The Silver Screen Oasis

I am completely with you on CANYON PASSAGE.

You like TEXAS RANGERS more than me but I thought it okay.

Do we have the same 4 set?

No. I have seen both of those on TCM in the past and saw "CP" last year when I still had Netflix discs.

One western you can avoid is Clark Gable's "The King and Four Queens." The film is just plain boring. It really looks good in HD on TV but that can't make up for how tedious the whole thing is.

Gable comes to a ranch belonging to the mother of a former cellmate. He has heard rumors of gold buried there from a robbery that his cellmate was in. The problem is the mother (Jo Van Fleet) also has four daughters-in-law living with her on the off chance that her sons will come home. A large part of the picture has the four younger ladies all taking turns throwing themselves at Clark. Not that he minds but he is waiting for one to slip up and tell where the gold is.

Gable looks good for his age and Fleet is probably the best thing in the movie. Raoul Walsh directed but seems like there wasn't a whole lot that went into it.

Some fun moments but virtually no action and it all comes down to not much going on.

Unless you're a big Gable fan I wouldn't run to see it.

That doesn't sound too promising. I like Gable's LONE STAR a lot. Adventurous, fairly clever, well cast with Ava Gardner and Broderick Crawford. Lionel Barrymore? I'm not sure. It's been a long time!

I have been stuck on westerns lately. STARZEncore has plenty of them if you don't mind the status of "entertaining." Today it was "Six Black Horses." It starred Audie Murphy, Dan Duryea and Joan O'Brien. Notably, it was written by Burt Kennedy. Knowing that from the credits it was easy to see why. Plot involves Joan hiring to Audie and Dan to take her to a town to meet her husband. The trip goes through Indian country and it is trouble. There is also something not quite right about the arrangement.

Audie and Dan worked a western before (Ride Clear of Diablo) and they seem quite comfortable together. Joan O'Brien is fine but most of the time I kept thinking she looked too much like Karen Steele (RIde Lonesome) to be a coincidence. Along with Kennedy rules of having someone named Lane in the movie, everyone gets a chance to philosophize along the way.

As Murphy westerns go I thought this one was a little better than usual. Better dialogue though not much of a plot. (When though does a western need much of a plot.)

Nothing deep but worth the time on a Saturday (or holiday) afternoon.

The Hateful Eight.

A long slow dialogue laden western that tries to be too clever and winds up being too dull for my taste. What is essentially a premise that is as old as westerns itself just takes too long to get where it is going. Characters are vivid enough. We learn a lot about them but not always in a natural order.

Quentin Tarantino assembles a fine cast and gives them broad characters to play and play them they do. Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Jennifer Jason Leigh (she particularly had it rough), and Bruce Dern as well as some others are stranded in a "habadashery" in a violent snow storm waiting for Leigh to be delivered to town for a hanging. Simple enough. Not so with Tarantino.

All I could think of at the end was what would they have done with this in 1957. (But that misses the point in a Tarantino film.) It would have been at least 45 minutes shorter and told in a less eccentric way. (But that also misses the point int a Tarantino film.)

It took me three times to get through it but I finally did. Violent, as usual, and a broad collection of colorful language Tarantino brings his signature unique style to this genre. I give him credit for the detail to the set, the characters, the cinematography, and homages to other things I just wish he would have made it a little more compact.

But I am a simple guy.