The Badlanders

TCM ran a spotlight on remakes back in December, and one of the pairs that they ran was The Asphalt Jungle together with its western remake of sorts, The Badlanders. The movie is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so I recorded it and sat down to watch.

The setting is the Arizona Territory in 1898. We start off at the federal prison there, and meet a pair of prisoners who are about to be released: Peter Van Hoek, known as the "Dutchman" (Alan Ladd), and John McBain (Ernest Borgnine). The two prisoners have no particular friendship for each other, as we see when the hotheaded McCain nearly comes to blows with one of the prison guards over the guard's brutal treatment of a third prisoner -- the Dutchman stops McBain from hitting the guard, but doing so with violence.

The Dutchman, after being released, heads for his old stomping grounds in Prescott, where he had worked as a metallurgist at a gold mine. He was cheated out of his share of gold and framed for arrest when a gold bar was put in his hotel room, so he wants revenge. The marshal knows about the Dutchman's past, and is only going to let him stay in town long enough to catch the next stage out.

The Dutchman's revenge plan involves the fact that he knows where an untapped and very good gold deposit is in the mine. It's down a shaft that's been closed off because it's too dangerous to exploit. So he plans to exploit it and make a big killing. The only problem is that he's going to need somebody to smelt the gold, so he's going to have to go in with somebody else on this deal. That somebody is smelter owner Lounsberry (Kent Smith), who has a mistress in the form of lovely Ada (Claire Kelly).

But the Dutchman isn't the only one with a connection to Prescott, and a desire for revenge. McBain was a rancher who owned the land under which the gold deposits were located, and he had the land stolen right out from under him; his first attempt at revenge is what landed him in jail. So he'd like revenge too, as well as getting back together with his wife of sorts Anita (Katy Jurado). The Dutchman approaches Mac for help in the revenge plot, and is kind of appalled at robbing what he thinks is technically his own property. But there's not much else he can do, and he can use the money, so he joins in.

Also joining in is explosives expert Vincente (Nehemiah Persoff), a Mexican who's been subject to some bigotry as have most of the Mexicans in town. The three are going to have to work according to a strict schedule, since they've only got one day on which they can pull off the heist, and there are the legitimate miners working a section of the mine that's not too far from where the passageways in the abandoned shaft are located.

If you know that The Badlanders is a remake of The Asphalt Jungle (both are actually based on a story by W.R. Burnett), it's easy to spot some of the similarities. But there's also a lot different. The plot has been pared down, since this one runs almost a half hour shorter than the original. In some ways that's to the detriment of our film, since parts of the movie feel rather rushed. There are also some differences in the ultimate fates of certain characters that I found quite interesting but that I'm not going to give away.

On the whole, if you didn't know about the relationship between The Badlanders and The Asphalt Jungle, you'd probably find The Badlanders to be a nice way to spend 80 minutes on a rainy day. The story, with its differences, still works, and the performances are more than adequate. But of the two movies, you'd definitely want to see The Asphalt Jungle first, since it's a great movie while The Badlanders is merely good.