Moon Under the Blood

I mentioned last week that Robert Mitchum is the TCM Star of the Month for January 2024. I happened to have one of his movies that I hadn't seen before on my DVR, and that movie is now on the TCM schedule: Blood on the Moon, early tomorrow at 3:30 AM Jan. 10 (or overnight tonight if you prefer to look at it that way).

The movie opens with Mitchum as a lone man on his horse riding somewhere through the old west. It's raining quite hard and getting dark, so the man sets up a makeshift camp for the night. However, not long after that, he hears sounds which he realizes are those of a cattle stampede. He climbs a tree for safety before the cattle come through, destroying his camp. And when the man who owns the heard shows up, he's none too pleased. That man is John Lufton (Tom Tully), who seems to own the entire region, or at least that part of the region that's not part of the Ute reservation. The interloper (Mitchum's character) is Jim Garry, who had been a cattle driver down in Texas before he lost his own herd.

This is one of those regions where homesteaders are beginning to show up, and Lufton is not pleased about that either. He offers Jim a choice, which is either to work for him or to leave the region. No joining in with the homesteaders. When Jim chooses to keep drifting, Lufton gives him a note and asks him to take it to his home in the valley. But before Jim can get to the Lufton spread, he's accosted by a gunman. Well, actually, a gunwoman, who turns out to be Lufton's daughter Amy (Barbara Bel Geddes). Amy is hot-headed, but has an older sister Carol (Phyllis Thaxter) who seems to be more level-headed.

Jim rides on into town, where he learn that he's not exactly a drifter. He had an old friend in the cattle driving business, Tate Riling (Robert Preston), who wrote him to come because he had a business proposition for Jim. Ostensibly, Tate wants Jim to help out the homesteaders, salt of the earth people like Kris Barden (Walter Brennan). To do this involves taking Lufton down a peg, which Jim can do by helping force Lufton to sell his herd. Tate has been working with the local Indian agent, Pindalest, to get Lufton's cattle off the reservation.

Now, Tate and Pindalest are going to play hardball. Pindalest has the power to declare it illegal for Lufton to have his cattle on the reservation, and use the military to get rid of the cattle if necessary. Riling also wants to manipulate the homesteaders into preventing Lufton from driving his cattle off the reservation. That would in theory force Lufton to sell the cattle at an artificially low price. But Lufton hates Riling, and would never sell to Riling. That's where Jim comes in. Lufton might well sell to Jim, who would then resell to the US government as represented by Pindalest, with the three of them pocketing the profits.

Once Jim learns the full extent of what's going on, he's horrified. This is complicated by the fact that Amy eventually starts falling in love with Jim after he informs her of what's going on and his possible willingness to side with Lufton. But can Jim get anybody to trust him?

Blood on the Moon is the sort of more complicated western that was beginning to show up in the years after World War II, and part of that is having someone not normally thought of as a direcor of westerns behind the camera: Robert Wise. Wise takes this complex and grown-up story and does quite a good job with it, helped by the fact that he and star Mitchum were both able to handle the noir-adjacent elements of the story. The supporting cast also mostly does a good job, although I have to say Walter Brennan isn't a particular favorite of mine. He's nowhere near as obnoxious here as he is in some other movies, however.

If you want a movie that's both intelligent and has action, you could do a lot worse than to watch Blood on the Moon.