God's Wrath

The second of the Robert Mitchum movies airing today that I wanted to do a blog post about is The Wrath of God, which concludes the afternoon at 6:00 PM.

It's sometime in the early 1920s in a Latin American country that, as far as I can tell, is not actually named. There's a revolution going on, and the local authorities are about to execute a couple of people by firing squad. But before they can do that, American priest Fr. Van Horne (Robert Mitchum) shows up, insisting that he be allowed to give the condemned men their last rights. In fact, he's in the middle of doing just that when the firing squad shoots.

He's not the only Anglo in town, however. There's also Emmet Keogh (Ken Hutchinson), who's looking for transport north to get out of the country, and even has his train ticket. But Jennings (Victor Buono), the third Anglo in our story, is an asshole who has somebody steal Keogh's tickets and passport so that Keogh won't be able to leave the country and instead be forced to do a job running bootleg liquor for Jennings.

Keogh and Fr. Van Horne meet up out on their way out of town, with Jennings eventually showing up where the alcohol is supposed to be delivred. Instead, there are a bunch of soldiers raping native girl Chela (Paula Pritchett), having killed the person who is supposed to receive the alcohol. It's here we learn that Fr. Van Horne is not quite what he seems, as his carpet bag has a machine gun in it that he uses to kill the soldiers and save the girl! (No mention is made of where they keep getting ammo.)

Eventually, the leader of the revolutionaries, Col. Santilla (John Colicos), finds out about this and starts chasing the three Anglos, capturing them and putting them before the firing squad. Except that this time, the firing squad doesn't actually have any bullets in the gun when they fire. (It's a good thing Alec Baldwin wasn't on the firing squad.) That's because Santilla needs a couple of non-Hispanics for an operation. It's totally voluntary of course, in that if they don't want to do it Santilla will be happy to have them executed.

Brutal "dictator" De La Plata (Frank Langella) rules in a town about 40 miles away. But there's only one road into town, and that's guarded by a mountain pass so none of Santilla's men can get through. (The town also doesn't look like much of a capital city.) However, foreign white guys could get through. The town has a mine that's petered out, so Jennings will play the part of an investor, with Keogh being a "mining engineer" there to inspect the mine. Fr. Van Horne will go up to town ostensibly to replace the previous parish priest, but really to kill De La Plata. Of course, there's a catch. De La Plata hates the Catholic Church, and will happily have any priest celebrating Mass executed.

Still, since the men don't have much realist choice they undertake the mission. De La Plata lives with his widowed mother (Rita Hayworth, who was already in the early stages of Alzheimer's although nobody knew it at the time), who doesn't care for her son's anti-clerical nature although she doesn't have much power. The locals don't care for De La Plata, but they don't want to be seen as helping the priest because they know what De La Plata has done to the last several priests. And Keogh, having saved Chela, finds out that her father has betrothed Chela to him.

The Wrath of God is one of those movies that I probably ought to rate higher than I'm going to, but then, I couldn't help but think about the problems with the movie as I was watching it. First was the fact that the Victor Buono character was such a jerk that it was hard to have any sympathy for him. And then there was the plethora of plot holes. Still, Robert Mitchum seems like he's enjoying himself, and people who want action movies with just a touch of humor will probably enjoy it as well.