Tag Archives: Adventures in Mexico

The Alamo (1960)

Nicholas Chennault ~ March 18, 2014

The Alamo—John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Richard Boone, Chill Wills, Frankie Avalon, Linda Cristal, Ken Curtis, Joseph Calleia, Denver Pyle, Hank Worden (1960; Dir: John Wayne)

This retelling of the Alamo story and the beginnings of Texas independence from Mexico is perhaps the most John Wayne film ever made: Wayne was the star, producer, and director, and his company provided some of the financing. Wayne as an actor was at his peak in the wake of The Searchers and Rio Bravo, and the movie was released to great hype. From our vantage point more than 50 years later, one would expect that it would have done well at the box office but perhaps not been greeted with much enthusiasm by critics. In fact, it was the opposite. A hugely expensive production in its time ($12 million) with an enormous cast, it only made back $8 million domestically. Wayne lost his personal investment. The movie eventually went into the black, making lots of money in Europe and Japan, but Wayne no longer owned it by that time. Critical reaction was mixed at best, but the movie was one of the few nominated for for the Best Picture Academy Award for 1960.

In 1836, Texans are declaring their independence from Mexico, and Mexican president/generalissimo Santa Anna is bringing his experienced army of more than 6000 north to bring them back into the fold. There is not much of a Texas army to oppose him—only 600 men under Fannin at Goliad and 187 men commanded by William Barret Travis (English actor Laurence Harvey) at San Antonio, using the old mission at the Alamo as a fortress of sorts. Sam Houston (Richard Boone in his curmudgeonly mode) is trying to put together a real army to oppose Santa Anna, but he desperately needs time to do that.

In addition to Travis, “Colonel” Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark), former Louisiana land speculator and knife fighter, commands some militia at the Alamo. And a bunch of roistering Tennesseans nominally led by former congressman Davy Crockett (John Wayne) are in town with an uncertain destination. Travis offends local Hispanics such as Juan Seguin (Joseph Calleia), who would otherwise support Texas independence, Travis and Bowie bicker constantly, and Travis ineffectively tries to recruit the Tennesseans.

During the build-up, Crockett bonds with his men, gives the occasional speech about how the word “republic” chokes him up, and makes a play for a young and attractive Hispanic widow (the beautiful Linda Cristal). She has no apparent dramatic purpose, since she doesn’t actually get together with Crockett and she doesn’t stick around after the first third of the movie. In the midst of their drunkenness, Crockett manipulates the Tennesseans into joining the defenders of the Alamo.

Laurence Harvey as Travis and Richard Widmark as Bowie (with his volley gun).

Santa Anna and his good-looking army show up and blast away at the Alamo. Crockett and Bowie conduct a commando operation to destroy the biggest Mexican gun, and there are constant conflicts with Travis. It can be no secret to us (or to audiences of 1960) that in the end the defenders are overwhelmed by Santa Anna’s forces and slaughtered to a man in an extended battle sequence, creating the first heroes of Texas independence. Each of the three defending principals gets an appropriately heroic end.

The need to make this a John Wayne movie means this film disproportionately focuses on the supposed Crockett, who seems not very authentic historically. He’s not too old for the part, since Crockett was almost 50 when he died at the battle. There’s a lot of meandering in the first two-thirds of the movie with extraneous characters. The Tennesseans (especially Chill Wills) quickly become tedious in their constant drunken revelry. Apparently having learned from Rio Bravo that one should always have a teen-idol singer in the cast to appeal to the younger demographic, Frankie Avalon here is another in a series of unnecessary young brothers and compatriots (Fabian in North to Alaska, Bobbie Vinton in Big Jake and The Train Robbers) who can’t act well.

In production design, there are a few concessions to 1836 this time, especially in the hats and firearms. Bowie’s seven-barrel flintlock volley gun (called a Nock gun, after its British maker) looks impressive; such a gun was developed by the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars for naval warfare but was not widely used because of its horrific recoil. Crockett’s coonskin cap looks hot and foolish; thankfully, he often wears more regular hats.

In Rio Bravo the year before, one of the prominent musical features was the constant playing of the Deguello, Mexican-flavored trumpet and guitar music that was said to have been played by Santa Anna’s men at the Alamo, signifying that no quarter was to be given. It was a romantic story, but, In fact, the tune was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin for that film. Here the theme music is a combination of the Tiomkin Deguello and the melancholy “Green Leaves of Summer” by Tiomkin, which would be nominated for an Oscar and become a big hit for the folk group The Brothers Four. The overture and musical intermission are usually omitted for television broadcasts.

Cinematography was by the excellent William Clothier. The screenplay was by James Edward Grant (Angel and the Badman), long a favorite (and often clunky) writer-friend of Wayne’s. The two or three patriotic speeches dropped in, especially those for Wayne, stop the action and don’t work very well. Producer/director Wayne wanted to express his patriotic sentiments and he got his way, but that aspect doesn’t play well now. The final battle scene has some curious editing, showing Mexican soldiers lunging at one or another of the notable defenders, cutting away, and seconds later returning to the defender, now skewered with a bayonet or sword and falling over.

The Alamo received seven Academy Award nominations. It won the Oscar for Best Sound (Gordon E. Sawyer, Fred Hynes) and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Chill Wills), Best Cinematography (William Clothier), Best Film Editing (Stuart Gilmore), Best Musical Score (Dimitri Tiomkin), Best Music (Song) (Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster for The Green Leaves of Summer) and Best Picture. Chill Wills placed a tasteless ad in Variety, soliciting votes and referring to those who voted for him as his “Alamo cousins.” Groucho Marx responded in a small ad of his own: “Dear Mr. Wills, I am delighted to be your cousin, but I voted for Sal Mineo” (nominated for Exodus).

Wayne directing, apparently in the same hat he wore from Stagecoach (1939) through Rio Bravo (1959). The hat does not appear on-screen in The Alamo, though.

This film is a relic of John Wayne in the 1960s at the height of his career, and that is the reason to watch it. John Wayne learned that he didn’t want to direct, although he took over that role again (uncredited, at his insistence) on 1962’s The Comancheros when Michael Curtiz was dying of cancer. As in the making of other films (see The Cowboys, for example), Wayne’s right-wing politics sometimes conflicted with those of others in the production. In this case, Widmark didn’t get along with him well. Widmark repeatedly challenged Wayne’s direction and once they almost came to blows; thereafter the two remained professional but distant. The movie is long, at 167 minutes, and there is a director’s cut at 203 minutes (1993, obviously done without Wayne’s participation) if you want even more and if you can find it. The movie was re-released in 1967 at 140 minutes, so there are lots of choices. Some of these cuts are in need of restoration.

So how accurate is it? Not very. For example, Bowie did not brandish a seven-barrel volley gun, nor was he wounded in the leg during the final assault, nor did his wife die during the time of the siege. He fell ill due to typhoid fever and was barely awake during the final attack, and Bowie’s wife had died a year before the battle was fought. Fannin was not ambushed and slaughtered during the siege of the Alamo. He and his men were murdered in Goliad on Palm Sunday three weeks after the Alamo fell. Bowie and Crockett never made the decision to leave the Alamo as shown in the movie. Though Bowie and Travis disliked each other intensely, they agreed that the Alamo should be defended. And the time frame for the battle is wrong. The movie shows the final battle taking place during the day; in reality, the final Mexican attack was pre-dawn, while most of the Alamo defenders were sleeping. The individual deaths of Travis, Bowie and Crockett are fictional, for dramatic effect. They were killed, but, especially for Crockett, the individual circumstances are not generally known and are still a matter of debate.

Billboard art by Reynold Brown, emphasizing the film’s epic scale and the final battle.

In a bit part as an aide to Santa Anna, look for famed Mexican bullfighter Carlos Arruza; well-known director Budd Boetticher would fizzle away his career in Mexico during the 1960s trying to make his magnum opus, a documentary on Arruza, before Arruza’s early death in 1966. If Arruza’s presence in the film was intended to make it appeal to Mexicans, it didn’t work; the film was banned in Mexico. There are various Canutts (related to Yakima, legendary stuntman and second unit director), Patrick Wayne, even an uncredited Pilar and Toni Wayne.

The first movie about the battle at the Alamo was the silent The Immortal Alamo (1911), now thought to be lost. There have been at least eight films portraying it, and three television productions, including Disney’s “Davy Crockett at the Alamo” episode on Disneyland. This is not the best film ever made about the Alamo, but it might be the most prominent. For a better, more historical Crockett performance, see Billy Bob Thornton in The Alamo (2004). The 2004 movie, which tries for greater historical accuracy, is not among the greatest westerns, but it’s better than this version and Thornton’s performance is terrific. The definitive Alamo movie has yet to be made.

For more actual history of the Alamo and its defense, focusing on the three protagonists (Crockett, Bowie and Travis) and doing a good job of separating the legends from what is actually known, see the books Three Roads to the Alamo (1999), by William C. Davis and The Blood of Heroes (2012), by James Donovan.

Vera Cruz

Nicholas Chennault ~ February 15, 2014

Vera Cruz—Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Cesar Romero, Denise Darcel, Sara Montiel, Jack Elam, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Henry Brandon, George Macready (1954; Dir: Robert Aldrich)

After the American Civil War, rootless American soldiers of fortune are drawn southward into Mexico, where the Mexicans led by Benito Juarez are rebelling against the Austrian-French regime of the emperor Maximilian. Among these mercenaries are the two protagonists of this film: Joe Erin, a flashy, grinning gunfighter of dubious morality (Burt Lancaster) and an impoverished plantation owner from Louisiana who had fought for the Confederacy, Ben Trane (Gary Cooper).

At the beginning of the film, Trane’s horse breaks a leg. As he tries to find a replacement he encounters Joe Erin, who sells him a horse for an exorbitant $100 in gold. He has stolen the horse from a platoon of lancers, who show up and chase the two as they make their escape. During the chase, Trane makes one of those shots so common in the 1950s, in which, shooting over one shoulder while his horse is rearing, he shoots a gun out of the hand of the captain of the lancers. Wildly improbable, this establishes Trane’s skill with a gun, however. Erin seems to have heard of him. As Trane is knocked off his horse by a shot, Erin leaps to loot the body, but Trane re-awakens and takes Erin’s horse and saddle instead.

Lancaster, flashing his pearly whites, as he does for much of the movie; and Cooper, with his unflinching rectitude. The collaborations and collisions between these two provide most of the tension in the film.

In the next town, Trane encounters a rough band of Americans in a cantina, who assume that he has killed Erin to take his flashy horse and rig. As they set upon him and are about to kill him, Erin shows up, demonstrates that he’s not dead, and they all head off to meet with the Juarista general to see how much he’ll pay them. As they enter another town, they see another rough band of Americans tormenting young maidens. Trane rescues one of them, the fiery Nina (Sarita Montiel), who kisses him and steals his wallet. Erin takes over the new band of Americans, adding them to his own unsavory gang.

Trane unconvincingly romances the fiery Nina (Sarita Montiel).

The first potential employer they encounter is not the Juarista general but Maximilian’s general, Marquis Henri de Labordere (played by the smilingly cosmopolitan Cesar Romero). He recruits them for a mission for Maximilian and is willing to promise more than the Juaristas can pay. However, all of them are trapped in the town square by the Juarista forces until Erin and Trane engineer a way out by using children as hostages. The Juarista general mouths a number of honest-sounding revolutionary platitudes, so we know now which party has the moral high ground in this struggle.

Arriving in Mexico City, the crude-mannered Americans attend a magnificent soiree at Chapultepec Palace, where they meet Maximilian (George Macready), give a demonstration of marksmanship and weaponry, and negotiate a mission for $50,000. They are to conduct the French countess Marie Duvarre (Denise Darcel) to Vera Cruz on the Mexican coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where she will catch a ship for France. In an aside between Henri and Maximilian, it is clear they do not expect the Americans to survive to collect their fee. From this point, everyone is trying to doublecross everyone else, with Joe Erin and increasingly Ben Trane frequently quoting Erin’s cynical mentor Ace Hanna, whom Erin killed.

Joe Erin meets the Emperor Maximilian.

The countess sets off for Vera Cruz, accompanied by the Americans, Henri and a troop of lancers led by Capt. Danette (German actor Henry Brandon). Various competitions are developing among the alpha males in the entourage. There is constant tension between Erin and Trane about whether they are really on the same side. They both want the countess, although they don’t trust her. Danette despises the Americans, especially Erin. Henri is playing them all. And what about the Juaristas?

Erin and Trane discover the real reason for the mission: the countess’ carriage is carrying $3 million in gold, to be used to hire more mercenaries for Maximilian. She tells Erin and Trane, however, that she intends to steal the gold, and she’ll cut them in. They run into a Juarista ambush in a small town, and fight their way out with some casualties. Nina takes over a cart when the driver is shot, and joins the caravan. The countess secretly meets with a sea captain who’ll help her get away, and she makes arrangements that exclude Erin and Trane.

[Spoilers follow.] Henri really doesn’t trust the countess, either, and he takes her prisoner with the intent of executing her. Erin and Trane follow the carriage, and it is attacked by Juaristas. They find the gold is gone and join the Juaristas, for a promise of $100,000. They provide covering fire for a Juarista attack on the town held by Henri and Danette, where the gold supposedly is. At great cost, the attack is successful. Erin kills Danette. With Lancaster’s trademark acrobatic agility, Erin climbs up into a third-floor room to rescue the countess.

“So if the gold isn’t in the wagon …”

And finally, the ultimate loyalties get sorted out. Erin has demonstrated that he doesn’t have any except to himself. Trane has now decided that he supports the Juaristas. They shoot it out in classic fashion; Trane even throws away his rifle to do it with handguns. (The final showdown is very well done, with due gravity given to the ceremony of the occasion.) Trane rides off into the sunset with Nina, and apparently will get the $100,000 to rebuild his plantation, with all the rest of the unsavory Americans killed.

This was produced by Lancaster’s company (with Henry Hecht), and it’s bursting with vibrant color cinematography, great locations in Mexico, a huge and talented cast, a complicated plot and ultimately even a good guy (Trane) to root for in all the doublecrossing. That’s a lot to cram into 94 minutes. As with most of his westerns during the 1950s, Cooper seems old for his role. But Trane’s still Gary Cooper, so it works. He doesn’t sound a bit like he’s from Louisiana, nor does Lancaster sound like he’s from Texas. Next to Cooper’s understated acting style, Lancaster’s performance seems a bit manic here. A more experienced director would probably have helped him tone it down, if he had the clout to do so. Among the other Americans, Ernest Borgnine stands out as Donnegan, about the same time as he was playing effective bad guys in movies like Johnny Guitar and sort-of-good guys in films like The Badlanders.

This is the second of Denise Darcel’s two westerns. She’s better in the other, Westward the Women. She and Sarita Montiel, who is fine here but has no chemistry with the much older Cooper, did not appear to have much in the way of American film careers after this. Cesar Romero, whose smilingly corrupt Marquis is sometimes referred to by the other characters as “Old Crocodile Teeth,” has his second most prominent role in a western after playing Doc Holliday in 1939’s Frontier Marshal. It is a close contest whether his teeth or Lancaster’s are more in evidence in this film; Lancaster probably wins that one. Henry Brandon, Capt. Danette here, shows up as Indians in other westerns: Comanche chief Scar in The Searchers, and a Sioux in The Last Frontier and as Comanche Quanah Parker in Two Rode Together. Charles Bronson, in the days when he was playing Indians and heavies at the start of his career, plays the crass Pittsburgh, under his real name, Charles Buchinsky. Jack Elam’s here, too, although he doesn’t get to do much. George Macready as Maximilian was 54, twenty years older than the real Maximilian was at the time of his death.

Aside from the individual performances, the direction of the larger-scale action scenes is good. The script isn’t great; in a short movie we hear way too many quotes about Ace Hanna, who’s dead long before it begins. The music by Hugo Friedhofer is very good. The story is by experienced western writer Borden Chase. The use of not-completely-bad and not-entirely-good characters in westerns was innovative for its time. It is said to have strongly influenced Sergio Leone and other makers of spaghetti westerns. The camera work sometimes (as in the scene where Erin kills Danette) makes one wonder whether they thought this might be shown in early 1950s 3D.

Many see Vera Cruz as one of the great westerns, but the parts don’t work together well enough for that. It is one of those rare cases where maybe the film should have been longer to help us cope with the spectacle and plot twists. It is fun to watch, however, and more than once, to try to figure out what the various characters’ real motivations and allegiances are. Dave Kehr refers to it as “Robert Aldrich’s hugely influential comic western … This cynical and exuberant film [is] the direct precursor to the disillusioned 1960s westerns of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah.” It’s probably only comic in the limited sense that there are some elements that can’t be taken quite seriously, rather than in the sense that it’s played for laughs.

The Last Sunset

Nicholas Chennault ~ January 16, 2014

The Last Sunset—Kirk Douglas, Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten, Carol Lynley, Jack Elam, Neville Brand (1961; Dir: Robert Aldrich)

Gunman Brendan O’Malley (Kirk Douglas) arrives at the Breckenridge ranch in Mexico, to find that lady of the ranch is old flame Belle (Dorothy Malone) and that her weak alcoholic husband John (Joseph Cotten) is preparing for a cattle drive to Texas that they are unlikely to be able to accomplish. Their nubile daughter Melissa (or Missy, played by Carol Lynley) is coming along, too. O’Malley offers his help (for a price: one-fifth of the herd plus Belle); now all they need is a trail boss who knows the way, and he promptly shows up in the form of Dana Stribling (Rock Hudson), a Texas lawman who is hunting O’Malley for killing his no-good brother-in-law. The two agree to put aside resolution of their differences until the herd gets to Texas.

As was often the case, Douglas made an unconventional protagonist for a western. He wears tight-fitting black and uses a derringer instead of a larger gun. He has been hunting Belle since the Civil War, when they had something going in Virginia. This is a cattle drive western, with the usual incidents: unreliable drovers (the nefarious Dobbs brothers, played by Neville Brand and Jack Elam); inclement weather (a dust storm), Indians (Yaquis), and a stampede. As they head the herd north, Breckenridge encounters former Confederates in a bar; they were from his unit under Stonewall Jackson and confront Breckenridge with having run at Fredericksburg. They’re forcing him to show them his wound (in his backside) when O’Malley and Stribling intervene. As the three leave, one of the Confederates shoots Breckenridge in the back.

Now Belle is a widow, but Stribling shows romantic interest in her. O’Malley rescues Stribling during a storm, and the Dobbs brothers make their move. Belle shoots one, and O’Malley and Stribling recover the herd. O’Malley gratuitously shoots a Yaqui (whose corpse is unusually cooperative in being moved to a horse), and Stribling gives the tribe a fifth of the herd to mollify them—O’Malley’s share. As Belle develops feelings for Stribling, O’Malley and the much younger Missy also start to bond romantically. On the night before the herd crosses the Rio Grande to Crazy Horse, Texas (presumably making this after 1876), Missy wears Belle’s yellow dress from a night long ago, and she and O’Malley make plans.

[Spoilers follow.] Once the herd is in Texas, however, Belle discloses to O’Malley that Missy is his daughter. Stribling and O’Malley (with his derringer) carry out their showdown, O’Malley characteristically without his hat. When Stribling wins, he finds that O’Malley’s derringer wasn’t loaded.

The women are more central to what’s going on here than they are to most westerns, giving this sort of a melodramatic feel with several sudden revelations along the way. Malone is very good. Hudson is adequate but pales beside Douglas in the meatier role. And he wears a strange hat. Adapted by Dalton Trumbo from a novel by Howard Rigsby, Sundown at Crazy Horse. Not bad work from director Aldrich, who had directed Vera Cruz in 1954 and would yet do Ulzana’s Raid ten years later. Shot in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Garden of Evil

Nicholas Chennault ~ January 10, 2014

Garden of Evil—Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, Cameron Mitchell, Hugh Marlowe, Victor Manuel Mendoza (1954; Dir: Henry Hathaway)

During the California gold rush (putting this more or less in the 1850s), passengers on a steamship are stranded in Puerto Miguel on Mexico’s Pacific coast. They include Hooker (Gary Cooper), a former sheriff from Texas; Fiske (Richard Widmark, in what turns out to be a good-guy role), a gambler; and Daly (Cameron Mitchell), a bounty hunter. Leah Fuller (a husky-voiced Susan Hayward) arrives in town, desperate for help in getting her mining engineer husband John out of a gold mine, where he lies trapped with a broken leg. The title of the film refers to the region surrounding the mine, about three days of rough travel into Apache country.

Fiske: “You know, at first I thought she was one of those women who come along every so often and fascinate men without even trying or even knowing why.”

Hooker: “And now what?”

Fiske: “She tries, and she knows why.”

Hooker, Fiske and Daly sign up for $2000 each, along with Vicente Madariaga (Victor Manuel Mendoza), a Mexican. After an arduous trip on which Daly makes a move on Leah, they find the mine, rescue Fuller (Hugh Marlowe) and fix his leg. The unreliable Daly gets his fill of gold and they head back, followed by Apaches and slowed down by the injured and embittered Fuller.

At the first stop, Daly helps Fuller escape on a horse to get rid of him. Daly is killed by the Indians, and the group finds Fuller’s body hung upside down from a cross. The party is now on the run. Vicente is killed, and they reach the narrow trail down a cliff just ahead of the Apaches. Fiske stays behind to hold them off, and Hooker and Leah make their escape. Hooker goes back to help Fiske, but it’s too late. The suggestion is that Leah and Hooker go off together, perhaps with some of the gold from the cursed mine.

Motivations are uneven. Leah appears to love her husband (he doesn’t think so), but she also appears to be attracted to Fiske (maybe) and Hooker, though not to Daly. It’s taken for granted that she drives all the men crazy with lust, although only Daly seems to act badly on that impulse. (What, no bathing in a stream scene?) The Apaches’ motivation doesn’t appear to be all that consistent, either, and they don’t look much like Apaches. Clothes and equipment (guns, particularly) don’t fit the 1850s. The writing is a little spotty, and there are obvious comparisons to Treasure of the Sierra Madre. One or two of Cooper’s brief speeches get a little heavy-handed, but his presence is strong as always. This story could have used a bit more character background development.

“I guess if the earth were made of gold, men would still die for a handful of dirt.”

There are questions left at the end. For example, did any of the gold get out, and what happened to it? Did Hooker get his $2000? This is watchable, but not the unrecognized gem some would claim. Spectacularly shot on location in Mexico in early Cinemascope and Technicolor, but there are occasional obvious painted backdrops, too. Good score by Bernard Herrman and competent direction by Henry Hathaway. If you like Susan Hayward in this, catch her in Rawhide with Tyrone Power, where she’s even better.

Big Jake

Nicholas Chennault ~ December 21, 2013

Big Jake—John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Richard Boone, Patrick Wayne, Christopher Mitchum, Bruce Cabot, Harry Carey, Jr. (1971; Dir: George Sherman)

A better-than-average John Wayne western from his late period (post-True Grit), maybe the third best after The Cowboys and The Shootist. Wayne plays Jacob McCandles, long estranged from his family and thought dead by many. At the start of the movie in 1909, his family is attacked by evildoers led by John Fain (Richard Boone, in one of his better villain performances). They shoot his oldest son Bobby (played by Bobby Vinton) and kidnap his grandson Little Jake (Ethan Wayne), demanding $1 million in ransom.

Big Jake is called back by his wife (Maureen O’Hara, in the last of their five movies together) and undertakes to lead a group into Mexico to deliver the money, aided by sons James (Patrick Wayne) and Michael (Christopher Mitchum), who are fans of new technology, longtime Indian scout Sam Sharpnose (Bruce Cabot) and Dog. There is friction, if not outright hostility, between Jake and the sons, and the writing for and acting of the sons is probably the weakest element of the movie. Others hear about the money and would like to steal it. There’s a good shootout scene when the ransom is delivered, with excellent dialogue between Big Jake and John Fain, although some criticize the film as too violent and bloody. The juxtaposition of old West ways and new technology with its limitations is effective.

These westerns in which John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara play an estranged married couple (Rio Grande, McClintock!) always seem to make the resolution of the estrangement a lot easier than it would be in any real relationship. It isn’t clear why the Boone character wears an orange serape the whole movie. Did they think we wouldn’t recognize him without it? Did they suppose it made him look larger? Is he related to Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name? The narration at the start, setting the late-west, early modern nature of 1909, is unnecessary and a bit clunky. In general, the film isn’t stitched together all that well and has too close an eye on what seems to have sold in previous Wayne movies, but it’s nevertheless quite watchable.

Director George Sherman was an old timer, and this was his last significant film. It is said that he was in bad health during the filming and that Wayne took over for him frequently. There are some instances of less-than-great camera angles during fights; in general the directing isn’t remarkable. The writing is by the same husband-wife team that wrote Dirty Harry about the same time. Note some of the trademarks: the recurring “I thought you were dead,” usually answered by “Not hardly.” And the lines repeated between Boone and Wayne are effective. Good score by Elmer Bernstein. Dog seems very like the feral character Sam from Hondo, made 20 years earlier. This was also made by Batjac, Wayne’s production company.

Two Mules for Sister Sara

Nicholas Chennault ~ November 27, 2013

Two Mules For Sister Sara—Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacLaine, Manuel Fabregas (1970; Dir: Don Siegel)

This one stars Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine. It’s directed by Don Siegel, from a story by Budd Boetticher, with music by Ennio Morricone. All of that sounds great, right? Somehow this is less than the sum of its parts. Clint Eastwood has cited Don Siegel (director of Dirty Harry and The Shootist) as one of his two greatest directorial influences, along with Sergio Leone; he dedicated his last western, Unforgiven, to them.

This features Clint in his early 1970s leather hat period (albeit the hat appears to be basically of the same design as he wears in the Dollars trilogy and Pale Rider; leather would be hotter than felt, though). He is Hogan, a Civil War veteran and mercenary working for the Juaristas battling occupying French soldiers in northern Mexico in the 1860s. In the movie’s opening scenes, he rescues an unclad Shirley MacLaine from three very unsavory American bandidos.

When she dresses, he’s surprised to find she’s a nun—Sister Sara. She’s also working for the Juaristas, it turns out. Hogan has agreed to help Col. Beltran (Manuel Fabregas) take the French garrison in Chihuahua in exchange for half the treasury. Sister Sara knows the garrison well, having taught the French soldiers Spanish there before they discovered she was working for the Juaristas. Together they devise a plan for attacking the garrison with Juarista support, so Hogan can collect his treasury, Sara can help the Juaristas, and Col. Beltran can root out the French from his country.

On their way to Chihuahua, Hogan is shot with a Yaqui arrow and Sara has to help him blow up a railroad trestle with a train full of French troops going to reinforce Chihuahua. Arriving in Chihuahua, Sara leads them to a house with a tunnel going into the garrison—a house of ill repute, as matters develop. Sara is a resident of the place who has disguised herself as a nun to escape French retribution. They storm the garrison, Hogan gets his treasury, and in the end Hogan and Sara ride off together, this time with Sara in a more suitable bright scarlet.

Now Red Sara.

It’s unclear what the two mules of the title refer to. The pairing of a profane adventurer with a woman of God echoes The African Queen. In fact, MacLaine was said to get along with neither Eastwood nor director Siegel. As with many films from the early 1970s, much of the blood looks like red paint. Watchable, but the script has some clunky dialogue and the story doesn’t hang together real well. Some have suggested it would work better if Sara stayed a nun. Story by Budd Boetticher, music by Ennio Morricone. In color, filmed in Mexico.

Rio Conchos

Nicholas Chennault ~ November 12, 2013

Rio Conchos—Richard Boone, Stuart Whitman, Anthony Franciosa, Jim Brown, Edmond O’Brien, Wende Wagner, Rodolfo Acosta (1964; Dir: Gordon Douglas)

The lead is ostensibly Stuart Whitman, but Richard Boone steals this better-than-average western, and actually gets top billing in the wake of his Have Gun Will Travel stardom on television. Jim Brown doesn’t have many lines in his movie debut, made just before his last football season, but he looks good and conveys a sense of fighting expertise.

In 1867, Capt. Haven (Whitman) and Sgt. Franklyn (Brown) are transporting 2000 repeating rifles from St. Louis to Texas. The rifles are stolen by a former Confederate, Col. Theron (“The Grey Fox”) Pardee (Edmond O’Brien), who takes them to Mexico. Pardee plans to sell them to Apaches led by Bloodshirt (Rodolfo Acosta as the Apache chief, just as he was in Hondo and Trooper Hook). Former Confederate Major Jim Lassiter (Boone) returned from the war to find his wife and son killed by Apaches, and he has become a revenge-obssessed alcoholic. The movie starts with a scene of Lassiter killing half a dozen Indians at a burial. When Haven finds Lassiter with one of the stolen rifles and tosses Lassiter in jail, Lassiter is forced to help Haven and Franklyn try to recover or destroy the guns across the Rio Grande in Mexico. He reluctantly agrees, if they take Rodriguez (Tony Franciosa), a charming Mexican murderer also in jail, who speaks both Spanish and Apache. The four don’t trust each other, and that’s where much of the drama lies for this movie. How good is Lassiter’s word? Can Rodriguez be relied on? Does Haven know what he’s doing?

Capturing the Apache maiden (Wende Wagner).

Along the way they acquire a prisoner, Apache maiden Sally (Wende Wagner in dark paint and decolletage), who adds another note of hostility to the group although she doesn’t speak English. They make their way into Mexico with a wagon load of gunpowder as bait for the gun thieves, fighting among themselves and with Mexican banditos and Apaches. Lassiter is the most resourceful fighter and tactician among them, but they all have their strengths (as with The Professionals two years later). They finally find Pardee on the Rio Conchos (a tributary of the Rio Grande, extending into the state of Chihuahua), along with the rifles and Bloodshirt’s Apaches, but are captured by the Indians and tortured before an explosive ending.

Captured by Bloodshirt.

There’s lots of action, most of it well-filmed. Whitman is somewhat wooden and his part seems a little underwritten, but Boone is great, with a magnificent voice and weatherbeaten looks. Franciosa is also very good, but his characterization (and that of most Mexicans in this movie) will strike current audiences as a little broad and perhaps stereotypical. Wende Wagner, in her first movie, is the weak link, both in acting and in her part as written in the movie. She doesn’t look much like an Indian (although she apparently had some Indian ancestry along with German and French), and her movie career didn’t develop into much. Most of the dramatic tension comes from trying to figure out whether the four or five central characters will be, on balance, good or bad. In the end only Haven and Sally survive the final action, and improbably they seem to go off together. But Lassiter does get Bloodshirt, or, rather, they get each other.

Apache attack.

This movie has a darker and grittier tone than, say, The Comancheros, which has a similar plot (stopping the sale of firearms to Indians) and the same screenwriter. It probably suffered in its time for being an ensemble piece without instantly identifiable good guys, instead of a John Wayne-style obvious good guys vs. obvious bad guys western of the sort that audiences were used to then. Lassiter, the most compelling character, is sometimes hard to identify with. But that also makes it less predictable in its way. An underrated and, these days, seldom seen western.

Filmed in Arizona and around Moab, Utah. Screenwriters are Joseph Landon and Clair Huffaker (who also wrote The Comancheros, The War Wagon and the novel on which this film is based). Good early score by Jerry Goldsmith. Available on DVD as of 2011 together with Take a Hard Ride, a spaghetti western featuring Jim Brown on another expedition into Mexico. This was probably the best western directed by Gordon Douglas, who also directed Fort Dobbs, Yellowstone Kelly and the 1966 Stagecoach remake, along with Barquero and at least one episode of Maverick.

The Ride Back

Nicholas Chennault ~ November 7, 2013

The Ride Back—William Conrad, Anthony Quinn, Lita Milan (1957; Dir: Allen H. Miner, Oscar Rudolph [uncredited])

Lead William Conrad doesn’t show up in these posters at all. The American posters show the title with an exclamation point that doesn’t make much sense: The Ride Back! You don’t usually see it that way, though.

This film is an example of why the 1950s could be such a good era for westerns. They were so strongly in fashion that stories that could have been in other genres got made as westerns. This is a small story with a small but excellent cast and good writing. The moving forces behind it seem to have been lead actor and co-producer William Conrad and co-producer Robert Aldrich.

Taking Kallen prisoner.

For current audiences, the balding, thickset Conrad seems an unlikely choice for a leading man. For several years he had played Marshal Matt Dillon on radio in Gunsmoke, and his deep voice was very recognizable. Here he is Chris Hamish, a deputy sheriff from Scottville (Texas?), who as the movie opens is in Mexico with a warrant for Bob Kallen, a half-Mexican gunman wanted for two shootings in the U.S. With the help of a priest, Hamish finds Kallen in a small village living with a girl who is related to the priest. He takes Kallen prisoner, although Kallen is open about the fact that he thinks he’s better with a gun than Hamish and plans to get away. Hamish agrees with him about the gun skills. Some villagers show up and ask Kallen if he wants them to kill the man taking him away. For the moment, he says no.

As they camp the first night, Kallen’s girl catches up with them and tries unsuccessfully to liberate him. He sends her home. They see some drunken Apaches and the next day are attacked by them. With only one horse, they take refuge in a house where they find two dead older women and a dead girl. They bury them and encounter a twin sister of the dead girl, who witnessed the slaughter and is apparently mute. Pursued by the Apaches, they take her along.

Once back in the U.S., they are about a day from Scottville, with only a lame horse. Kallen and Hamish have come to know a bit about each other. Kallen thinks he has been unjustly accused in the shootings and won’t get a fair trial. He is good with people; the mute girl much prefers him to Hamish. It comes out that Hamish’s wife can’t have children and hates him, and he considers himself a failure. That’s why he’s so adamant about bringing Kallen in—the accomplishment of that task will show that he can actually do something. He could have been jealous of Kallen’s people skills, confidence and ability with a gun, but it seems that he comes to admire Kallen.

Less than a day from Scottville, the Apaches attack them again. Hamish is wounded badly, and he gives Kallen both the key to his manacles and the gun before he collapses. Kallen polishes off the remaining Apaches. He takes advantage of Hamish’s weakened condition to take the horse and head back for Mexico. But as Hamish lies delirious on the ground with the girl helpless to do anything for him, Kallen returns, helps Hamish onto the horse and the three of them move on toward Scottville.

Pondering whether they can get back at all.

This is a psychological western, a character study of both Kallen and Hamish, but especially of Hamish. The movie is short, at less than 90 minutes, and it’s not long on plot. But it is effective. The shifting relationship of a captor and outlaw captive moving toward mutual respect might remind you of the original 3:10 to Yuma, made the same year.

Shot in black and white at a time when the transition was being made to color, the cinematography is effective, with lots of low shots that include clouded skies. It didn’t have a large budget, and it didn’t make a lot of money, but it is good. It got made because Conrad also played a role as producer. The dialogue is fairly spare, and both Conrad and Quinn are very good. This was a period when Quinn played several villains in westerns (Last Train from Gun Hill, Warlock), and he is excellent in all of them. Kallen is written more flamboyantly than Hamish, and Kallen shows some of the outlaw’s attractiveness. The credited director, Allen Miner, was ill during a significant amount of the shooting (ten days), and during that time the second unit director Oscar Rudolph took over, although he is not credited as director.

Major Dundee

Nicholas Chennault ~ November 6, 2013

Major Dundee—Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, James Coburn, L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates (1965; Dir: Sam Peckinpah)

Made between Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch, this film is a commentary on the question: What does it mean to be macho? A study in male hubris, director Sam Peckinpah is giving free rein to certain of his proclivities: a love for Mexico, drinking and roistering, and for fighting with studios over film budgets which he has wantonly disregarded. Filmed on location in Durango, Peckinpah initially thought he could escape the scrutiny of studio overseers, but not for long. He theoretically planned it as an epic, only to end up with a chopped-up and not terribly coherent version of his vision.

The plot doesn’t hang together very well, leading to the suspicion that Peckinpah was making this one up as he went along. Late in 1864 in the waning days of the Civil War, Major Amos Dundee (Heston) is in disgrace, stationed out west (in Arizona Territory? Texas?) with custody of uncooperative captured Confederate prisoners (led by Richard Harris as Capt. Benjamin Tyree[n]) who are continually trying to escape. Dundee has some personal history with the Confederate leader, who was once an officer in the same pre-war regiment as Dundee.

Dundee is attacked–by Apaches, not by Senta Berger’s Austrian doctor.

Dundee takes a group of Union soldiers and unsavory volunteers, augmented by Confederate prisoners who hope to earn their freedom, into Mexico in pursuit of renegade Apaches who have abducted a pair of Hispanic children after killing their parents. In the course of the movie, he has multiple fights not only with Indians but also with various groups of the French soldiers then occupying Mexico. He has to deal with racial strife in his own ranks between his Buffalo soldiers and the Confederates. In a Mexican village, Dundee encounters and develops a relationship with an improbable Austrian female doctor (Senta Berger, apparently just thrown in for a voluptuous romantic interest). Along the way, he gets the children back, defeats the Apaches, is wounded and has a debauched and impatient recuperation under the noses of the French, deals with further rebellion among the Confederates and has to fight his way back into U.S. territory against vastly superior numbers. And he loses a lot of men.

Dundee’s Confederates, led by Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris).

Early in his career, Harris routinely had trouble with other male leads and authority figures while working on movies, and this production was no exception. It was also troubled in other ways, particularly by Peckinpah’s battles with the studio (in the person of producer Jerry Bresler) over funding and oversight. Heston apparently believed in the production and Peckinpah enough to contribute his own salary during a financial battle, although Peckinpah was abusive to him and others on occasion. In fact, Heston convinced the studio not to fire Peckinpah, although by Heston’s account he (Heston) took over the direction in the later part of the film when Peckinpah was incapacitated by various forms of debauchery. It is said that the studio ended the shooting early, before some planned scenes were filmed.

One result of the troubles was that the studio took the final cut away from Peckinpah, and the theatrical release was supposedly truncated. Erratic editing is more obvious in the second half of the film. One reason for that is that the script was never more than two-thirds finished. In 2005 a new cut of the movie was released in a longer 136-minute version and with some different music, apparently an attempt to reconstruct what Peckinpah had in mind before the studio took it away from him. The twelve added minutes apparently include some drunken recuperation angst by Dundee and rounding out of other characters. Billed as Peckinpah’s lost masterpiece, this cut may have been lost for 40 years, but it is still not a masterpiece. It’s worth watching, though. This movie will probably remain what it has been in legend: a supposed masterpiece destroyed by a short-sighted studio with an eye only for profits. Apparently 30 minutes of Peckinpah’s version of the film remain lost.

Harris’ histrionics (on screen and off) notwithstanding, Heston’s performance carries the movie. Heston was unparalleled for portraying moral rectitude, certainty and strength on screen, even when the script in this case occasionally doesn’t have him doing very well in the rectitude department. Berger didn’t have much of a career in American movies, and her role here seems thrown in, but she’s all right in it. James Coburn plays a one-armed Indian scout with alarming eyebrows. Slim Pickens is an alcoholic muleskinner. Jim Hutton is a by-the-book artilleryman stuck in the cavalry who nevertheless finds ways to incorporate artillery in the action. In addition, there are a number of Peckinpah regulars: L.Q. Jones, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates are among the Confederates, and R.G. Armstrong is a Bible-bashing volunteer smiting the heathen. Australian actor Michael Pate is again an Apache leader (Sierra Chariba), as he was in Hondo.

Producer Bresler wouldn’t allow Peckinpah to use Lucien Ballard as his cinematographer, and Sam Leavitt’s work is workmanlike. Major Dundee bombed at the box office, and Sam Peckinpah became more or less unemployable. He worked his way back via television (notably with a masterly adaptation of Noon Wine with Jason Robards and Per Oscarsson) and returned four years later with The Wild Bunch.

If you’d like to read more from somebody who has researched the movie and its missing footage more than almost anybody, see Glenn Erickson’s consideration of the DVD. He takes more the “lost masterpiece” view of the film. His comments are at http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1700dund.html

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 9, 2013

The Magnificent Seven—Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Robert Vaughan, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholtz, Eli Wallach (1960; Dir: John Sturges)

The exotic Yul Brynner seems an odd choice as the star of a western, but he’s become one of the iconic figures in the history of westerns because of his role as Chris Adams, leader of the seven in this relocated remake of Akira Kurosawa’s marvelous The Seven Samurai. John Sturges’ talent for directing large-scale action was never in better form, and a number of elements combined to make this one of the most memorable westerns of the 1960s—a period that represents the apex of a certain kind of Hollywood western.

The movie opens in a southwestern town with a dead Indian, whom prejudiced locals won’t allow to be buried in the local Boot Hill. A newcomer, Chris Adams (Brynner) volunteers for the dangerous job of driving the hearse to the cemetery, and unemployed cowboy Vin (Steve McQueen) rides shotgun. They make it up the hill, only to be faced at the cemetery by a small mob of armed and angry objectors, whom they handle with ease.

Chris (Yul Brynner) and Vin (Steve McQueen) ride to Boot Hill.

Among those impressed are three town fathers of a Mexican village plagued by bandits. They’re looking for help in ridding themselves of Calvera (Eli Wallach in his Mexican bandit chieftain mode) and his band of 30 or so banditos, who prey on the village regularly and kill any one there who shows signs of resisting. Better employment is hard to come by, and Chris assembles a team of six, starting with himself and Vin. They include Harry Luck (Brad Dexter), an old acquaintance of Chris’s who refers to him (not entirely convincingly) as “You old Cajun”; Bernardo O’Reilly (Charles Bronson); Lee (Robert Vaughan), a smooth but high-strung gunslinger now on the run himself; and Britt (James Coburn), a taciturn, knife-throwing cowboy. The final member of the group is Chico (Horst Buchholz), a young Mexican would-be gunfighter initially rejected by Chris. But as the band goes south into Mexico, Chico follows and is eventually accepted as one of them.

The villagers have considerable misgivings about their new defenders. But as they prepare for the return of Calvera, Chris and his band teach the villagers some rudiments of self-defense and begin to form relationships. Bernardo, for example, becomes a favorite of the village children, and there are a few romantic attachments that develop with female villagers, notably for Chico. Cold gunfighter Lee has nightmares, and, after a drinking bout, confesses his fears to a couple of the villagers.

The adversaries.

Calvera and his bandits return, and initially they are easily driven away by the unexpected resistance. But they return yet again and Calvera tries to understand what drives these Americans who are now leading the resistance to him. His native humor and ruthlessness both show through. And there is the final battle, which four of the seven do not survive. The action sequences are extremely well directed and edited.

As Chris and Vin leave the village at the end, Chris mutters the bottom line on all the killing: “The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose.” But at least he isn’t dead. The movie’s most memorable line might be Calvera’s: “If God had not wanted them sheared, He would not have made them sheep.” A few lines seem a little anachronistic, like Vin’s reference to a man falling off a ten-story building.

There are small touches that work very well, and some that raise questions. When Vin is loading a shotgun and shakes each shell before popping it in the shotgun, and then tells Brynner, “Let ‘er buck,” that seems authentic. In fact, McQueen and Brynner did not get along particularly well, and Vin’s sequence of mannerisms are McQueen’s way of stealing the scene against Brynner’s gravity. The Mexican villagers seem unusually well-laundered, though—lots of bright whites in a very dusty setting.* And one wonders why McQueen’s character Vin wears chaps so much in town, where they’re not necessary. You’d think they’d be too hot and cumbersome in what seems to be a very warm climate. Brynner and Buchholz as actors don’t exactly fit the backstories of their characters. But it all works surprisingly well notwithstanding those quibbles.

No, The Magnificent Seven is not as good as Seven Samurai, and it’s not nearly as long, either—just over two hours in playing time, to more than three for Kurosawa’s masterpiece. It has an epic feel without so much of the epic length, as well as less philosophical darkness. However, it may be the most successful example in film history of transplanting a story from one cinematic genre to another. Kurosawa was said to have given John Sturges a sword in appreciation after the release of the Sturges film. (For another successful western based on a Kurosawa samurai film, see Sergio Leone‘s A Fistful of Dollars, based–without prior permission–on Yojimbo.)

The seven defending the town from Calvera’s men.

Much of the brilliance of this film lies in the casting and character development of the seven, and of Calvera. The enigmatic, bald Brynner, with his vaguely Asian background, would seem to be an unlikely fit for a western. Even though he’s the leader of the seven and has more camera time than any of them, he remains enigmatic to the end of the movie. His bearing and his all-black dress seem a little unusual, too, but it all makes for one of the iconic characters of the genre (reprised by Brynner in one sequel and in the science fiction thriller Westworld). This was the breakthrough movie role for McQueen, who’d starred on television in Wanted: Dead or Alive. He would go on to have one of the greatest movie careers of the 1960s and 1970s, although that career did not include many more westerns. Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughan, James Coburn—every single one of the seven would be a significant star by the end of the decade, with one exception: Brad Dexter. And as these characters are introduced and later developed, enough time is spent to insure that we are interested, but they remain not entirely explained. Wallach is superb as Calvera, the greedy, human and philosophical bandit chieftain, and an interesting villain contributes significantly to the success of any western. (See him again in a similar role in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.)

One of its elements may be the best of its kind in any western: Elmer Bernstein’s score, especially the theme. Bernstein was the quintessential movie composer of his time; he worked quickly, and in a broad variety of genres. He scored hundreds of movies, and this may be his most memorable music. The cinematography of Charles Lang, Jr. is excellent, too. McQueen, Coburn and Bronson would work with Sturges again in The Great Escape, and this film would spawn three sequels—none remotely approaching this first in the series for quality and watchability. Decades later (1998-2000) it would even be a short-lived television series. And a new cinematic remake is currently in production and scheduled for release in late 2016, with Antoine Fuqua directing and Denzel Washington in the Yul Brynner role.

*The well-laundered whites of the peasants were apparently one result of Mexican authorities not liking the depiction of Mexican nationals in 1954’s Vera Cruz, also filmed in Mexico. For a period of several years thereafter, they were much more vigilant in policing the way Mexicans were shown in American films shot in Mexico. So the villagers in The Magnificent Seven were never dirty in their white peasant clothing.

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Great Western Movies

An In-Depth Guide to Westerns