The Mother of Skaith Reviews – Tombstone (1993)

“I am very sleepy! I watched that movie you gave me all the way through last night! It is very violent! But I watched it. I even started to watch that other thing. The Director’s Commentary. That man in it was very good! He was funny. No, he is not Sam Elliott! I know Sam Elliott! He was Virgil Earp. What was the last Earp man? There was Wyatt, and Virgil, and who was the other? Morgan Earp.

“Who played him? Don’t give me that, I know people! I just don’t know their names. Who was he!? Oh. No, I don’t know that person. Well, who was the other man? The funny man. The other bad man did the spinning thing with the gun, he did this and that and up and down, all fancy thing. And then the other fool man, he did the same thing with a cup! Doc. He was just mocking the man! I was laughing so much. How do you come up with that sort of thing? I tell you what, it was very good writing. How did they come up with that ? Like that man doing that, and Doc doing that to mock him. You have to really appreciate how good the writers are who come up with that sort of thing. I mean, real authors.

“How did Doc become a Doc? Was he a real doctor? Why did he go west if he was a doctor? How do you become a gunfighter if you go west? Oh, he had TB? What is TB again? Well, how did that make him decide he was going to become a gunfighter? You have TB and you gonna be a fighter?

“So when that Wyatt said, he sees the sash, which is what the Cowboys wear, he’s gonna shoot the man wearing it, and that Ike Clanton–was Ike Clanton the leader? Or was the man in the red shirt the leader?

“–so Ike Clanton, he out there running away and they’re running after chasing him, and he takes off his sash and throws it away. Did they still shoot him after that? The man is not wearing a sash any more! That’s what I said, it is very violent. There is a lot of running around and shooting and fighting. And those men were bad! The bad men in The Magnificent Seven, they just go there to rob the people, they don’t kill the people! Unless, you see the man come running out to kill you. He just wants to steal from the people. But these in this one, they go and they just be killing for no reason! Oh, were they stealing too? What were they stealing? What were they doing with cattle? I didn’t see any cattle in the movie.

“And was that opium? When the man in the red shirt comes out and he’s all shooting the moon. It was opium! The Director’s Commentary said so. You could just buy it back then, like over the counter medications today. But it is so addictive! And that girl, Wyatt’s wife. She was addicted to it! That’s very sad. What happened to her? No, in real life, I want to know, what happened to her?

“I know they died, Riders. It was a long time ago. Everybody in the movie is dead now in real life, yes, I know that. Thank you for telling me. I would not have known otherwise.

“Warlock? Who is in that movie?”

(Reposted from 2019)

Raw Edge (1956 ) – Western Movie Review (rerepost)

[A/N: currently I have enough mental energy to work, work out, and eat food that isn’t the emergency pizza stash. Please enjoy this repost. ]

So I stumbled across this movie via Jeff Arnold’s Western movie blog). His review indicated, in short, that this movie is One Weird Puppy, but also that it starred Yvonne DeCarlo (she was in The Ten Commandments! And Criss Cross, and Brute Force. Really, IMDB, Brute Force? Huh.) Also, it has Rory Calhoun (Look, if you don’t watch 1950s B-Westerns, I don’t know what to say to you), and a couple of those other bit actors that you always can have fun spotting in the background going “sure, boss,” leering, and attempting the shoot the hero in the back.

IMDB: “In the lawless Oregon country of 1842, local magnate Gerald Montgomery decrees that any unattached woman belongs to the first taker. Dan Kirby is lynched, starting a stampede to claim his half-Indian wife Paca. Trouble starts with the local tribe, but worse is in store when Dan’s tough brother Tex rides in. The zeal of Montgomery’s men to protect him from Tex is tempered by their lust for Hannah, who’d be his widow.”

Soooo….yep, this is a weird movie all right. The person set up as the main villain does not have a big showdown with the hero; he’s absent most of the movie and the person whom the hero does confront and conquer is the two-bit thug we have been seen being a despicable lech the entire time. And there is the, uh, extremely weird setup for the plot to begin with.

(Quoth the Mother of Skaith: “Was that actually the law?” “No, mom. They made it up for the movie.” “Oh. Why?”)

What sets this movie apart from pure exploitation is the fact that all the characters–including the women–actively and intelligently work in their own interests. In both cases (yes, there’s only two women in the movie), their own interests prioritize: staying alive, protecting their loved ones, or avenging their loved ones, as well as conforming–or attempting to conform to–to standards of human decency.

Plot: So after the lynching of the guy who is going to be avenged by a handsome stranger with a gun, Mrs Montgomery/Hannah attempts to get his widow, Paca, to safety with her tribe. This doesn’t work; Paca is claimed by one of Montgomery’s men. She isn’t happy with the situation, needless to say, but sticking with the guy who can protect her is the only way to stay alive. She sticks with him, until the time comes when she can safely turn it around and…well….it’s not really a satisfying revenge, because it’s over too quickly. Meanwhile, Mr. Montgomery is absent (doing stuff. What stuff? The kind of stuff that keeps you out of the house when a handsome mysterious stranger with a gun arrives after you’ve lynched his brother), Mrs. Montgomery is not, and a handsome stranger mysterious stranger has just showed up with a gun.

You can kind of guess what happens from there on out. And even if you don’t, it’s unpredictably fun to watch happen.

Mrs. Montgomery is the damsel in distress of the movie and as such, given the expectations of modern audiences, is, well, actually slightly annoying. I kept yelling for her to get a freaking gun of her own. However, she is a genuinely likeable character regardless, and moreover, she’s consistently written. She remains ladylike and resourceful throughout all. You buy her personality and don’t want her to be hurt. She’s a loyal wife who loved (past tense) her husband, and is also semi-aware that the entire situation is his and partly therefore her fault. Still, Lady, get a freaking gun. (She does, however, attempt to brain a thuggish lech [Neville Brand, flashing his best teeth for the camera] with a candlestick in the final shootout. Which is something.)

The Indians are also given a treatment rather unusual for early westerns. They don’t whoop, they don’t shoot arrows, and they don’t get mowed down by the white men. They react to the murder of one of their own in a measured, reasonable way, and it’s quite satisfying.

The photography and acting is also very good; color is nicely used, scenery is lush, sets nice, etc. Yvonne looks spectacular and Rory is more than adequately handsome. I’m also out of time, so,

Rated: Four ornamental bull’s heads out of five.

Quik ReReview: Fort Bowie (1958)

Fort Bowie is a 1958 Western movie that stars Ben Johnson and a bunch of other names I don’t recognize. Probably no one else will, either. Anyhow:

– NO I AM NOT OBSESSED WITH YOUNG BEN JOHNSON BACK WHEN HE WAS FINE.

– Heh, he mentioned Mangas Coloradas (AKA, Lex Barker in the Barker-Johnson vehicle War Paint. Or War Pony. Or something like that. Previously reviewed on this blog somewhere.)  (Do I watch too many ’50s Westerns? Nooooooo of course not.)

– I’d watch a movie called War Pony.

– Well, you can’t say that this movie isn’t quick and to the point as far as characterization and plotting goes. We’re at 6 minutes flat and we know who is who and what’s what. Ben is Tomahawk Thompson, the Good Captain. The Bad Major is a Washington stooge who shoots Indians under a truce flag. The wishy-washy Colonel isn’t going to like this. (Neither are the Indians, but really, who cares?)

– Mind, the writing is pretty clunky. But it’s still fast-moving and fast-moving cheese is the best kind of cheese.

– OK, the Colonel just said he wanted his wife…alive, in one piece, and with her hair still on, three separate times in one conversation. If that isn’t a code for “murder that b*tch please” I don’t know what ain’t.

– Heh, “The woman of Victorio” was cast out by the Apache, who don’t trust her. Quoth Ben: “Seems to me you’re in a bad spot, lady. We don’t trust you, either.”

– Wow, that was direct of her.

– Oh, OUCH.

– You’d probably get in trouble for beating up a civilian.

– Wow, Ben is a magnet for forward women in this film, ain’t he. (…even though it’s hard to tell at bootleg resolution) (still not obsessed).

– Wow, Ben gets lucky a lot in this movie. Mind you, this is not a good idea. It’s not even as though the Colonel is particularly bad: he’s even resisting the Political Officer’s insinuations about genocide.

– The Colonel even dotes on her, she’s just a witch!

– Why are we spending so much time watching this witch?

– OH NO SHE THREW HIM UNDER THE BUS! WHY? SHEESH!

– YIKES SHE CAME RIGHT OUT AND SAID IT?! (Ben, we told you it was a bad idea!)

– CROCODILE TEARS LADY.

– So Ben gets what’s probably a suicide mission: take terms to Victorio while the other cavalry troops go rampaging around meanwhile. He points out that it might not be definite suicide, if the terms are such that Victorio likes them. Why do I get the sudden feeling that Victorio is not going to be offered reasonable terms….?

– “But sir, Victorio will chop Thompson into pieces and throw them at us!” (Direct quote).

– I love this movie. It’s pure cheese, but it moves fast, it thinks about things on an adult level, and then it does something juvenile while giggling instead.

– Ben salvages his conscience, dignity, and honor out of the wreckage of a conversation with Mrs. Colonel. That takes some doing…..ohh, so he actually didn’t sleep with her. He turned her down and she took it poorly. Well, obviously, he’s the hero.

– Ben points out that if Victorio smells a trap, he, Ben, will be in deep trouble.
“Yes, you’d be the first victim.”
“But not the last, sir.”
“….yes.”
(Snerk.)

– So: there is a possibility Ben might survive the Colonel’s Uriah Gambit. On the other hand, there is a strong possibility Mrs. Colonel is going to end up dead by the end of the movie. AND GOOD RIDDANCE. The Indian girl is much nicer, Ben.

– Oops, the negociations failed. Well, who could have possibly seen that happening?

– Aww, Victorio rides a white horse, and he gets to kill the evil Major himself. And then scalp him. See, that’s what we call progress!

– ….mind you, he does leave orders for Ben and Co. to be tortured. It’s an incremental process.

– That was the most lackluster stampede I’ve ever seen. Sheesh.

– See, this film has kind of set things up to the point where I’m actually hoping the Apaches take Fort Bowie. And that’s not really a good thing, honestly, because aside from Victorio there are no Indian characters to be rooting for.

– Lady, loading rifles is honestly the least you could do. And shut up and stop trying to manipulate your husband. WHAT THE HECK DO YOU MEAN, YOU’VE NEVER LOVED ANY MAN BUT HIM? WHAT? ARGH.

– Oh no, darn it, the cavalry has arrived. Drat. I was hoping they’d take the fort!

– Tomahawk fight! A clinch! Oh no! Who will the Colonel shoot with his last bullet!?

– Well, Ben survived.

– Also the Colonel has apologized.

– Indian Girl is injured, but at least she’s got Ben….

– AHH GROSS IT’S A KISSING SCENE EWWWWW FASTFORWARD IIIIIT

Rated: Lol, it’s a B-grade Western, what do you expect?

Gunsmoke (1953) – Movie reReview

Audie Murphy and Susan Cabot, who collaborated at least two other times, in Duel at Silver Creek and Ride Clear of Diablo, are the leads in this lightweight but thoroughly well-made and entertaining movie. Also in it is Charles Drake, the white knight to Audie’s black knight in No Name on the Bullet. All of those are extremely good movies. Just about all of Audie’s works are on the + side of B or at least the – side of A.

This one is an easy A if you ask me.

So, this one is about a young gun, Reb Kittridge, drifting into Billings after having made a quick and escape from Johnson County. He’s got a job lined up in Billings, but the situation grows rapidly murky when someone takes a potshot at him before he even gets into town, he meets the daughter of his presumptive target, Rita Saxon (Cabot), and then declines a gunfight with Old Man Saxon (since he hasn’t actually been formally hired yet.) This sort of behavior endears him greatly to Old Man Saxon–who used to be a hellraiser himself, and remembers what it was like to be a young gun who wants out and just needs a leg up…

Anyhow, the bad guy wants the Saxon ranch; Saxon doesn’t want to sell; Kittridge kind of wants to be done with this whole gunslinging business, blah blah blah…so Saxon “loses” his ranch to Reb in a game of cards (“complete with morgage,” heh.)

So now, the burden of the plot is on Audie to get his cattle to market by hook or by crook, with Telford (the bad guy) breathing down his neck and Rita’s bushwacking fiance also causing trouble. Also, Reb’s erstwhile friends have now become business rivals and are now trying to murder him. Better yet, the Saxon ranch genuinely is in a peck of trouble, mortgaged, facing a tight deadline, and low on men and beef both (“That’s your problem, son.” Hehhh.) Oh yeah, and there isn’t even enough money to make payroll for all the men who are about to quit, HAH.

And even better still, Miss Saxon is not at all pleased with the change of management in her home.

And so the fun begins…

– It’s actually kind of a bad look to be picking a fight with a man six inches shorter than you, Curly…
– That being said, Audie (briefly) going berserk on some stuntmen is a definite highlight.
– Rita in some really 50s’ underwear and an incredibly pointy bustier, is also, as Kittridge points out, also worth looking at. I mean…corsets, man. Just…corsets.
– Old Man Saxon has a pretty good role, fatherly, calm, and stalwart…but also slyly running the whole show from the back seat the whole damn time.

There really isn’t all that much more to say about this movie, other than it’s well-written, is acted with distinction and great prowess, moves quickly, is fun and occasionally, genuinely clever. It’s a credit to its genre and you ought to give it a watch.

Rated: See ya round, Johnny.

Movie (re)Review – Best of the Badmen (1951)

Best of the Badmen was released in 1951, is a Western, and stars Robert Ryan, Claire Trevor, and Walter Brennan, in case you needed to know any of that.

This movie was indecisive.

It’s got good filming/staging/cinematography. (Look, I am easy to please. If the colors are pretty and there are lots of them, I am happy.) It’s got good fight choreography (Robert Ryan was a collegiate boxer and knew how to throw a punch). It’s got some pretty top-notch actors–Walter Brennan in particular underplays his usual humorous old-timer role with an almost villainous edge, to interesting effect. On the other hand, there are times when the actors–especially Robert Ryan–nail their parts effortlessly, and then there are times when they don’t. If they’d all gone full-throttle, all the time, it might have smoothed over the deficiencies of the script and made it better overall.

Anyhow, it’s also got an intriguing concept for a plot: post the Civil War, the man (Jeff Clanton, Robert Ryan) who brings in Quantrill’s Raiders (you know–Jesse James and the like) peacefully, is double-crossed or outfoxed or whatever, by the evil carpetbagger-slash-Pinkerton, Fowler. Fowler wants the rewards on the Jameses and Youngers; when Clanton refuses to hand them over, has him found guilty of murder in a kangaroo court and sentenced to hang. However, after Mrs. Fowler (Claire Trevor) breaks him out of jail and he hooks up with the outlaws, the once peaceable Clanton is hell-bent for revenge on Fowler. (Only Fowler–he doesn’t care about the money.) Also, Mrs. Fowler has also taken refuge in the outlaw town–incognito–and hooks up with Clanton. Dum-de-dum, something something outlaw raid, oh, and maintain your humanity and let’s escape to Mexico but not until I. Get. Fowler.

So you can see there is much that could be of interest there. However, it’s got a script that doesn’t quite pull together as well as it should, and can’t decide whether it is going to be dumb but competent and occasionally witty, or dumb but moralizing and dramatic. It settles on dramatic….and dumb.

Pros: The characters are well-sketched. Walter Brennan, playing an antiheroic twist on his usual role, is quite good. Even the outlaws, who usually would be consigned to a surly bunch in the background, are fairly distinctive and have a certain amount of personality. Claire Trevor (rather zaftig and looking glam in period costume) does fine in an ambiguous but also slightly underwritten role. Jack Beutel, as the sidekick, is good at being A Good Kid.–which, if that name sounds vaguely familiar, yes indeed he was Billy the Kid in the 1943 horrorshow The Outlaw. He’s wayyyyy better in this movie. [This is not difficult.]

Cons: The script is a lot stupider than it needs to be and there is the distinct impression at points that the actors knew it, too. Oh, and the ending is abrupt, moralistic, and pretty darned unsatisfying. Other than that, it’s a good little movie.

Rated: Oh, and Robert Ryan has a shirtless scene.

Music Monday – Paladin, Paladin

Quik(re)review – The 13th Letter (1951)

So I (re)watched The 13th Letter – a 1951 movie directed by Otto Premiger (you know, the name you know from lots of better movies such as Fallen Angel, Laura, Where the Sidewalk Ends and…River of No Return? Huh.) and starring an underwritten Linda Darnell, a bored Charles Boyer, and Michael Rennie’s cheekbones as the hero.

It’s about a (very) tall, handsome, young, unmarried doctor who has set up in a small Canadian town and is just starting to settle himself and his clock collection in comfortably. The settling-in process is interrupted by a series of poison pen letters accusing him of an affair with Charles Boyer’s wife. This is, of course, nonsense, because Rennie has Linda Darnell throwing herself at him in a negligee and it’s getting harder and harder to dodge. But things get decidedly serious when one of the letters’ receivers commits suicide on being told he has cancer. Everyone is a suspect now–from the incompetent hospital nurse who is Boyer’s spurned ex and Boyer’s sister-in-law, to Darnell’s snide younger sister, to Linda Darnell herself. And what is the terrible trauma which lurks in our hero’s past…?

The reveal is two-fold, and actually rather more satisfying than you’d expect. It’s even been cunningly foreshadowed by Boyer’s doctor character explaining to another about this weird psychological condition known as folie a deux…

All that said, it’s still a bit underwritten. There’s enough story here for a TV episode, not really for a movie. Linda Darnell has barely anything to do except look alternately sultry and sulky, and there’s nothing whatsoever to make the romance between her and Rennie interesting other than both parties’ good looks. The central mystery is, fittingly, the most intriguing part of the story; but it’s a little hampered by the fact that there are really only two strong suspects and neither of them get any focus. Inserting more plot–such as making the “investigation” less laughable–would have provided more interest, and more room for all characters to explore and expand. It didn’t, it wasn’t, they couldn’t, and ultimately this movie is….a bit underwritten, and its cast members–who totally did have the ability to take what they were given and deliver on it–were good-looking but underserved.

Rated: I’m going to do something productive with my day any minute now. Annnny minute now.

Bar Fight Friday

Name all three movies correctly, and I’ll post a bin.

It has a great theme song!

It has The Mother of Skaith’s approval!

Haha I know no one’s going to get this one.

QuikReview: Gunman’s Walk (1958)

(reposted from: Watchlist Update)

This one was actually kind of hard to watch: it’s about a strong and headstrong man who goes his own way and raises his sons to do the same…and how his sons, well, do the same.

Van Heflin is solid and by turns charming and unpleasant as patriarch Lee Hackett, who considers himself one of the boys, except for when he doesn’t, and don’t you forget it, kid. He owns the biggest spread in the state, and built every bit of it up with his own hands at the barrel of a gun, wrestling control from wrestlers and Indians. Only….

…only, that was a long time ago and the place is civilized now. It’s illegal to wear guns in town. (It’s illegal to shoot people, too.) Lee himself skirts around issue #1 by having a thorough understanding of issue #2, but his eldest son…

Tab Hunter (also seen as a juvenile in the George Montgomery flick Gun Belt) is Ed Hackett: handsome, ambitious, sullen, resentful, and generous by turns. (Except the handsome bit. He hangs on to that with great prowess throughout the entire movie.) He’s grown up in the shadow of his father and wants to move out of it, but at every turn keeps finding that Dad is–and indeed, all the other authority figures in town are–just a little ways ahead of him. Like, twenty years ahead of him. And when you’re playing with fire and loaded guns, and even if Dad does keep bailing you out of trouble–you don’t get a whole lot of second chances.

Hunter gives an excellent performance–he considered it his best role, apparently, as it gave him a chance to show he wasn’t just another pretty face. He also rides impressively well, so he’s got that going for him, too.

James Darren as the Good Son and Kathryn Grant as the half-Sioux but entirely civilized love interest whose brother was killed…semi-inadvertently…by Ed, have less material to work with but still serve their parts well as the immovable moral centers around which the rest of the characters circle, orbit, and/or crash.

Another reviewer pointed out that this movie might also be read as anti-gun. I suppose you could make that argument, but I find it more of a condemnation of the people who take on a deadly responsibility, perhaps themselves with a clear understanding of what it is–but who fail to teach their children the same. Lee carries a gun as a statement of power, independence, and self-reliance, not quite understanding why this statement is out of fashion in the modern day, but still somewhat understanding that it is. On the other hand, his son, who has absorbed that wearing a gun means standing apart from people who don’t, is violently confused as to why there still seem to be constraints, and so many conflicting rules about his behavior…when he’s the man with the gun.

The ending is standard and a bit pat, but it’s also what the audience, having grown to understand the characters and know their ways, knows is coming–and wants to see.

Rated: four white mares out of four.

Read/Watchlist

Mostly, it’s been The Shadow novels. However, there are others.

– The Continental Op – Dashiell Hammett

– Star Man’s Son – Andre Norton, which is a post-apocalyptic scifi-adventure

– Carpe Jugulum – Terry Pratchett

Watchlist:

– Spy x Family is incredibly cute, wholesome, funny, exciting, well-paced, well-written, well-characterized, well-plotted, and overall just awesome. One of the reasons I never could get into American comics in a big way is that the art style is always uneven or just plain ugly. Manga-style art just looks so much better to my eye!

– Diablo (2015) – a nu-Western starring Scott Eastwood, who really should have asked his pops for some help. It’s one of those “I have one clever idea, one idea should be enough to swing a movie on,” and “I want it to be dramatic and meaningful,” type movies that only has a budget of around five dollars (4.95$ of which went to Scott’s hairdresser), and which desperately needed someone who knew what they were actually doing to write the script (to make it meaningful) and direct it (to make it dramatic.) It’s basically unwatchable, and I only skipped to the end because the synopsis spoiled the twist and I was curious to see how it ended. Shame, that.