Westerns

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movieman1957
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Re: Westerns

Post by movieman1957 »

"Black Horse Canyon" is a slight picture that if not for Joel McCrea would probably be on a list to pass over. He plays a personable cowhand who has to catch a stallion that has killed a man, thereby saving him. His partner is a young man he has raised since the boy was 12. They come upon a ranch run by Mari Blanchard. The younger falls for her, though she is too old for him, and spends most of the movie making a fool of himself. McCrea keeps warning him while he and Blanchard work their way into each other's good graces.

Lots of shots of horses running and some good stunt work by what looks like McCrea himself, though nothing to rough. Only for die hard McCrea fans.
Chris

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JackFavell
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Re: Westerns

Post by JackFavell »

You've been catching a lot of obscure McCrea westerns lately.... I always tell myself I am going to watch them after you write, but never seem to have time.
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movieman1957
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Re: Westerns

Post by movieman1957 »

Because you have a life. :)
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Re: Westerns

Post by JackFavell »

Ha! Hardly! I just need a separate TV to myself!
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Re: Westerns

Post by movieman1957 »

I enjoyed a routine western with Audie Murphy called 'The Cimarron Kid." It is also noteworthy for being an early Budd Boetticher picture. Murphy is a friend of the Dalton gang, though not part of it until circumstances force his hand. Then he is all in. The odd thing is that it is awfully hard not to like Murphy even when he is being evil. While he is robbing banks he is planning for the day he can get out.

Early on Noah Beery is a welcome part of the film. Two things that come across as Boetticher touches are a long take involving most of the cast early on that is noteworthy for how smoothly it goes. Another is right near the end when Murphy's love interest talks about him and after she is done she comes out of the light toward the camera and into a total silhouette. It gives her a sinister feeling.

Some nice action and nice color photography make it a nice diversion.
Chris

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Re: Westerns

Post by pvitari »

I've been watching a whole herd of Tim Holt's RKO westerns, thanks to the Warner Archive, which has released 20 of them (half of total B-westerns Holt made RKO) in two collections, the Tim Holt Western Classics Collection, vols. 1 and 2. Hopefully the rest are on the way soon.

For fans of b-westerns, these are really tip-top entertainment, as Holt was able to insist on and get, especially in his post-war movies,* the best RKO could afford for a b-western -- terrific supporting actors (YMMV with Richard Martin, Holt's post-war sidekick, as the half-Mexican, half-Irish "Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamonte Rafferty"), great sets with excellent set decoration, superior direction especially from Lesley Selander, and equally good cinematography. Some of his films were photographed by Nick Musuraca, who shot a lot a movies whose titles you'd recognize today, like Out of the Past, and I Remember Mama, for which he received an Oscar nomination. I especially enjoyed the second to last movie in the second set, The Mysterious Desperado, on which Musuraca was D.P. It has some of the loveliest day for night shooting I've ever seen, with misty snow-capped mountains -- it was shot in Lone Pine -- seeming to float off into the mid-toned gray sky... beautiful... and shadowy lighting in shots set a dark house that look like they belong in a noir. As soon as my screencapping program is updated (I've been waiting for over a month!) I plan to make some screencaps from this movie.

Holt himself is a wonderful cowpoke (or lawman, or whatever occupation he has in these various westerns). He grew up riding horses and even won a school award for horsemanship when he was a teenager. There was one scene (I forget which movie) in which with dancer-like grace he leaped into the saddle and only after he was on the saddle did he slide his foot into the stirrup. I had to rewind that one a few time just to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. The plots of Holt's movies were pretty formulaic -- he usually played a cowboy or small rancher or a lawman -- a stand-up kind of a guy, who would find himself (reluctantly, if he was not a lawman character), fighting some bad guys for control of a ranch or a town. Very often he was would be set up or for some reason be thought guilty of a robbery or murder and end up in jail, and then would escape so he could find the real bad guy and prove his innocence. He was such a good and sincere actor that no matter how repetitive the story might be, I always felt involved watching each one. On top of that, he had a sense of humor, with a smile often playing on his lips at the silliness of his sidekicks or the indignation of a leading lady. I sometimes get the impression that Holt's characters find the world just a tad absurd and he is amused the ridiculousness of it all, no matter how much hot water he's in after being mistaken for a bad guy and thrown into jail -- sometimes it even gets as far as being put on trial.

One thing I especially like about these movies is that even though they're all short (about an hour), they give a fair amount of time to the villain characters, and in many of the movies they seem not just stereotypes but real people whose greed or desire for power, etc., seem to have genuine human motivations. In one movie, two of the baddies were a couple very much in love who robbed to get money so they could run off together and I almost found myself wishing they'd get away with it.

Holt rarely got the leading lady in his b-westerns. There'd be a hint of romance and usually the movie would end with him moving on or promising to come back. I was really surprised when one ended with him kissing the lead actress and deciding to stay. :)

Holt's dad was silent film star Jack Holt and Tim himself first acted in one of his father's movies when he was 10. By his late teens he had embarked on a career of his own and immediately was a stand-out for his handsome boyish looks and acting talent. He made a number of A films -- Stellas Dallas, Stagecoach, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and a few others -- but somehow always ended up coming back to his western series rather than pursuing the more distinguished projects.

Holt retired from movies in 1952, at the ripe old age of 33, because the b-western was fading out and the movie industry had changed in a lot of ways he didn't like. Much as he liked making movies, it was never a consuming passion with him -- he had grown up in the industry and it held no glamour for him. His third wife, Berdee, was from Oklahoma, and he moved to Harrah, OK with Berdee and their children. He was a partner in a rodeo and spent a lot of time touring with the rodeo and making personal appearances. He made only a few movie appearances after that, usually as a favor for someone, like that 1957 "classic" The Monster That Challenged the World. ;) He did appear on a Virginian episode. His last job was managing a country-western music radio station. Sadly, he died prematurely in 1973 at the age of 53 from bone cancer. :( A fine actor and by all accounts, a fine man, gone too soon.

Holt's sister Jennifer Holt was an actress and was the leading lady in a lot of b-westerns in the 1940s.

*While Holt was off at war (he was a pilot and received a Purple Heart for a wound he suffered in Japan on literally the last day of the war), RKO looked around for a new b-western hero and plucked from the ranks of supporting players a young fellow named Robert Mitchum. His first western lead was an oater called Nevada, and he was doubled by another young fellow named Ben Johnson (who also worked as an extra on the movie and can be seen very clearly standing behind a croupier in a saloon scene). Mitchum was paired up with Holt's usual sidekick Richard Martin, as well as Guinn "Big Boy" Williams. But he had no intention of staying a b-western star and as soon as he could got himself into more prestigious films like The Story of G.I. Joe and Out of the Past, which put him quickly on the road to A-list status.
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Re: Westerns

Post by RedRiver »

While searching for something else, I came upon this comment by Moira Finnie, about director Jack Arnold's MAN IN THE SHADOW.

Arnold was sort of interesting too since he used to take exploitation movies with prosaic scripts and found a way to give them an appealing cheesiness, as he did in The Creature from the Black Lagoon or he found a way to give a genre picture an unexpected dimension, as he did in the surprisingly haunting The Incredible Shrinking Man.

As some of you know, I'm required by law to comment on THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN at any opportunity. It's a condition of my parole. This sensitive, literate fantasy is seriously one of my favorite movies. I haven't seen MAN IN THE SHADOW. It sounds like yet another treat from out of nowhere by this talented director of B features.

Arnold was no stranger to the "saddle and six-shooter" genre. His NO NAME ON THE BULLET, an Audie Murphy vehicle, is quiet and ironic. It's a story that could be set any time, anywhere. It just happens to be in the old west. The director made some B minus films. His overall record is lacking. But he adapted Bradbury's IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, another thought provoking tale. And TARANTULA is one of the better "big bug" movies. The special effects are terrible. But that's not what Jack Arnold was about.

I'm simply amazed at the number of classic era films I've never even heard of. I'd love to see MAN IN THE SHADOW. I'm pretty sure I'd like it. As would my parole officer.
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Re: Westerns

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I do recommend you see Man in the Shadow, Red. It feels rather ahead of its time, dealing with racism as well as power run amok. It's set in contemorary times, so it's not a typical western but it could have taken place anytime, anywhere. I don't think anyone rides a horse, only pick-ups and patrol cars. :D
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Re: Westerns

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Did anyone see Star in the Dust a few days ago on Encore? I enjoyed it quite a lot, at least for the cast if not the plot. It was made in 1956 by a director named Charles Hass whose name I was not familiar with. Looking up his filmography, it looks like he did mostly TV work. It felt like a slightly above-average TV production, with enough style not to feel totally nondescript. John Agar is the hero, the town Sheriff who seems to have inherited the job from his father, who apparently died (no explanation) but is still held in regard by the town. It seems Agar has to prove he can handle the job and from the start of the movie his main problem is how to get a man convicted of murder legally hung and not lynched by the farmer faction or sprung loose by the ranching faction that hired his gun in the first place. The inmate is "Sam Hall", played by Richard Boone, the baddie we now know so well but making him even more eerily familiar is the fact that's he's basically presenting us perhaps for the first time with his future successful television character, "Paladin", from Have Gun, Will Travel (which would debut a year later and might already have been in production when this movie was made), and transposed him into a killer. Decked out in the same all-black duds, quoting Shakespeare and even charging his standard $1,000 fee---only in this movie the fee is to kill anyone, not necessarily the bad guys.

Boone is incarcerated almost 90% of the time so he doesn't get to do much and since we never see him do the killing he was convicted of, or any other real mayhem except an attempt to break, we don't ever really feel compelled to see him as evil. The real villain is the man who hired him, whose identity is being held secret unless the cattlemen fail to get Hall out of town before the hanging. Mostly Hall looks on at things, wryly amused at all the hullabaloo swirling around him.

Agar is pretty much the same as he is in all his movies, not much personality or emotion. His deputy is the always reliable Paul Fix and he's assisted by another would-be deputy in James Gleason. There's some funny business between the two old "codgers". The set-up with the prisoner and the deputies put me a little in mind of Hawks' Rio Bravo which would be made a few years later.

There are three principal female characters; one, which is Agar's love interest and a sister to the leading cattle rancher (Leif Erickson) is played by 50s bombshell Mamie Van Doren who isn't as bad as she might have been, she's rather sweet actually, kind of similar to Marilyn in River of No Return, if not quite as interesting. More interesting are Colleen Grey who is in love with Richard Boone and Randy Stuart who plays the wife of one of the farmers (Harry Morgan) and who has a secret connection with Van Doren's brother. These two ladies have opposing but passionate interests in the fate of Boone's character, a situation which I don't think Agar ever even becomes aware of (he's fairly clueless about a lot of things, going about his business more doggedly and out of a kind of bullheadedness than shrewdness...thank goodness for his deputies and the ladies who basically save his hide).

Commenting throughout the movie on all the characters and doings, is a fellow who sits under a tree strumming his guitar and singing lyrics he makes up off the cuff, ending each refrain as Sam Hall blowing everyone off with "blast your eyes". He seems sympathetic to poor old Sam and to think most of the others are fools. It's kind of strange and the singing is sometimes intrusive, rather like the whistling music in The Proud Ones. But it gives the movie a certain quirkyness.

The ending is kind of predictable but all in all I enjoyed it, especially seeing "Paladin" had he gone to the dark side...kind of like Darth Vader.
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Re: Westerns

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Hell Bent For Leather stars Audie Murphy as a man on the run as he is mistaken for an outlaw he had a run in with trying to help him. The quirk here is (and you find out ten minutes into the film) the Marshall who is after him knows he is not the man that he really is hunting. But he is the only one in the posse that knows it.

Murphy kidnaps an unwilling Felicia Farr who, as it turns out, knows well the territory they are hiding in. Along the way she comes to believe Murphy's story and tries to help him. Murphy pulls double duty in that while he is running from the posse he is trying to find the guy that bushwacked him.

Gorgeous scenery in the Alabama Hills fills most of the screen time. Murphy is his usual fine self. Farr is lovely and does well though I imagine any of the ladies of the day would have been fine. Stephan McNally turns in another good performance as the Marshall who is more concerned with a reputation then the law he is supposed to represent.

Clocking in at about 80 minutes it's a good "B" level western. It's nothing deep but is entertaining. (Streaming on Netflix.) Look for small roles by western "B" stars Bob Steele and Alan "Rocky" Lane.
Chris

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Re: Westerns

Post by RedRiver »

Hitchcock on horseback! Innocent man evades authorities while pursuing the real culprit.
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Re: Westerns

Post by movieman1957 »

Excellent summary.
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Re: Westerns

Post by Richard--W »

pvitari wrote:I've been watching a whole herd of Tim Holt's RKO westerns, thanks to the Warner Archive, which has released 20 of them (half of total B-westerns Holt made RKO) in two collections, the Tim Holt Western Classics Collection, vols. 1 and 2. Hopefully the rest are on the way soon.
...
I've been thinking about buying these two box-sets, so I appreciate your detailed review.

Were Holt's programmers period westerns? I mean, did they mix horses with cars and telephones like Autry and Rogers did?

The third box-set was released November 1st.

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Re: Westerns

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The Divine Miss G suggested I watch "The Last Sunset." I didn't care for it much (which she pegged.) It was an odd film. Weird love triangle involves Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas and Dorothy Malone. Throw in Malone's daughter for a kicker and you have weird things happen. It's long and, at times, slow and it's involved. Men who are ready to get after each other all acting like boys when they are after the sexy provocative Dorothy Malone. Then it goes off from there.

Moira said it so much better than I can -

I am inexplicably partial to Kirk's broth of a cowboy, the rascally Brendan O'Malley, whose extraordinarily tight jeans and oily snake charmer manner livens up the often unintentionally amusing Western, The Last Sunset (1961). Directed by Robert Aldrich in a straightforward style, the movie should've been better with Kirk, Rock Hudson, Joseph Cotten and recent Academy Award winner for best scenery chewing, Dorothy Malone, in the cast. (Even though Dot seems to still be playing her outlandish character from Written on the Wind and warming up for her seething widder woman in tv's Peyton Place). Not any of the actors faults ultimately, but the script (by Dalton Trumbo, yet) was a doozey, filled with lots of people speaking their piece, exchanging meaningful glances, hidden motives and generally displaying very poor communication skills among the adults, though teenage Carol Lynley was pretty believable as a girl with ideas...about the wrong guy. (Copied from another forum here.)

It's puzzling at points and some continuity problems near the end caught my attention. Not one of my favorites but am happy to see a new western. Thanks April.
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Re: Westerns

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"The Texans" is a 1938 Paramount production where a baby faced Randolph Scott and a blonde Joan Bennett play two who have differing opinions on post Civil War Texas and what they should be doing. Scott wants to move on to unite the country and Bennett, along with boyfriend Robert Cummings, are determined to keep the war going - never mind the surrender.

Episodic and a bit slow at first it picks up steam and has some fine action scenes later on. Fine support from Walter Brennan and May Robson it is a film that really wants to be a BIG picture but I don't think it quite pulls it off.
Chris

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