by ·Comments Off on The Big Combo (1955, Joseph H. Lewis)

Handsome noir about a clunky police investigation. If you can watch it like a film critic, for pure light and sound, it’s a keeper. If you care about writing and plot, it’s iffy.

Donlevy in conference with the thugs:

Villain Richard Conte looked familiar (I guess from The Blue Gardenia or Thieves’ Highway), lead cop Cornel Wilde not so much (of Shockproof). Jean Wallace was best known as Wilde’s wife. The villain’s wife-in-hiding is Helen Walker of Nightmare Alley. The villain’s pathetic hanger-on was Brian Donlevy, who is both Quatermass and McGinty, and thugs Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman were both later in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The Swedish antiquer played a general in Merrill’s Marauders, and Bettini is Ted de Corsia, who must’ve had a noirish face, appearing in The Killing, Lady From Shanghai, and Naked City.

Cornel pays a visit to Bettini:

Conte shows Jean Wallace his closet:

by ·Comments Off on The Big Gundown (1967, Sergio Sollima)

The Big Movie Series #2. This is my third show in a row (after Nemesis and I’m a Virgo) where a lead character belatedly realizes they’ve been doing damage not out of righteousness but as a tool of capitalism. Lee Van Cleef is a ruthless lawman chasing escape artist Cuchillo because corrupt rich guys say he’s a criminal. Lee is as badass as you could hope for, but Cuchillo (Tomas Milian of Identification of a Woman and Four of the Apocalypse) still runs off with the movie. All I knew about this previously was the Morricone score – he and the writer and producer followed up with Once Upon a Time in the West, while Sollima went on to make a reportedly-great Charles Bronson revenge flick.

Just some doomed outlaws:

Our guys:

Hotwife Manolita Barroso:

by ·Comments Off on The Tin Star (1957, Anthony Mann)

Badass bounty hunter Henry Fonda (same year as 12 Angry Men) rolls into town and meets the unqualified local sheriff Anthony Perkins (three years pre-Psycho) who wants to do the right thing and arrest local bad guy Neville Brand (lead of Riot in Cell Block 11) even though it’ll probably get him killed. Meanwhile, Fonda is renting a room from a woman (Betsy Palmer, the killer in Friday the 13th) who has been exiled from town because of her half-breed son (Michel Ray, who would become an Olympic skiier and a beer billionaire). And Lee Van Cleef and his brother are going around murdering people. Fonda, an ex-lawman, says repeatedly that he’s done being a lawman, nuh-uh, never again, so we just know he’ll become acting sheriff and take care of things.

The writers lost the oscar to Designing Woman, but this was a very good Mann western to file with all the others.

Henry Fonda, Mrs. Voorhees and the young owner of Heineken:

Thanks to a well-placed mirror, we can see the bar fight and Perkins’ reaction:

by ·Comments Off on For A Few Dollars More (1965, Sergio Leone)

Zowie, a pip of a western, and not at all a sequel to A Fistful of Yojimbo like I’d feared. Thrilling action with all the close-ups and wide-shots, Morricone twang and badass tough guys we’d expect.

Clint, eight years before facing off against Briggs:
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Clint is a steely young bounty killer out for heaps of money.

Lee, some six years after Ride Lonesome:
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Lee is a steely older bounty killer out for revenge. Of course we do not know he’s out for revenge until the very end when it’s revealed that the music-box portrait chain he carries around belonged to his sister who was long ago killed by super-thug El Indio.

Gian Volontè of Hercules and the Captive Women, later in Le Cercle rouge and Sacco & Vanzetti:
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The meaning of this musical/emotional prop is withheld until the final showdown, almost exactly like Charles Bronson’s harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West. Lee and Indio are shown to be excellent long-range shooters. Lee, however, is the Fastest Man In The West (making the outcome of the climactic shootout a foregone conclusion). I think Clint’s special skill is a supernatural awareness of his surroundings, knowing exactly where/who to shoot. Awesome movie, anyway.

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by ·1 Comment

Two of Budd B.’s lately acclaimed late-50’s westerns starring Randolph Scott. Scott is around 60 in these, but not an Eastwood-like figure, kind of a big face and a game-show-host voice. All smiley in the first movie, darker and more serious in the second. I watched both on TCM, so all screenshots are stolen from elsewhere online.

The Tall T (1957)
Randolph Scott (“Randy” to Robert Osborne – they’re close) is kind of a stupid rancher, who loses his horse in a humiliating bet and has to hitch a ride home. Too bad the coach he hitches with is hijacked by bad men. The coach’s other passengers are a just-married couple, rich woman Maureen O’Sullivan and opportunistic accountant John Hubbard. Scott is just caught in the crossfire here, but since the bad men murdered his friend and the friend’s young son and tossed ’em in the well before Scott arrived, he is gonna get himself some revenge.

Randolph, 16 years after Fritz Lang’s Western Union, and Maureen, who started out in Frank Borzage’s Song o’ My Heart:
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Our head bad guy is Arthur Hunnicutt (Big Sky, The Lusty Men), and he’s got two sidekicks – not so bright Billy Jack (Skip Homeier of Fixed Bayonets) and sharpshooter Chink (Henry Silva!). Arthur sends the husband to make a ransom deal with the girl’s father, then kills the husband. Scott gets philosophical with Maureen over the death, then when Arthur rides off to collect payment, the prisoners wipe out Billy Jack and Henry Silva (awful lot of blood for the 50’s), wait for Arthur to return then kill him too.

John Hubbard as the traitorous coward husband:
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I liked it, but didn’t see what’s the big deal. Osborne points out that Randolph and Arthur seem like similar men, and their roles could just as easily have been switched – I guess I can buy that.

The great Henry Silva, forty years before Ghost Dog, in his first credited film role:
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Ride Lonesome (1959)

This one I liked better. We’ve got a younger, prettier, tougher dame (Karen Steele), a less smiley Randolph Scott, James Coburn in the Henry Silva slot (a fair trade), and a bonus appearance by Lee Van Cleef.

TV’s Karen Steele was also in Boetticher’s earlier Decision at Sundown and John Turturro’s favorite film of 1955, Marty.
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Scott is a bounty hunter who captures wanted killer Billy John (star of Fuller’s Verboten!) then runs into two other guys – smart guy Pernell Roberts (184 episodes of Bonanza) and dumb sidekick Coburn – who were out for BJ, not for the money but for an amnesty deal so they can live decent lives. These are obviously Good Guys, though the movie plays up the tension between them and Scott, having Pernell rave on about how he’ll have to kill Scott before they get to town.

James Coburn’s first film role! He’d become a regular for Sam Peckinpah, who also cast Randolph Scott in his final film role three years later.
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But Scott isn’t out for the money after all. He knows BJ’s dangerous brother Frank will follow them, and wants revenge for Frank’s killing Scott’s wife some years ago. Revenge taken, he surrenders the prisoner to his buddies for a happy ending. Oh yeah, and Karen Steele tags along for the whole movie but I missed exactly why because I was in the kitchen getting some ice cream during that scene. There’s a standoff with some indians who just killed her husband – I think it’s mostly an excuse for another fight scene.

Lee Van Cleef, recently of Sam Fuller’s China Gate, 25 years before Master Ninja:
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Good movie, gets a lot done in 90 minutes. Also the music doesn’t telegraph everything that’s gonna happen 20 seconds beforehand like in The Tall T.

Thrilling finale at the hangin’ tree:
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