The Stalking Moon

I think I'm down to the last of the movies I recorded last July when Eva Marie Saint was TCM's Star of the Month for her centenary. By the time this movie is posted here, it will have expired from my DVR, but I'm getting rather farther ahead of myself than I expected to. At any rate, the movie in question is a western I hadn't heard of before last July, The Stalking Moon.

Gregory Peck stars as Sam Varner, a scout working for the US Army cavalry circa 1880, when a fair portion of the western US was still just territories, and various Indian tribes were still pretty darn violent. Sam is close to the age where he can get his army pension, and has been saving up to buy some farmland over in the New Mexico Territory. His current mission, which should be his final one before getting that pension, is to help round up some Apaches who have wandered off the reservation and need to be brought back to the reservation.

Sam and the cavalry find the Apaches, but there's a catch. There's a white woman among them, one who was clearly kidnapped by the Apaches some time back. The best everyone can remember is that there was such a kidnapping a decade ago, and the woman still remembers English well enough to inform the men that her name is Sarah Carver (that's Eva Marie Saint), which would fit with that previous kidnapping. However, she also has a mixed-race child with her, which is an obvious ethical dilemma. One would guess that this child is the product of rape, so who gets custody of the child presuming Sarah doesn't want to be with the Apaches any longer. However, the kid is innocent, and doesn't really speak any English.

This being a Hollywood movie of the late 1960s, however, such niceties are ignored, and it's naturally assumed that since possession is nine-tenths of the law, and Sarah has the child with her, the child is going to go along with Sarah away from the Apaches. The plan is to put Sarah and the kid on a coach to the nearest train station, which will take them east. But while waiting for the coach, the kid goes running off, and when Sam and Sarah find him and bring him back to the stagecoach station, they find that the staff at the station have been murdered.

It stands to reason that the killer is the child's father, Salvaje, who not unreasonably wants the boy back. Since it wouldn't really be safe to take Sarah and the boy to the train station as that's where Salvaje would be looking, Sam decides to offer Sarah the chance to stay at his place over in New Mexico. He could use someone domestic around, and in theory New Mexico should be far enough away that Salvaje won't find them. Yeah right on that second part. As you might guess, people start getting killed in the vicinity of Sam's place.

The Stalking Moon is a well-enough made movie, and it's got a lot of nice cinematography. But it didn't feel to me like it was doing anything new. Fans of westerns will probably enjoy the movie, and it's certainly not bad. But I feel like if I were asked to recommend westerns to people not that into the genre, there's other more original stuff that I'd recommend first. I would never say that The Stalking Moon isn't worth watching. It's entertaining enough. It's just that there's more out there that's better.