis and assessment of each film, bookended by contextual information relating to pre- and post-production issues and interspersed with relevant dialog exchanges and copious film stills. These analytical synopses, for want of a better term, are so lengthy and detailed that readers are likely to find themselves running the films through their heads as Jordan provides his own running commentary on how Wise achieved certain effects through camera setups, staging of action, direction of actors, attention to sound, and so on. Even if one has an intimate familiarity with Wise’s films, Jordan continually surprises with his insight and observations, and makes one want to watch them all over again.

Another highlight of the book are the personal recollections from many of the actors and actresses who performed in Wise’s films. These oral histories, some of which run to several pages, are also deftly woven into the overall narrative. The contributors are an interesting bunch. None of them are superstars per se (not all are actors, either), and while some names are more familiar than others, all are extremely talented professionals who made significant contributions to Wise’s films. It’s refreshing to read fresh perspectives from personalities not often heard from. There’s an unassuming tone to each of their recollections, which is fitting, given the modest, self-effacing nature of the man they’re discussing. Their memories are informative and entertaining, all of them linked by the greatest respect for their subject.

Stunt man Jack Young recalls doubling for James Cagney on “Tribute to a Bad Man” (1956), and being impressed by the relaxed yet professional atmosphere on Wise’s set—a recurring claim made by everyone who worked on his films. Young offers a superbly concise description of Wise as “a good director who cracked a soft whip.” He also reveals some interesting facts about the nature of his profession in the 1940s and ’50s, when stunt men also served as stand-ins and lighting doubles for actors, a practice no longer allowed.

BY FRED BLOSSER

“Sabata” (1969; U.S. release, 1970), “Adios  Sabata” (1970; U.S. release, 1971), and “Return of Sabata” (1971; U.S. release, 1972) are often referred to as “The Sabata Trilogy,” thanks to clever marketing by MGM, which originally released the three Italian Westerns theatrically and on home video here in the States. Technically, “trilogy” is a misnomer. As I noted in an article review on this site in 2014, “Adios, Sabata” was released in Italy in 1970 as “Indio Black, sai che ti dico: Sei un gran figlio di...,” with Yul Brynner as the title character Indio Black. It was rebranded for distribution in the U.S. and some European markets when “Sabata,” starring Lee Van Cleef, turned a profit for MGM and producer Alberto Grimaldi. Commercially, it was a smart move, keeping the Sabata name on marquees until the true Van Cleef sequel, “È tornato Sabata... hai chiuso un'altra volta!,” followed in American theaters as “Return of Sabata” in the Watergate summer of 1972. For a longer analysis of the first Van Cleef movie, not included in the review that follows, see the 2014 review.

Only Mr. Magoo would mistake Yul Brynner and Lee Van Cleef for each other, but reviewers had an “Oh, well,” attitude about the casting, simply assuming that Brynner had stepped in for Van Cleef between the first and third movies. Audiences didn’t seem to notice or care. Anyway, many of the same credits appeared on all three films, ensuring some continuity of style: producer Grimaldi, director “Frank Kramer,” actually the Americanized alias of Gianfranco Parolini, scriptwriters Parolini and Renato Izzo, and supporting actors Pedro Sanchez, Nick Jordan, and Gianni Rizzo. The strategy probably benefitted the three films over the long haul, as well. With genre pictures, series tend to have more staying power than stand-alone titles. On DVD, MGM Home Video released the three movies in 2006 both as individual discs and as a boxed set under the “Sabata Trilogy” label. Kino Lorber Studio Classics produced a Blu-ray edition of “Sabata” for the U.S. market in 2014, and now has completed its set with “Adios, Sabata” and “Return of Sabata,” released simultaneously as individual discs.

In “Adios, Sabata,” Brynner’s title character signs up for a caper to steal the Emperor Maximilian’s imperial gold from murderous Col. Skimmel (Gerard Herter) and turn it over to Juarez’s good-guy Mexican revolutionaries. The “inside man” for Sabata at Skimmel’s military post, and alternately his rival for the gold, is Ballantine (Dean Reed), a portraitist and con artist. Lots of explosions ensue, along with chases, battles, gunfights, and trick weaponry (like Sabata’s rifle magazine that also serves as his cigar holder). As a “gringos south of the border” action-fest, it’s better than any of the sequels to and reboots of “The Magnificent Seven,” including last year’s dour remake.

In “Return of Sabata,” Van Cleef’s character comes to Hobsonville, Texas, as the star of a Wild West sideshow in a traveling circus. Sabata tells his old Army subordinate from the Civil War, Clyde (Reiner Schöne), now the proprietor of a local gambling house, that he plans to stick around long enough “to collect the $5,000 you owe me.” Actually, Sabata has a bigger score in mind, related to his reason for traveling with the circus, and to the money being raised by town boss McIntock through exorbitant sales taxes to fund “civic improvements” in Hobsonville. Where Van Cleef’s original Sabata was a steely man of mystery, his character in “Return of Sabata” is more relaxed, to the point of mugging for the camera in a couple of scenes, having a gorgeous hooker girlfriend, Maggie (Annabella Incontrera), and indulging in what today’s viewers might regard as a couple of sexist comments. Some reviews unfairly conclude that the plot makes no sense. If you pay close enough attention, it does, but “Kramer” makes the narrative hard to follow, inserting details and events in rapid succession and seemingly at random. Only later do they pay off with verbal or visual punchlines. It’s hard to tell if he was being intentionally disruptive to keep viewers guessing about Sabata’s motives along with Clyde and McIntock, or if he couldn’t resist adding every gag that he and Izzo thought of.

Like “My Name is Nobody” (1974), the next-to-last Spaghetti produced by Sergio Leone, “Return of Sabata” indulges in too much noisy, surrealistic circus business for anybody but the most avid Cirque de Soleil groupie. Where “Sabata” had one acrobat in the protagonist’s entourage (Nick Jordan), the sequel has two (Nick Jordan and Vassili Karis). An opening “shootout” in a weirdly lit room between Sabata and a passel of gunmen turns out to be part of the sideshow act. It concludes as the stage lights come on, the gunmen get up, wipe off their fake blood, and joke with each other, and a noisy troupe of clowns runs in. Viewers allergic to clowns may be tempted to punch “stop” or “fast forward” at that point. The first of the gunmen “shot down” by Sabata appears to be played by actor and stuntman Romano Puppo, Van Cleef’s stunt double in several Spaghettis, even though Puppo doesn’t appear in the cast credits for the picture in IMDB and the Spaghetti Western Data Base.

Licensed from 20th Century Fox and MGM, the KL Studio Classics Blu-ray editions of “Adios, Sabata” and “Return of Sabata” have sharp hi-def clarity and a strong color palette, nice upgrades from the previous DVD discs. Extras are scanty, limited to reversible case sleeves with the American poster artwork for the films on one side and the Italian on the other, and trailers for the Sabata films and “Barquero,” an inferior 1970 American Western starring Van Cleef. Unfortunately for aging fans, the audience most likely to remember Van Cleef and Brynner, no SDH subtitles are provided. The German Blu-ray editions from Explosive Media that preceded the KL releases are superior in this respect, including both audio and captioning options not only in English but also in Italian and other languages. Too, it’s unfortunate that KL didn’t spring for the rights and the costs to port over and translate the attractive, informative insert booklets that Explosive Media’s Ulrich Bruckner included with the German discs. Regardless, fans will appreciate Kino Lorber for making “Adios, Sabata” and “Return of Sabata” readily accessible in the U.S. market in good hi-def prints.

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“UNWELCOMING COMMITTEE”

By Raymond Benson

Although the picture takes place a couple of months after the end of World War II in the year 1945, Bad Day at Black Rock is really a western. The setting is a desert town that’s barely a whistle stop for a train that hasn’t halted there in four years; the main street looks as if it’s right out of Dodge City, and the opening credits are designed in big, colorful, bold words that spread across the wide CinemaScope screen. Even director John Sturges is primarily known for his many westerns.

Good Guy Spencer Tracy rides into town—on that train—and is met with inexplicable hostility from everyone he meets. All he wants is to find a guy named Komoko—a Japanese farmer who supposedly lives just out of town. Most of the residents seem afraid to help Tracy. The ones who aren’t scared are bullies who attempt to intimidate Tracy into leaving town. It doesn’t take long for Tracy to figure out that Black Rock is run by Bad Guy Robert Ryan. Even the alcoholic sheriff (Dean Jagger) is in Ryan’s pocket, as well as the young female mechanic (Anne Francis), the telegraph operator (Russell Collins), and the hotel clerk (John Ericson). Ryan has a couple of bruisers (Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin) who do most of the threatening. The only civilian seemingly willing to extend an ounce of courtesy to the stranger is the undertaker (Walter Brennan).

So why is Tracy so unwelcome? Why is Black Rock so paranoid? What secret in its past are the citizens obviously protecting? Tracy—not one to back down easily—decides to try and get the answers before the gang puts him in the ground.

These are classic western trappings. It’s High Noon, only Tracy has come to town to find everyone against him, rather than the other way around. Ryan is the archetypal greedy, mean cattle baron, and Marvin is his six-shooter-slinging henchman. The only difference is that everyone in Black Rock gets around in a car instead of on a horse.

As film historian Dana Polan states in the accompanying audio commentary, Bad Day is a B-movie disguised as a prestige picture. The studio is MGM. The CinemaScope/color photography is impressive. The star is Spencer Tracy, adding “respectability” to the film. And, in the end, it’s a “problem picture,” in that the movie is about racism. All that spells “importance.”

None of that really matters, for Bad Day at Black Rock is simply solid entertainment. It is suspenseful, full of tension, has action—a car chase, hand-to-hand combat, a shootout—and admirable performances. Tracy was nominated for an Oscar Best Actor. Sturges was nominated for Director, and the adapted screenplay by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman received a nod.

The Warner Archive Collection release presents a 1080p High Definition transfer with DTS-HD Master Audio. 

Supplements include the aforementioned commentary and the theatrical trailer.

It’s a few-frills package, but Bad Day at Black Rock is a no-frills thriller that packs a raw and gritty punch. Recommended.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

It goes without saying that Kirk Douglas is a Hollywood icon. From his first role as Walter O’Neill in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” (1946) to “Spartacus” (1960) and beyond that until his last, so far, appearance in a made for TV movie, he remains—even in retirement after a stroke and a helicopter crash— one of those larger than life movie stars, the kind they just don’t make any more.  He had a look and a style. Those shiny white teeth could as easily smile charmingly at you or snarl like a barracuda. His bright blue eyes could be full of tenderness one minute, as in his love scenes in “Spartacus,” or fierce and mean as in “Gunfight at the OK Corral.” He played complex characters that were always a mix of good and bad, but never evil.

Such a character is Johnny Hawks, the frontier scout he plays in “The Indian Fighter” (1955), made in the middle part of Douglas’ career. He had moved up from tough guy film noir roles by then and this was the first film made by his own production company, Bryna Productions. The film was made on location in Oregon by Hungarian-born director Andre de Toth, who wore an eye patch, had seven wives and 19 children (talk about the kind of man they don’t make anymore!). It tells the story of Hawks, who is brought in by the Army to lead a wagon train of settlers through Sioux Indian territory. Rather than the peerless good guy who has no flaws, Johnny has one major hang-up. He is easily distracted. When, in the opening scene he spies Onahti (Elsa Martinelli) the beautiful daughter of Chief Red Cloud (Arthur Franz), bathing in a river sans clothes, he can hardly keep his mind on his job. His ogling is interrupted by Sioux brave Grey Wolf (Harry Landers) who says, if he lays one more eyeball on the fair Indian lass, he’ll set him up for a quick scalp treatment. Nevertheless, Johnny during negotiating safe passage for the wagon train and trying to establish peace terms between the tribe and the soldiers at Fort Benham, manages to make a few passes at Onahti, who resists at first, but soon surrenders to Johnny’s virile charms.

Plot complications come in the form of two shifty ne’er-do-wells, Lon Chaney and Walter Matthau, who spend most of their time getting the Indians drunk enough to tell where they can find the gold said to be located on Sioux land. When Johnny abandons the wagon train for a night to have a little dalliance with Onahti, all hell breaks loose. Several braves are killed by the gold hunters and the tribe goes on the warpath. The wagon train narrowly makes it back to the fort, and everybody wonders, where the heck is Johnny Hawks ? Johnny wakes up that morning under a tree lying next to the Indian chief’s daughter. He had a great night, but, boy, is he in trouble.

The film climaxes with the Indians besieging the fort in a scene that resembles something out of “The Vikings” (1958), one of Douglas’s later films, The Sioux set the fort on fire by lobbing balls of flame at it from long poles cut from saplings. I don’t know if that has any historical authenticity, but in his commentary, provided on a separate audio track, Western film historian Toby Roan, makes note of the scene’s uniqueness, and gives credit to the filmmakers for at least coming up with a different approach to the old Indians-attacking-the fort scene.

Incidentally, Roan is the proprietor of a highly-recommended blog on western films, https://fiftieswesterns.wordpress.com/, where you will find all kinds of interesting info on older westerns. I had seen “The Indian Fighter” before, but I wasn’t aware, until Roan pointed out that beloved character actor Hank Worden ("Old Mose" in “The Searchers”) actually plays two parts in this movie. He’s a jail house guard, and also Crazy Bear, one of the Indians that Chaney and Matthau ply with liquor, trying to find out where the gold is. Roan provides a ton of other insights into the making of the film. He knows which construction company built the full-sized Fort Benham out there in the Oregon wilderness and even what kind of lumber was used.

Kino Lorber presents “The Indian Fighter” in a 1080p transfer on Blu-ray in Cinemascope with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Colors are bright and clear, and Wilfred M. Kline’s cinematography of the Oregon forests and the snow-covered Cascade Mountains in the distance are a treat for the eye. It was de Toth’s first Cinemascope film, and he used the wide-angle lens in several scenes to do a full 360 degree pan of the beautiful vistas surrounding the actors. The inestimable Franz Waxman contributed a very colorful score for the film, and it’s too bad this release is not in stereo.

“The Indian Fighter” is an entertaining movie, but it’s not without problems. De Toth’s direction seems to be focused more on the scenery than the bloody frontier action taking place, resulting in an overall lack of intensity. Douglas, however, and his supporting cast acquit themselves well. Douglas displays a lot of physicality, doing quite a bit of stunt work himself. In fact Roan points out that doing a horse fall, he ended up with a broken nose.

It’s also definitely a film of its time. It’s not likely that you could make a film today entitled “The Indian Fighter” unless it was about a boxer in Bombay. And Johnny Hawks’ forceful seduction of Onahti in the river bed might be protested by feminists today as nothing more than a glorified rape. However, the movie gets points for a sympathetic portrayal of the Sioux (even though there are no native Americans in the cast), whose Chief Red Cloud tells Johnny his concern about the white men coming into the territory is not the loss of the gold they are after, but the pollution of the air and water they will bring. Nice environmental touch.  â€œThe Indian Fighter” is a mixed bag, good but not without its flaws, just like Johnny Hawks.

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John M. Whalen is the author of "This Ray Gun for Hire...and Other Tales." Click here to order from Amazon.  

By Hank Reineke

The blending of two disparate but popular film genres – in this case, the horror/sci-fi film with the saddle opera - was hardly new when The Valley of Gwangi hit the big screen in 1969. This film’s most identifiable predecessor, one pitting cowboys against a prehistoric monster, might be The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956), but truth be told Hollywood had been combining these two genres almost from the very beginning. In the 1930s and ‘40s, audiences thrilled to the ghostly monochrome exploits of such western serial heroes as Ken Maynard, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Buster Crabbe with such films as Tombstone Canyon (1932), The Vanishing Riders (1935), and Wild Horse Phantom (1944). Universal’s Curse of the Undead (1959) was a later but no less interesting experiment for Hollywood’s preeminent fright factory. The studio removed the vampire from the usual atmospheric Gothic trappings of old Europe and dropped him onto the sagebrush plain.

On the far loopier end of the spectrum, the notorious director William “One Shot” Beaudine, provided us with the ultimate in old west weirdness with his legendary twin-bill of 1966, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and Jesse James vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter. 1973 brought to movie houses two of the more memorable big-screen blends: the sci-fi/western Westworld and Clint Eastwood’s prairie ghost saga High Plains Drifter. This combining of westerns and fantasy films continues, more or less, to this very day… as anyone who caught the lavish CGI-fest Cowboys and Aliens (2011) can attest.

Director James O’ Connolly’s The Valley of Gwangi is set mysteriously at the turn of the century somewhere “South of the Rio Grande.” (Principal photography on The Valley of Gwangi was actually shot on various locations throughout the deserts of Spain). The locals are enjoying a parade through a dusty town. The parade has been staged to promote K.J. Breckenridge’s wild and wooly Cowboys vs. Indians Wild West Show. K.J.’s rodeo, not-politically correct by today’s standards, is set to be held at an equally non-PC bull-fighting arena. Contemporary political activists needn’t grab their picket signs. The stadium is hardly filled to capacity, and we soon learn Breckenridge’s rodeo is in dire financial straits. The show simply hasn’t been pulling in the crowds of late, and even main attraction “Omar, the Wonder Horse,” whose equally non-PC stage-jump from an elevated platform into a murky pool of water isn’t enough to save this sad affair.

Suggesting the writing is on the wall, the sultry Breckenridge (Gila Golan) is approached by smooth talking Tuck (James Franciscus), a self-absorbed rodeo cowboy and former lover of T.J. Tuck now makes his living by booking acts for a big entertainment consortium back east. He wants K.J. to sell off the rights to her semi-popular diving horse act, but his ex-paramour is still bitter over their estrangement and not interested in selling. Besides she believes newly found prosperity is just around the corner. She agrees to show him the still-secret attraction that she’s certain will reverse her rodeo’s downward spiral.

The budding impresario is stunned when she unveils “El Diablo” a miniature horse that Tuck recognizes is no horse at all. It’s actually an Eohippus, a fifty-million year old ancestor of the equine. This was not a lucky guess, nor is the startled ex-cowboy an expert on prehistoric beasts. Ten minutes earlier in the film Tuck had gleaned this morsel of knowledge after stumbling upon a scotch drinking Paleontologist camped in the scrub brush desert in search of fossils. Tuck responsibly alerts the amazed scientist (Laurence Naismith) about the Eohippus (“The greatest scientific discovery of the age!”) and together they learn the Eohippus was captured on the frontier outskirts of the grimly named “Forbidden Valley.”

BY FRED BLOSSER

The late Sergio Corbucci (1926-1990) had a long, prolific career in the Italian film industry as a screenwriter and director, but little exposure in U.S. theaters by comparison with his total output. IMDB credits him with sixty-three titles as director. By my count, eleven arrived on Stateside screens, none of them earning Corbucci any real notice at the time. All were genre films -- first sword-and-sandal movies, then Westerns -- before it was cool for critics to treat such products seriously, especially dubbed imports. Three toga-and beefcake pictures -- “Goliath and the Vampires” (1961), “Duel of the Titans” (1961), and “The Slave” (1962) -- were released on drive-in and double-feature bills in the Hercules era. “Minnesota Clay” (1964) had a 1966 run disguised as an American B-Western. “Navajo Joe” (1966) passed through theaters in 1967, earning a typically dismissive review from Bosley Crowther in the New York Times (“results aren’t worth a Mexican peso”). You had to use a magnifying glass to see Corbucci’s name on the movie poster. In his 1994 autobiography, Burt Reynolds said he only took the offer to star in the picture because he thought the director would be the other Sergio . . . Leone. “The Hellbenders” (1967) came and went, also camouflaged as an American production and promoting Joseph Cotten’s starring role. Cotten was a fine actor but hardly big box-office in ’67.

“The Mercenary” (1968) enjoyed a higher profile in a 1970 release, but “Alberto Grimaldi Presents . . .” dominated the credits, including the cover blurb on a paperback novelization that touted the movie as “the bloodiest ‘Italian’ Western of them all . . . by the producer of ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.’ ” “Companeros” (1970) didn’t open in the U.S. until 1972, and then only with limited distribution. “Sonny and Jed” (1972) followed in 1974. Neither made much of an impression as the Spaghetti cycle waned here. “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later” (1975), a sad attempt at comedy in the Spaghetti twilight, loped through rural drive-ins. “Super Fuzz” (1980; U.S. distribution, 1982) was a Terence Hill police comedy that the Times’ Herbert Mitgang said had “one funny gag a few minutes before the end.” At least Mitgang noted Corbucci and Hill by name as “longtime makers of spaghetti westerns.”

If you were nostalgic for Italian Westerns in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, after the cycle had come and gone in the States, you could read about Corbucci in Laurence Staig and Tony Williams’ “Italian Western: The Opera of Violence” (1975) and Christopher Frayling’s “Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone” (1981). There you would learn that one of Corbucci’s Westerns that never made it to the States, “Django” (1966), was as wildly popular and influential overseas as Sergio Leone’s movies. But good luck in ever seeing it or Corbucci’s other Westerns, unless you might catch “The Hellbenders” in a pan-and-scan, commercial-infested print on local TV.

Thanks to the advent of home video, cable, and streaming internet -- and in particular, DVD and Blu-ray in which his films can be seen in the proper aspect ratio and definition -- both the committed and the curious now have access to virtually all of Corbucci’s thirteen Westerns, even the obscure “Grand Canyon Massacre” (1964), his first powder-burner, co-directed with Albert Band. Is Quentin Tarantino justified in praising Corbucci as “one of the great Western directors of all time”? Today, you don’t have to take Tarantino’s word for it, or not; you can judge for yourself.

By most accounts, a Corbucci Top Five would include “Django,” The Great Silence,” “The Mercenary,” “Companeros,” and “The Specialist” (1969). The first four are all in relatively easy reach in various formats and platforms. “Django,” “The Great Silence,” and “Companeros” have had domestic DVD releases. “The Mercenary” hasn’t, but it shows up periodically on cable channels, albeit in an edited version, and you can find good DVD and Blu-ray editions with an English voice track through Amazon and import dealers on the web.

“The Specialist” remains more elusive. Written and directed by Corbucci during his peak period, originally titled “Gli specialisti” and also known as “Specialists” and “Drop Them or I’ll Shoot,” this Western never played in U.S. theaters, has never had an American video release, and is hard to find even on the collectors‘ market in a print with an English-language option. Not to be confused with other, unrelated films of the same name, including a mediocre 1994 Sylvester Stallone crime drama and an obscure 1975 B-movie with Adam West, it is past due for official U.S. release on DVD. Or, better yet, on hi-def Blu-ray to give Corbucci’s compositions and Dario Di Palma’s rich Techniscope and Technicolor cinematography their due sharpness and color on home screens.

BY DOUG OSWALD

Robert Mitchum is Martin Brady, an American hired gun living in exile in Mexico in “The Wonderful Country,” a Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber. While waiting on the Rio Grande for his contact for a gun smuggling job, Brady decides to escort the wagon north to Puerto, Texas, and pick up a cache of guns on behalf of his employers, the Castro brothers.  Pancho Gil (Mike Kellin), another agent of the Castros, arrives to escort the guns they’re buying from a man named Sterner, but Brady insists on picking up the guns himself. When one of Brady’s associates reminds him that he’s a wanted man in America, Brady states, “I want to see the other side of the river.”

Arriving in Puerto, a tumble-weed startles Brady’s horse and he breaks a leg in the fall. He’s aided by Dr. Herbert J. Stovall (Charles McGraw), who sets his leg. Ben Sterner (John Banner, Sergeant Schultz of “Hogan’s Heroes” fame) receives his 500 silver Pecos in payment for the guns. We learn Brady killed the man who murdered his father and he believes he’s a wanted man, thus his self-imposed exile in Mexico.. We later discover this is not the case after the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers approach him about working for them to prevent the Castro brothers from selling guns to the Apaches.

Major Stark Colton (Gary Merrill) wants Martin to help the U.S. Army stop the Castro brothers from selling guns to the Apaches. The Castros are a couple of regional Mexican tyrants, one a governor and the other a general. Texas Ranger Captain Rucker (Albert Dekker) wants Brady to join the Rangers, all past crimes forgiven. Meanwhile, Helen Colton (Julie London), Colton’s beautiful wife, meets up with Brady. Rumors spread about the two of them, resulting in Brady killing a man bullying his friend “Chico” Sterner (Max Slaten Ludwig) followed by his return to Mexico to confront the Castro brothers.

The wonderful country in “The Wonderful Country” may be that place between borders, cultures and people on the other side of the river or in the next village. It’s the place one longs for after leaving home, but can never fully return to. More Mexican than American after his years in exile, Brady wants to return home, but discovers it isn’t possible. He’s seen by the Castro Brothers as a “gringo” and by the Americans as some sort of hybrid Mexican not to be trusted.

Pedro Armendáriz is a welcome addition to the movie as Governor Don Cipriano Castro in a small role as the political half of the notorious Castro brothers. General Marcos Castro (Víctor Manuel Mendoza), is the military half and they play Brady against one another holding his past as collateral for his service until he’s had enough and refuses their orders. The Castro brothers are discussed throughout the first half of the movie, but their welcome appearance, especially that of Armendariz, is a bit of a let down because they have next to nothing to do other than give Brady new orders and to share their mistrust of each other.

“The Wonderful Country” boasts many merits, but it has a complicated plot which is slow paced and filled with underdeveloped dramatic elements and characters. I wanted to see more of Armendariz, Merrill, Banner and Kellin as well as a more fully developed relationship between Brady and Helen. We never fully learn about Helen’s past, why she’s unhappy with her husband or what she sees in Brady. We also don’t really get a satisfying reason for the gun running operation between the Castro’s, Sterner and the Apaches other than to have a gun battle between the U.S. Cavalry and the Apaches as well as several cross border visits for Brady and other members of the cast. Baseball great Leroy “Satchel” Paige has a small role as Army Sergeant Tobe Sutton and Jack Oakie makes an appearance as Travis Hyte.

The film is based on the novel by Tom Lea, who also has a cameo as the barber who gives Mitchum a shave. The 1959 United Artists release was directed by Academy Award winning editor Robert Parrish (He also co-directed “Casino Royale” (1967) and directed “Fire Down Below,” “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun,” “Lucy Gallant, “The Purple Plain,” “Saddle in the Wind” and more than a dozen other movies). Parrish had a distinguished career as editor/actor/director. He also wrote the best selling 1988 autobiographies “Growing Up In Hollywood” and “Hollywood Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” where he chronicles his experiences as a child actor in Charlie Chaplin and Our Gang comedies to his WWII service, relationships with many classic Hollywood greats and his editing/directing career.

Produced by Mitchum’s production company, D.R.M. Productions with Mitchum credited as executive producer, there’s also a great score by Alex North. In the end, the sum totals of all those other interesting elements do not add up to a cohesive movie. it needs a tighter plot and and even the 98 minute running time seems a bit padded.. The Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks and sounds terrific, preserving the beautifully filmed widescreen image. The disc includes the theatrical trailer for this and two other Mitchum releases as the only extras. "The Wonderful Country" is a flawed but entertaining film and  the Blu-ray is a welcome addition  for fans of Mitchum and traditional Westerns.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Fox has reissued its original DVD release of the 1968 western "Bandolero!" as a region-free title in its made-on-demand "Cinema Archives" line.  The film is top-notch entertainment on all levels- the kind of movie that was considered routine in in its day but which can be more appreciated today. The story opens with a bungled bank robbery carried out by Dee Bishop (Dean Martin) and his motley gang. In the course of the robbery two innocent people are killed including a local businessman and land baron, Stoner (Jock Mahoney). The gang is captured by Sheriff July Johnson (George Kennedy) and his deputy Roscoe Bookbinder (Andrew Prine) and are sentenced to be hanged. Meanwhile Dee's older brother Mace (James Stewart), a rogue himself, gets wind of the situation and waylays the eccentric hangman while he is enroute to carry out the execution. By assuming the man's identity he is able to afford Mace and his gang the opportunity to cheat death at the last minute. When they flee the town they take along an "insurance policy"- Stoner's vivacious young widow Maria (Raquel Welch) who they kidnap along the way. This opening section of the film is especially entertaining, mixing genuine suspense with some light-hearted moments such as Mace calmly robbing the bank when all the men ride off in a posse to chase down the would-be bank robbers. Mace and Dee reunite on the trail and the gang crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico- with July and a posse wiling to violate international law by chasing after them in hot pursuit. Much of the film is rather talky by western standards but the script by James Lee Barrett makes the most of these campfire conversations by fleshing out the supporting characters. Dee's outlaw gang makes characters from a Peckinpah movie look like boy scouts. Among them is an aging outlaw, Pop Cheney (Will Geer), a well-spoken but disloyal, greedy man who is overly protective of his somewhat shy son, Joe (Tom Heaton). The presence of Maria predictably results in numerous gang members attempting to molest her but their efforts are thwarted by Dee, who always comes to her rescue. Before long, Maria is making goo-goo eyes at her protector, conveniently forgetting he is also the man who slew her innocent husband. (The script tries to get around this by explaining that while her husband was a decent man who treated her well, she could never get over the fact that he literally bought her as a teenager from her impoverished family). The story also puts some meat on the bone in terms of Dee and Mace's somewhat fractured relationship. Both of them have been saddle tramps but Mace informs Dee that his reputation as a notorious outlaw allowed their mother, who Dee neglected, to go to her grave with a broken heart. Every time the script might become bogged down in these maudlin aspects of the characters, a good dose of humor is injected, 

The story proper kicks in mid-way through the film when the gang finds itself en route to a remote town in the Mexican desert that mandates that they cross a hellish landscape populated by bandoleros, particularly vicious bandits who appear seemingly out of nowhere and pick off individuals one-by-one in a "Lost Patrol"-like scenario. July and his gang are also subject to the eerie murders as stragglers in the posse become victims. When Dee and his gang finally arrive at the town they find it deserted, as the population has fled the marauding bandoleros. Dee proposes to Maria and they agree to start a new life ranching with Mace in Montana- but their joy is short-lived when July and his posse sneak into town and arrest them. Before everyone can saddle up to return to the USA, the town is invaded by an army of bandoleros, setting in motion a truly exciting finale. The entire enterprise is directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, an old hand with horse operas and often memorable action flicks such as "Chisum", "The Wild Geese" and "The Sea Wolves". "Bandolero!" is one of his best achievements and he inspires fine performances by all. Martin plays it unusually straight and in a subdued manner, a rare instance during this era of him playing a realistic, multi-dimensional character. Stewart looks like he's having the time of his life and Welch, then still a contract player for Fox, acquits herself very well indeed among these seasoned pros. The supporting cast is excellent with Kennedy and Prine in top form and familiar faces such as Will Geer, Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor, Perry Lopez and Harry Carey Jr. popping up in brief appearances. There is also some excellent cinematography by William Clothier and a typically fine score by Jerry Goldsmith. "Bandolero!" is one of the best westerns released during this era. 

The Fox made-on-demand titles are generally devoid of bonus materials but they have wisely ported over additional content that was found on the initial DVD release. These include a trailer for the film as well as a Spanish language trailer and a gallery of very welcome trailers for other Fox Raquel Welch titles. The transfer is excellent but Fox didn't catch a blooper on the main menu which depicts Stewart, Welch and- wait for it- what appears to be an image of Stuart Whitman! Apparently some Mr. Magoo-type who designed the menu eons ago couldn't tell the difference between Dean Martin and Stuart Whitman, who starred in both "The Comancheros" and "Rio Conchos" for Fox. A minor gaffe on an otherwise fine release. 

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