La bataille de San Sebastian

Next up among the movies that's been sitting on my DVR waiting for me either to get around to watching it just before it expired or for the next TCM showing is Guns for San Sebastian. This time, that means another TCM airing, tomorrow, May 13, at 11:00 AM.

The movie has some opening intertitles that imply this is based on real history, but as far a I can tell it isn't. In Mexico in the 1740s, the Spanish still hold the place as one of their many colonies in Latin America, although there a lot of rebellious sorts among both the native peoples and those of mixed race. Leon Alastray (Anthony Quinn) is one of those mixed-race people, and as the movie opens he's been chased into some village after having been shot. But he's been fortunate enough to make into the church of parish priest Fr. Joseph (Sam Jaffe), who's enough of a radical that he's not going to give Leon over to the government. Fr. Joseph, for his secular sins against the state, is given the assignemnt of going to the God-forsaken middle of nowhere village of San Sebastian to find out what happened to that parish's previous priest.

But, Fr. Joseph is able to hide Leon out under the cart he's taking to the village. Or at least intends to, since getting to the village involves crossing a stretch of desert. Eventually, the two men do make it to San Sebastian, where the find that the church is crumbling and there don't seem to be any inhabitants left. Fr. Joseph, pious man that he is, starts ringing the bell anyway to summon any Christians who may be in the area. Except that what it summons is not a Christian, or at least not one that's coming to pray. Instead, a bandit fatally shoots Fr. Joseph.

There were villagers at one point, and in some way still are, as they eventually come out of their hiding up in the hills. The mestizos as well as the local Yaqui tribe have been engaging in predatory raids on the land in part because the locals have good grain stores and in part because the Yaqui want what they see as their land back. Every time there's a raid, the locals flee to the hills. This time, however, due to a series of misunderstandings, the locals see Leon, think he's the new priest, and think that there's been a miracle performed. So their intention is to stay in town, with Leon as their new parish priest even though Leon really doubts the existence of god. He just happens to have been bequeathed Fr. Joseph's cassock.

Leading the mestizo raiders is Teclo (Charles Bronson), who is at times in league with Yaqui leader Golden Lance (Jaime Fernández) and at times wokrking with just the other mestizos. In any case, they're enough of a threat that Leon is determined to tell the local to stop being such cowards for god's sake and start fighting back! They do so first by rebuilding their dam, and then petitioning the colonial governor to send arms so they can fight the Yaqui and Teclo themselves. Along the way, Leon falls for one of the locals, Kinita (Anjanette Comer), although this is a problem considering that he's supposed to be a Catholic priest and priests are, after all, supposed to be celibate.

The locals try to make peace with the Yaqui, but Teclo doesn't want to see that happen, so he scuppers things leading to the final showdown. Of course, there's still also the issue that Leon himself is supposed to be an outlaw still....

Guns for San Sebastian is another of those international co-productions that for me always seem to be a bit of a problem because the required dubbing in post-production always feels a bit artificial. The visuals are nice and the story is pretty good, although it does drag a bit. The movie could probably have been 90 to 95 minutes instead of the 110 that we get. Still, it's not a bad movie and definitely worth watching at least once.

Run of the Arrow

In addition to foreign films, I feel like I've got a somewhat disproportionate number of westerns sitting on my DVR waiting for me to watch and review them before they expire. One of those movies that I hadn't heard of before the last time it showed up on TCM was Run of the Arrow.

The movie opens with something that's a looming theme in quite a few Hollywood westerns, the US Civil War. Specifically, the movie informs us it's the last day of the war. Virginian O'Meara (Rod Steiger) shoots Union Army lieutenant Driscoll (Ralph Meeker), although Driscoll survives. O'Meara takes Driscoll to where General Lee is, although he learns that Lee is in the process of surrendering, thereby ending the war. O'Meara had been a farmer on one of those hardscrabble farms, so on returning home to his mother, there's not much of a life for such a defeated Confederate soldier to return home to. There's that frontier out west, of course, where a man can start life fresh, so O'Meara decides he's going to do just that.

Some time later, in a part of the west that still has more natives than Americans, O'Meara meets one of the natives, an elderly and dying Sioux, Walking Coyote (Jay C. Flippen, yes, playing a native American). The two, however, meet a band from a different sub-tribe of the Sioux, who threaten to kill the two men. Walking Coyote, being Sioux, knows the "Run of the Arrow", which involves running a gauntlet of men trying to shoot arrows at you. If you survive the gauntlet, you're basically free, or some such.

O'Meara survives and winds up with yet another sub-tribe of the Sioux, the Lakota, headed by Blue Buffalo (Charles Bronson). O'Meara falls in love with one of the women who tends to the wounds, and decides he wants to become a member of the tribe, largely because the Lakota also understand that the Americans are moving west and destroying another people's way of life much the same way that O'Meara thinks the northerners destroyed the southern way of life in the recently ended civil war.

Soon enough, the Americans do come, in the form of Capt. Clark (Brian Keith) and his cavalry who have been given the task of finding a suitable location to build their new fort. The Sioux have negotiated that it be built on land that's going to interfere less with their traditional hunting grounds, and give O'Meara the job of playing scout to the cavalry since he's got such a good command of English. And wouldn't you know it, but serving under Capt. Clark is... Lt. Driscoll!

O'Meara sees all of this as his chance to get back at the Americans for what they did to Virginia, while there are also a lot of US Army men who don't care for the Indians. As is usually the case in these movies, the treaty gets violated, and there's a decisive battle between the US Army and the Indians.

Run of the Arrow was made at RKO near the end of the studio's existence, so it has the feel of a movie that doesn't really have the budget it should have had. (At least the print TCM ran is much better looking than the one they run for Glory which is from a similar point in RKO's death throes.) The movie has an interesting premise, although it feels to me like it suffers from quite a bit of implausibility. Then again, it was directed by Sam Fuller, so one should expect it to rebel against the traditional constraints of Hollywood's view of what America should become: the idea of O'Meara's redemption feels like it's a metaphor for the post-Red Scare era of the 1950s.

Ultimately, while I find Run of the Arrow a bit uneven, I think it's got more pluses than minuses.

Charles Bronson and Marisa Pavan, American Indians

Some time back, I recorded a block, or at least a double feature, of Alan Ladd movies. I already did a review of The Deep Six; the other movie that I recorded was Drum Beat. Once again, having watched it, I can now do the requisite post on it.

The movie is based on a real historical event, the Modoc War of the early 1870s between the Modoc Tribe and the US. The Modoc, like a lot of tribes, had been put on reservations not always on their traditional lands, with the result that some tribal members were unhappy and resorted to violence. The Modoc were originally in northern California but moved north to Oregon, and by 1872 some dissidents were resorting to violence.

Against that background, an Indian fighter named Johnny MacKay (Alan Ladd) is summoned to Washington by President Grant to discuss the issue and what can be done. Johnny's job will be to go back west and renounce violence in the effort to bring peace between the Modoc and white man and subdue those members of the tribe who don't like the status quo. Also heading west is Nancy Meek (Audrey Dalton), whose uncle had fought on the frontier and decided to retire there. Unfortunately, they don't make it to Oregon without incident, as the stagecoach is attacked, and Nancy discovers that there's been an ambush on her uncle's farm with her uncle and aunt having been killed.

The man responsible for all of this is a member of the Modoc calling himself Captain Jack (that's Charles Bronson), and he's a bright if violent man who knows how to use violence to keep the white man at bay. But, as mentioned earlier, there are some Modoc who are also willing to live in relative peace with the white man, or perhaps even in the white man's world and not just on a reservation. Among that latter group are Toby (Marisa Pavan) and her brother Manok, and they can function as a sort of go-between the Modoc and the whites.

Sadly, while there are Modoc dissidents who still want to fight, there are also white dissidents who see the violence from the Modoc and want revenge in the most severe way possible. This threatens to scupper the delicate peace negotiations between the US government, who really do want peace albeit with them in control, and the Modoc. When some whites do bollix things up, that's only bound to make Captain Jack more violent.

Of course, we know how history turned out, and that the Americans wound up victorious; after all, there's no Modoc country today. That requires the defeat of Captain Jack, and the rest of Drum Beat deals with how that happens.

Drum Beat is well enough made, although despite the disclaimer in the opening about how "Fictional incidents and characters have been introduced only where necessary to dramatize the truth", I wonder just how much of this follows the real history, and the extent to which it needed to. Alan Ladd and Charles Bronson both do well, although it is a bit difficult to believe Bronson as a member of the Modoc. It's even more difficult to accept Marisa Pavan as a Native American.

Of course, back in the 1950s when Drum Beat was made, it was normal to cast not just white Anglo Americans in odd ethnicities, but foreigners as well, and everybody does the best they can. Drum Beat is ultimately entertaining enough, if not a particularly great movie.

The Magnificent Seven

We're halfway through August and up to the day honoring actor Charles Bronson. Surprisingly enough, I'd never actually sat down before and watched The Magnificent Seven end-to-end in one sitting, and certainly never done a post on it before, although I have posted about the Japanese movie of which it is a remake, Seven Samurai. So the last time The Magnificent Seven showed up on TCM, I recorded it in order to be able to do a post in conjunction with a future airing. That airing is tomorrow, August 16, at 12:45 PM.

I assume most people know the basic story, and that a lot of readers here have even seen the movie already. The action is moved from medieval Japan to 19th century Mexico, where a village in the middle of nowhere is being predated upon by bandit leader Calvera (Eli Wallach) and his substantial band of bandits. In this most recent raid, one of the villagers gets shot dead, which is the breaking point. They want to fight back, but they don't even have effective weapons. So they head north to the American border since guns are easier to get in the US, trading some of their few possessions for those guns.

When they get to the border town, they find a stalemate where the locals don't want to bury an Indian in their cemetery, so a couple of gunslingers drive the hearse past them, shooting those who actively resist. Those gunmen are Chris (Yul Brynner) and Vin (Steve McQueen). On hearing from the Mexicans, Chris realizes that the villagers would still be ill-equipped to defend themselves even if they had guns. That, combined with a sense of adventure, leads him to tell the villagers that he'll form a band of American gunslingers who will help the villagers defend themselves, even if the pay won't be good.

Over the next half-hour of the movie or so, we get set pieces introducing the rest of them Chris hires. Harry (Brad Dexter) assumes that Chris is only taking the job because there must be a gold or silver mine near the village, so he wants in; O'Reilly (Charles Bronson) needs the money, as does gambler Lee (Robert Vaughn). There's a knife expert, Britt (James Coburn) as well. Finally, there's the young hothead Chico (Horst Buchholz) who wants to be part of the group, only to not reach Chris' standards. But he's so determined, following the other six through Mexico, that eventually Chris does let him join.

When they reach the village they start to teach the villagers how to fight, even without guns, and prepare for Calvera's eventual return. Along the way, some of them start developing emotional bonds to the villagers, notably O'Reilly, who had a Mexican mother and Irish father. It's all leading up to the return of Calvera and his men for the final showdown.

The Magnificent Seven is a highly entertaining film, and it's easy to see why over the years it has gained a reputation as one of the iconic westerns. It's definitely worth watching if you haven't seen it before.

MGM makes a boxing movie

The next movie that I had on my DVR that's coming up soon on TCM is Tennessee Champ. That next airing is tomorrow, March 6, at 2:45 PM, so as always I watched it in order to be able to do a post on it here.

The nominal lead here, at least in terms of the actor getting the highest billing), is not the "Tennessee Champ" character, but a man named Willy Wurble (Keenan Wynn). As the movie opens up, he's in Vidalia, TN, playing fairly high-stakes poker. But just as he's about to win a big hand, violence breaks out, and Willy is forced to beat a hasty retreat in a rowboat across the river. He comes across another person affected by the violence, a man swimming in the river trying to get away named Daniel Norson (Dewey Martin). Daniel got in a fight with a man names Sixty Jubel and knocked the guy out, with Sixty hitting his head and dying in the fall, as Daniel tells Willy in the boat after Willy saves Daniel.

Willy's real job is as a boxing promoter, of a washed-up boxer named Happy (Earl Holliman). Happy is supposed to have a fight soon, but there's an issue with Happy's opponent. Willy gets an idea when Daniel runs into Willy and Happy in town the next day, which is to stage a fight between Happy and Daniel, even though Daniel knows nothing about Marquess of Queensbury-style boxing by the rules. Not even that Daniel knows much about fighting in general, to be honest. He's the son of a preacher man, and filled with the spirit of the God that pervades revival Christianity, which raises the question of how Daniel even got into that fight with Sixty in the first place.

But with the prospect of money coming in, Willy calls up his wife Sarah (Shelley Winters) and gets her to go on the road with him. This especially after Daniel knocks out Happy despite the staging supposed to be Happy letting the inexperienced Daniel hang around for several rounds before beating him. Sarah, meanwhile, realizes that Willy is back to his old ways of being dishonest with his boxers by not giving them a fair percentage of the take. Daniel, having won, gets christened the "Tennessee Champ", and vows to win enough money to be able to build a church of his own, since his real aim in life is to bring the spirit of the Lord that he feels to everybody else.

Not everyone is happy with this. Certainly not Willy, who sees his opportunity at a big payday about to go by the wayside. And not some of the other managers, who expect the fights to be more or less fixed. Daniel finds out that the fight game is fixed, and leaves, since he can't be dishonest. But there's still the question of getting the money to build a church. That, and Daniel's perceived need to atone for what happened to Sixty....

I mentioned MGM in the title of my post because Tennessee Champ is another of those movies where MGM could bring a lot of gloss to a subject, even when bringing that sort of gloss is exactly what this sort of movie doesn't need. Indeed, the whole religion angle turns the material into something that feels rather hokey. Plus, once again there's the question hanging over the story of how everything is going to be resolved in a way that satisfies the Production Code while also having a happy ending.

I do have to say, however, that Tennessee Champ isn't as bad as some of my comments above might lead you to believe. It's more something that could have been a lot better than it turns out being.

True Cross

One of those movies that I had seen show up here and there in the listings, but had never gotten around to watching, is Vera Cruz. It looks like Pluto TV has the rights to it among the streaming services, and when I noticed it was one one or another of their movie channels, I decided that I'd finally watch it so that I could do a review of it here.

The movie starts off by informing us that at the same time the US Civil War ended, Mexico was going through a war of its own. The French had sent Maximilian (George Macready) to be a puppet ruler of Mexico in France's interest, and needless to say the Mexican people mostly didn't like this. Benito Juárez (not seen here), led the revolt against Maximilian. More important, however, is that a modest number of Americans, especially those who had fought for the Confederacy, streamed southward into Mexico to make a new life for themselves or to try to make a fortune to regain what they had lost in the US Civil War....

One of thos men is Ben Trane (Gary Cooper), whose horse pulls up lame after the opening titles. Ben is going to have to destroy the horse and get a new one, and he arrives at a small place owned by another American who has multiple horses, Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster). Joe is a bit wary of strangers, even if they're fellow Americans, and you wonder whether Trane is going to be safe with Erin.

Eventually, the two, with a band of American mercenaries in tow, wind up meeting Maximilian and his solders, led by Marquis Henri (Cesar Romero). Maximilian has an important job for them. The Countess Marie (Denise Darcel) needs to get to the port of Veracruz and from there to France, presumably to rally the French in support of Maxilimian. But with Juárez's men all around, that's going to be difficult. So perhaps the Americans could form an armed escort to get Marie to Veracruz. Maximilian, of course, plans to have the Americans killed which would get a bunch of his problems out of the way.

But there's more to the convoy than just the countess, and both Trane and Erin figure out what that something is. The Countess' carriage seems to have a lower clearance than expected, and when they investigate, they realize that the carriage is carrying a whole bunch of gold. That money is going to be used to get more men and arms from Europe for the fight against Juárez. It also goes without saying that once Trane and Erin find that gold, they act like they'd want it for themselves, and not necessarily to share between the two of them.

But still, they're going to have to get to Veracruz so that they can abscond by boat with that gold. And the Juaristas are going to be chasing them all the way. Perhaps they'll kill the Americans before they can turn on each other....

Vera Cruz was made by Burt Lancaster's production company, so it's unsurprising that he gets the showy part. Of course, he was also in that earlier stage of his career where, in action movies like this, he'd really mug it up for the camera. Thankfully he doesn't have Nick Cravat with him this time to be even more obnoxious. But Lancaster comes across as less likable, and for me it wasn't just the way the script was written.

Vera Cruz was also filmed on location in Mexico, which is a big plus for the production; up to this point Hollywood westerns hadn't really been filmed south of the border even if they were set in Mexico. The motley crew of American mercenaries also gave some future stars fairly early roles, such as Ernest Borgnine and Charles Bronson (still credited here with his birth name Buchinsky).

All in all, Vera Cruz is a well-made western, and not a bad one, although there's a reason why it doesn't have the reputation that some of the other westerns of the era have.

The man who shot Charles Bronson

There's a classic line from the western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." I couldn't help but think that Charles Bronson might have had that line in mind when he was making the movie From Noon Till Three.

Bronson plays Graham Dorsey, a member of Buck Bowers' gang robbing banks in the old west. Graham has a premonition, however, that the next robbery isn't going to go well. Indeed, on the way to the next town Dorsey's horse breaks a leg forcing him to shoot it and forcing the gang to look for a new horse. They stop at the ranch of the wido Starbuck (Jill Ireland, who of course was Charles Bronson's wife in real life) who, amazingly enough, claims not to have a horse.

Dorsey decides to believe this, if only to get the other members of the gang off of him. This is both so that he doesn't have to go in on that robbery and so that he can have some time with Starbuck. Plus, he can claim to the other members of the gang to be holding her hostage so that she doesn't run off to the authorities. She's rather chaste now that her husband has died, and she's not so forthcoming about her past. Dorsey goes along with the ruse, eventually having a brief but passionate affair with the widow Starbuck while he's waiting for the rest of the gang to return.

Of course, they're never going to return, since the robbery goes bad and they get caught, with vigilante justice scheduling them to be hanged that very afternoon. Dorsey is actually OK with this, but Starbuck has romantic notions about Dorsey being loyal to his gang and trying to save them and she might just not love them if he doesn't go into town to free them. Dorsey eventually agrees, but this is another ruse: he intends to go off to the middle of nowhere and wait for the hanging to pass, with the plan to tell Starbuck that he was unsuccessful in freeing the rest of his gang. What a convenient solution.

Except things don't go that way. Dorsey comes across a posse, who must have been told about him by Bowers, so now he's going to have to try to escape. He's fortunate enough to run into one of those itinerant quack dentists, and forces the dentist at gunpoint to switch outfits with him. The posse then shoots the dentist, leaving Dorsey to ride free in the dentist's wagon and return to Starbuck.

However, when Dorsey asks for directions, the people recognize the wagon and bad suit, so have Dorsey arrested and ultimately sentenced to a year in prison for medical malpractice. Starbuck, meanwhile, has had to confront the townsfolk. She tells them such a fantastic story about those three hours that everybody is overcome with emotion and Starbuck becomes a national celebrity, telling her tragic story that's utterly made up in an early version of an "as told to" book that becomes a bestseller.

Dorsey gets out of prison and has the bright idea of returning to Starbuck, who will be thrilled to find that Dorsey is in fact still alive. Except that she's not thrilled. She's made money off that legend, and she's got ideas about what she wants Dorsey to be, not what Dorsey actually is. She's gone and printed the legend, and now she actually believes the legend. What's a man like Dorsey to do?

I really liked the second act of From Noon Till Three, as it took the basic idea behind The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and twisted it inside out, taking it in all sorts of odd directions that mostly work. It certainly helps that Bronson and Ireland, being married in real life, play off each other very well. The one problem with the movie, however, is how long it takes for the story to get to the fun, quirky second act. The payoff is quite good, but you certainly have to wait a while to get to the payoff. Liberty Valance solved the problem by having the story told in flashback, while that probably wouldn't work so well here because of the changes wrought in Bronson's character by becoming a legend.

Still, I would say that the payoff is worth the wait. And people who like 1970s westerns are probably going to have a lot less of a problem with the first half than I did. So From Noon Till Three is absolutely worth watching.

Mr. Majestyk

Of the various free streaming service, one thing that I really like about Pluto is the ability to go through the various movie channels and watch something that's already started from the beginning, in addition to whether or not it's available via on-demand. Their 70s movies channel has been running a title I had probably vaguely heard of, but certainly never seen before, Mr. Majestyk, so I eventually got around to having the TV on during one of the airings and rewinding it to the beginning to watch.

Vince Majestyk is a character played by Charles Bronson. He farms melons in what one would logically guess to be the Central Valley/Stockton part of California that was the filming location for quite a few movies, notably Fat City for the purposes of this post since the main characters spend some time becoming farm laborers in that one. However, the movie is actually set (and was filmed) in Colorado, which I wouldn't have associated with melon farmers, censorious puns not intended. Anyhow, Vince is looking for people to pick his melon crop, which has to be picked within days or else the melons will rot on the vines. He's perfectly willing to use Mexicans, since they're good and will work for less in spite of the work Cesar Chavez did to try to get them more. A couple of Anglo thugs don't want this, and try to intimidate Majestyk, ultimately calling the cops when they pull a gun and cause a scuffle.

The thing is, Majestyk has a criminal record and the thugs don't, and since he actually did shoot at the thugs' truck, he did technically commit a crime. It's off to jail for him, and that's serious because of that past criminal record. Majestyk just wants to get out on bail as quickly as possible so he can get back to getting that crop picked, which is all he really wants. But if you thought a Charles Bronson movie was going to be that sedate, you'd be very much wrong.

Also in jail with Majestyk is Frank Renda (Al Lettieri). He's a big time mobster who has enough money to be able to hire lawyers to get him off every time he's been arrested and/or brought to trial. Right now, he's in jail awaiting transfer to someplace with more security, and doesn't seem to like the idea of Majestyk just wanting to be left alone. Both of them along with several other prisoners are set to be transferred, but Renda has been able to hire a bunch of men who start a shootout with the police during the transfer attempt, leaving Renda and Majestyk alone on the prison bus.

Majestyk's plan is to turn Renda back over to the police in exchange for getting the charges against himself dropped. It doesn't take much to figure out that Renda has no plans of letting that happen, to the point of killing Majestyk if need be. Majestyk is actually able to escape Renda and head back to his farm, the police willing to use him as bait to lure Renda. They know that Renda has a terrible desire for revenge and will want to get Majestyk himself....

If you like the sort of action movie Charles Bronson made, you're really going to like Mr. Majestyk. It's not necessarily my favorite genre of movie, not that I dislike the genre. And I have to say that I decidedly enjoyed it. The setting is different enough that it allows for some off-balance plot turns. Bronson may not be the world's best actor, but he was just fine in the action movies he did. Al Lettieri is a very good villain and unfortunately died much too young about a year after this movie. Linda Cristal plays one of the Mexican farm workers who has some sympathy for Majestyk, sticking by him even though she knows the danger.

If you haven't seen Mr. Majestyk, definitely be on the lookout for it and give it a watch.

Breakheart Pass

I didn't really intend to do posts on multiple westerns in fairly quick succession, especially two with a gunrunning theme, but I happened to watch Breakheart Pass without really knowing what it was about.

It's the 1870s somewhere in the northern half of the Rockies, in an area where snow-covered mountains aren't uncommon. One of the army forts has suffered a breakout of one of those communicable diseases that were more common in the 1800s, so the fort is basically on quarantine until a special train can be put on to bring medicine to the fort. In addition to relief soldiers and the crew of the train, there's a private car on it which is owned by Fairchild (Richard Crenna), territorial governor. He's heading up to the fort with his fiancée Marica (Jill Ireland), because her father is the current commander of the fort.

The train stops at one of those small towns that populated western movies, where it picks up a few more passengers. One of them is Pearce (Ben Johnson), a US Marshal who is there for the obvious reason that the train and its supplies need to be protected. Also brought on the train is Deakin (Charles Bronson). He's the prisoner of Pearce, so you wonder why he'd be taken to the Fort as it doesn't really seem to be mentioned whether this is a through train. In any case, he's been on wanted posters that all of the other passengers have seen, so they immediately suspect anything he's been doing.

And they're going to have a lot to suspect Deakin of, when they find out that the doctor who is going to be treating the outbreak, Molyneux (David Huddleston), is found dead in what looks like a fairly obvious murder. Deakin seems to know way too much about medicine for his own good and starts to take over the investigation, which you'd think would set off alarm bells in the other passengers.

To be fair, it does set off those alarm bells, but not for the reason that a normal viewer would expect. In fact, as the movie develops, there are quite a few more murders, and all of the main characters turn out to be not quite what they seem. The train, as well, is not necessarily going to the fort in order to treat that outbreak. But who is committing the murders, and why?

Breakheart Pass is the sort of movie that feels a bit out of place and out of date. The idea of setting a murder mystery on board an old west train is a good one, but you feel like it would have been done already in the 1950s. That, or this is the sort of material that by the mid-1970s would make great material for the TV movies of the week when there were only the three networks and all-star TV movies were the rage. Now, none of this is to say that Breakheart Pass is in any way a bad movie. Instead, it's more that it's the sort of material that feels a bit pedestrian, like it's been done before. It does entertain and it also quite thankfully doesn't outstay its welcome.

There's also the lovely photography. The northern half of Idaho stands in for what I think was supposed to be Colorado, and for the most part the scenery is quite nice. As with Oh Mr. Porter, train buffs will probably enjoy the movie as well. Breakheart Pass certainly isn't an all-time classic, but it's also the sort of movie that nobody who made it has anything to be embarrassed about.

Out west with Frank Sinatra

Several months back, I had the chance to record 4 for Texas the last time it ran on TCM. It's back on the schedule, tomorrow at 3:00 PM, so recently I made a point of watching it to do a review here.

Dean Martin plays Joe Jarrett, who at the beginning of the movie is riding on a stagecoach with a railroad man who is carrying $100,000 in cash and gold that's in one of the bags that's part of the cargo. Of course, you know that the stagecoach is going to be attacked, and soon enough Zack Thomas (Frank Sinatra) comes, guns blazing. Thankfully, Joe is a pretty good shot himself, and is able to save himself, but not his fellow passenger or the coachmen.

However, there's another problem, which is that a third guy, Matson (Charles Bronson) has a group of men there for the robbery. It seems as though back in Galveston, where Zack is based, the banker that more or less runs the town, Harvey Burden (Victor Buono) has grown tired of working with Zack, and wants somebody to take him out. It's Burden's men who get killed in the gunfire, leaving Zack and Joe alone when the dust settles.

Joe is able to get the drop on Zack and get the money, heading off to Galveston, since he grew up in an orphanage there. However, he doesn't realize that Joe is going to be heading there, or the danger that Burden and Matson pose to him. Joe finds out that there's an old riverboat at one of the piers in the harbor, and he decides that he's going to refurbish the boat and turn it into a casino. That was also Zack's plan too.

Meanwhile, Zack has a long-suffering girlfriend in Elya (Anita Ekberg), while Joe is about to get one himself. He doesn't realize that one the riverboat for some reason that's not well explained is one Maxine Richter (Ursula Andress), who seems to have squatter's rights and so becomes a partner with Joe in fixing up the boat and making the casino a reality. But before they can do that, they're going to have to deal with Matson returning to town and trying to kill both Joe and Zack, who eventually have to team up.

4 For Texas has a lot of star power, but it's a movie that doesn't really work. I think part of it is that most of the cast, with the chief exception being Bronson, look like they don't fit at all in a western. The movie also doesn't get well from one part of the plot to the next, with the orphanage scene looking tacked on because those kids never really show up again. There's another tacked-on scene, involving the Three Stooges and a portrait of Maxine in the nude, that doesn't fit into the movie either.

All in all, I'll be glad to get 4 for Texas off my DVR and free up room for something else. But maybe you'll like it.

Riding Shotgun

Randolph Scott made a bunch of westerns in the second half of his career. I've got a couple of box sets of his westerns, but not too long back TCM ran a western that I hadn't seen yet, Riding Shotgun. So recently, I watched it to do a post on here.

Scott plays Larry Delong, who does the titular "riding shotgun", that is, riding next to the guy who's got the reins of the horses on a stagecoach, shotgun in hand, to watch for Indians or possible robbers. He's been working for a bunch of different stagecoach lines all over the west, in part because he's good, but more because he's looking for a criminal who harmed him some years ago, Dan Marady (James Millican). Marady finds out that Delong is in the area, and has a plan for dealing with Delong.

Marady has a gang, with Pinto (Charles Bronson when he was still early enough in his career to be credited under the surmame Buchinsky) second-in-command, and plans to use those gang members to lure Delong away from the stagecoach. Marady has a special handgun he knows Delong will recognize, so one of the men in the gang takes it into the stagecoach station and makes certain Delong sees it. This leads to the gang capturing Delong and tying him down, leaving him to die.

Delong is eventually able to extricate himself, but in that time the Marady gang has robbed the coach on which Delong was supposed to be riding shotgun. The stage does make it back into town, but the passengers describe Delong having been with the gang members who showed him Marady's gun, so when the posse goes out looking for the gang that includes Marady, who is of course guilty of nothing more than negligence.

Delong shows up in town, alone, since he was of course not in the gang. But he can'tconvince anybody in town that he wasn't part of the gang, and they're out for blood what with the coach driver having been killed in Marady's attack. The only person who has any support for Delong is the sheriff's deputy, Tub Murphy (Wayne Morris). He at least wants Delong to get a "fair" trial, inasmuch as that might be possible.

Worse, Delong can't get anybody to believe what's more likely to happen. He's bright enough to figure that what Marady did was a ruse so that the townsfolk would find the coach and send a posse out to look for the gang. Marady then plans to come in to town and rob the local businesses. Delong tries to warn everybody but nobody will listen. And he can't leave town because nobody will give him a horse. Worse, they basically corner him with the intention of stringing him up if it weren't for Tub's presence.

Riding Shotgun is the sort of programmer western that was still being made in Hollywood into the mid-1950s, not too long before such stuff would be supplanted by episodic television. Riding Shotgun is more than competent, as is only to be expected considering the presence of somebody like Randolph Scott in the starring role; a director like Andre de Toth; and the resources that a major studio like Warner Bros. could bring to such a movie.

Sure, there are better westerns out there, but for people who already like westerns and want something undemanding that they might not have seen before, Riding Shotgun fits the bill just fine.

The original Death Wish

When I had the free preview of all the movie channels over the Thanksgiving weekend, another movie that I got the chance to record was the 1974 original version of Death Wish.

Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey, an architect in New York City with a wife Joanna (Hope Lange) and married daughter. He's successful enough to take vacations and live in a nice apartment, at least by early 1970s New York standards. This of course is the era as I like to describe of of just before President Ford telling the city to drop dead. (Not that Ford said that of course, but that's how the Daily News interpreted the president's desire not to bail out the bankrupt city.) Times Square was seedy, and crime was much higher than it is today, although on the last point it should be mentioned that the high crime rate wasn't just a New York City thing.

Anyhow, it's that crime rate that's important. One day when Joanna and her daughter are going to the grocery store, they arrange for the store to deliver the groceries, since carrying that many groceries in the big city is a pain. A couple of hoodlums in the store hear this and take a look at the address for the delivery, so they're able to go up to the Kerseys' apartment and claim to be the grocery delivery. Gaining entry in this way, they then proceed to savagely beat and rape the two women.

Paul and his son-in-law go to the hospital, where they learn that the daughter is going to recover, but that Joanna just died. This is long before the use of DNA evidence, so there's not going to be much of any way to find the assailants. And the daughter doesn't really recover. Well, she does physically, but mentally she's shattered to the point that she won't talk and has to go to a sanatorium.

Paul tries to go on with his life, taking an assignment out in Arizona for the property developer Jainchill (Stuart Margolin). In addition to owning a whole bunch of land, Jainchill is interested in target shooting, and takes Paul out to a shooting range where the two find out that Paul is a pretty good shot, and seems to like it. So Jainchill gives Paul a gun, which is officially illegal in New York despite it being a massive violation of the Second Amendment.

One day, Paul himself gets caught up in the petty crime, and since he has his gun on him, he fights back by shooting the thugs. The police don't like this, of course, since homicide is a bit of a problem even if this one is a justifiable homicide. More than that, they don't like the fact that somebody is showing the cops up. So Detective Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) starts investigating the case, with little to go on -- until Paul starts becoming a more brazen vigilante and there are more killings.

The police are distressed, but the average people are cheering the mysterious vigilante on, being sick of an ineffective police force. Remember, this was the era of Serpico when it was becoming public knowledge just how corrupt the New York police were (and still are, but since 9/11 the amount of sucking up to the police has become almost unbearable). Eventually, something's bound to happen to make Paul's identity as the vigilante become public....

Charles Bronson wasn't the best actor out there by a long shot, but Death Wish is a movie that really plays well to his skill set as an actor. The movie also came out at a time, a few weeks before Richard Nixon's resignation, when there was a lot going wrong in America both nationally and in New York, and it's easy to see why the movie would capture the imagination of all those people who would like to think they could do something to stand up to all that was plaguing them.

Death With may not be an objectively great movie thanks to Bronson's limited range and what seemed to me to be some continuity issues, but the movie has an obvious appeal, both as a time capsule and a catharsis for anybody who's ever wanted revenge, which is probably most of us. Death Wish is available on DVD and Blu-ray, if you haven't seen it and wish to watch for yourself.

Elizabeth Taylor calls the sandtune

Another recent movie viewing off my DVR was The Sandpiper, which TCM ran when Elizabeth Taylor was Star of the Month in March. It's available on the four-movie box set of Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton movies, since both are in it.

Taylor plays Laura Reynolds, an artist living in a beach house (or at least, for what passes for a beach) in California's Big Sur. She lives with her son Danny (played by James Mason's son Morgan) and no father in sight. Laura home-schools Danny, so although he's bright, he's got some problems with society. It's caused a few run-ins with the law, and this time the judge has decided he's had enough. Danny is going to be put in a boarding school, an Episcopal school run by Rev. Dr. Hewitt (Richard Burton).

Laura is unhappy with this, but the alternative is the boy going into reform school, so she reluctantly decides to send Danny there. She's afraid that Danny is going to develop "conventional" values which won't serve him well as an adult and that he won't be able to reason for himself. Danny isn't happy either at first, but when he recites Chaucer -- in Middle English, no less -- to Hewitt's assistant Claire (Eva Marie Saint), she sees the potential in him.

Oh, Claire is Mrs. Hewitt, too; remember that Dr. Hewitt is Episcopalian and they have no qualms about married ministers. This is going to be a problem for reasons you can probably figure. Dr. Hewitt has to deal with Laura both for the practical purposes of getting legal paperwork done, but also to try convince her that his school really is best for the kid. But while doing so, it opens up a whole new world to him, as he gets to see the real Laura and her bohemian artist friends Cos (Charles Bronson) and Larry (James Edwards). And slowly Dr. Hewitt begins to fall in love with Laura.

That is a huge problem for a man who is supposed to be a moral pillar, never mind what it's going to do to his wife should she find out about the relationship. Meanwhile, Laura's theories are beginning to make Dr. Hewitt question whether he should be raigins money for a new chapel for the school....

The Sandpiper is clearly a star vehicle for Taylor and Burton, who were a hot pair after their romance started a few years earlier (I think on the set of Cleopatra). It's too bad that the story is pedestrian, and director Vincente Minnelli couldn't be bothered to rein in Taylor. She takes every opportunity she can to chew the scenery and make the whole movie faintly ridiculous. If you like watching Taylor chew the scenery, you'll love this one. If not, unfortunately The Sandpiper isn't even bad in a fun way like X, Y, and Zee.

The Sandpiper also won an for its original song "The Shadow of a Smile", heard in instrumental throughout the movie and then with lyrics in a horrible MOR arrangment over the closing credits. It's a terrible song, and only makes the movie more aggravating.

Then again, I always say that you should probably judge for yourself. The TCM four-film box sets are always moderately priced, so if you don't like The Sandpiper, you might still like one of the other movies.

Gang War (1958)

I briefly mentioned the film Gang War back in December 2011. It's finally showing up again on FXM Retro, tomorrow morning at 10:35 AM.

Charles Bronson stars as Alan Avery, a high school teacher living the middle-class life in Los Angeles together with his pregnant wife Edie (Gloria Henry). One night, he has to go out to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for her. Unfortunately, while he's in the parking lot after picking up the prescription, he sees two guy knifing a third to death. Who wants to see that? Well, Alan is a good citizen, so he goes to the nearest pay phone and calls up the police anonymously, to report that he saw a murder. He may be a good enough citizen to tell them he saw the murder, but he's not good enough to identify himself. And who can blame him? Nobody really wants to get involved as an eyewitness to murder.

However, Alan left the prescription behind in the phone booth, and since the police were able to figure out where the call came from, they were able to find the prescription and ultimately find the man who called in the news of this murder. The police ask him to come down to the station to file a report, and that's where the trouble really begins for poor Alan. It turns out that the murder was committed by a couple of henchmen of the gangster Maxie Meadows (John Doucette). Apparently, some bigger gangs from the national syndicate are trying to horn in on Meadows' territory, which is what led to the murder. But Meadows is still powerful enough to have sources in the police department who are beholden to him, not to the public. So Meadows finds out who's been ratting on his henchmen.

Meadows response to this is take another of his henchmen, boxer Chester, and have him go to the Avery place to smack Edie a bit -- just enough to give Alan second thoughts about testifying against Maxie's henchmen. Unfortunately, Chester has taken a few too many punches in the ring, to the point that he's not quite so good at following instructions any longer, or even recognizing his own strength. He hits Edie hard enough that he kills her. Oops.

Of course, Alan finds out about this, and it's enough to send him over the edge. He's now hell-bent for leather, and willing to get Maxie, consequences be damned....

Gang War is one of those B movies that Fox was making a lot of in the late 1950s and early 1960s, running under 75 minutes in length and using a lot of people who weren't established stars at the time. Gang War is one of the better ones. The story is interesting, it's got Bronson, and it's got a lot of location shooting in Los Angeles. Notably, the old Capitol Records building in Los Angeles, the one that was designed to be round and look like a stack of records, can be seen in the early sequences when Alan first witnesses the fatal knifing.

I don't think Gang War is available on DVD at all, so you're going to have to catch the FXM showing.