Nicholas Ray's dud

A lot of professional movie critic and film historian types like to praise a director like Nicholas Ray for being a bit of a maverick and doing things that challenged Hollywood and American middle-class society, as in movies like Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger than Life. But even directors like Ray weren't immune from making absolute duds, as you can see if you watch a movie like Hot Blood.

Luther Adler plays Marco Torino, the head of a branch of Roma or Gypsies (the word used since in the 1950s mainstream society would never have used the word "Roma") that emigrated to the US a couple of generations ago but is still trying to keep the cultural norms they had back in Europe. Marco is getting old and has the feeling that he may be dying, so it's time to find a new chief, meaning his kid brother Stephano (Cornel Wilde). And with a new king there's a need for a new king. Stephano kind of likes Velma (Helen Westcott), but there are political implications of the same sort that would have faced the traditional royalty of Europe in centuries past.

In steps the Caldash family, Dad Theodore (Joseph Calleia) has a daughter of marriageable age, Annie (Jane Russell). But what Marco doesn't know is that Theodore is a bit of a con artist. He's been going around the US offering his daughter's hand in marriage, only to faint during the ceremony at some point after the dowry has been paid but before the marriage is official, allowing him to flee the jurisdiction with the money and take the shtick to another city. Their plan is to trick Marco out of a couple thousand dollars, which was a fairly tidy sum in the mid-1950s.

What Theodore doesn't know is that Annie has plans of her own. She tells Stephano about the ruse, figuring this will make him go along with the wedding since he doesn't really want to marry her. But she decides to go through with the wedding for real, never fainting during the ceremony. Stephano is none too happy about having been tricked.

Annie, however, is willing to be married for real and wants Stephano to reciprocate, and when he still doesn't, there's a whole lot of bickering between the two that results in Annie threatening to divorce Stephano in front of the entire Gypsy council. Will the two live happily ever after? Is Marco dying at all?

Hot Blood feels like the sort of movie that could have come from a novel that was really set in the old country and had the action moved to modern-day America for no good reason, resulting in a script that seems utterly unrealistic, even more than something like The Rose Tattoo. It also doesn't help that Russell and Wilde are both badly miscast as Gypsies. Beyond that, I can't figure out what everybody was thinking making this movie.

Hot Blood is currently available on TubiTV and, since it was released on Columbia, may show up on The Roku Channel's Cinevault Classics that seems to be the service with all the old Columbia movies. But The Roku Channel doesn't release schedules in advance, so you'd have to stumble onto this one through pure dumb luck (or dumb bad luck).