THE GOLDEN ARROW. MGM, 1962. Originally released in Italy as L’arciere delle mille e una notte. Tab Hunter, Rosanna Podesta. Directed by Antonio Margerhiti. There are a lot more names in the credits, but they won’t mean much to you unless you speak Italian.

   Director Antonio Margerhiti had a few films released here under the nom-du-fake “Anthony Dawson” (not to be confused with the actor so memorable in Dial M for Murder), including War of the Planets and Web of the Spider, and he earned a mild reputation as a visual stylist whose films are sometimes fun to look at, if not to watch.

   The visual flair serves this film well, because The Golden Arrow is simply stunning: vast palaces, exotic cities and golden deserts done up in storybook Technicolor, set off with colorful costumes and lovely ladies… or the chiseled features and manly chest of Tab Hunter if your tastes run to that sort of thing.

   Tab Hunter was never as bad an actor as his reputation would suggest — he’s quite good in Gunman’s Walk — but he’s dubbed here, so it’s hard to evaluate his thespic accomplishments. In fact, the whole cast is dubbed, with some voice-actors clearly taking several roles, lending a comfortable feel for those of us who grew familiar with Italian movies in the 1960s, from Hercules to the Man With No Name.

   The story is a bit far-fetched perhaps, but once you accept Tab Hunter as an Arabian Bandit Chief, you can swallow the rest fairly easily. Princess Rosanna Podesta is being pressured by the evil Grand Vizier (you know the type) to marry one of three rather miserly Princes when she’s abducted by Tab and the Arabs. Not to worry though; it seems he’s really the son of the murdered sultan and rightful heir to some throne or other, and before we know it, Princess Rosanna has been returned to the palace (and the three Scrooges) while Tab goes off in search of the Golden Arrow that will restore him to his throne.

   Fairly standard so far, but here’s where things get whacked-out. Rosanna prays to Allah to help Tab, and Allah sends down three goofy angels to help him out with sundry miracles and magic tricks. No kidding, Allah sends three angels. At this point I began to wonder how this would have played in a Biblical epic if Jesus had gone around reuniting happy young lovers, and it gave me pause.

   But only for a minute. Next thing I knew, Tab had wandered into the Underworld, doing battle with fire monsters and resisting the advances of a kinky queen. Then the three pesky Princes got sent off on some kind of quest, each to find the rarest gift in the world to win Rosanna’s hand. Then Tab entered a city of ruins lorded over by an evil wizard. Then the evil Vizier poisoned Rosanna. Then Tab beat up the Wizard, returned a bunch of dead folks to life and resisted the advances of a grateful queen. Then… well you get the idea: just one damn thing after another here, with magic, treachery, pitched battles and the obligatory flying carpets thrown around like insults at a Friars Roast.

   In all, a film you can switch off your brain and enjoy without feeling guilty the morning after. Or not very guilty, anyway.

Jon and I watched this movie last night, the original, the one with with Martin Balsam, Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, not either of the two remakes. The movie probably doesn’t need one more review, but here’s the music that plays over the opening credits:

NOTE: The book review that follows was first posted on this blog on 20 August 2015. The movie review that follows after that was written today. Also note that the first eight comments were left last year and refer to the book only.

  PHILIP MacDONALD – The Mystery of the Dead Police. Doubleday/Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1933. Pocket #70, paperback, 1940. Dell D-247, Great Mystery Library #19, paperback, 1958. Macfadden Books 60-205, paperback, 1965. Vintage, paperback, 1984. First published in the UK as X v. Rex by Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1933, as by Martin Porlock. Films: MGM, 1934, as The Mystery of Mr. X; MGM, 1952, as The Hour of Thirteen.

   I don’t know where this book falls chronologically in terms of serial killer fiction, but it must have been one the first. (Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders was published in 1936, for example, but serial killers themselves (e.g. Jack the Ripper) had been around for a long time when this book was written.)

   The victims in this one, though, are all policemen. We know that the killer is a madman, for every so often we are given glimpses into his diary after each death, often in very inventive ways. There is an attempt by the author to throw suspicion on a gentleman adventurer named Nicholas Revel. He is, apparently, well-to-do, but no one, including Scotland Yard, knows how he has gained his fortune.

   The madman’s diary, I suspect, is of little interest to readers today — too many serial killers have come down the pike in the meantime, I’m afraid — but the mysterious activities of Mr Revel? This is what makes this tale go down a lot more easily than a lot of other detective fiction does that was written in 1933.

   Revel clears the former fiancé of Jane Frensham of being the killer, for example, but then he also seems to be romancing her a little as well. But since Miss Frensham’s father is the chief commissioner of the police, he finds himself helping to investigate the crimes, whether he wishes to or not.

   MacDonald is equally inventive in the way he tells the story, often in very short snippets from a multitude of viewpoints. The flaws in the telling, as I saw them, is that (as pointed out above) the madman is just that, mad, and that Revel’s place in the story is, alas, telegraphed long before I would have liked it to have been.

   But until the ending, I enjoyed the book very much. There is much about it that I will remember for some time. It has been considered a classic in many quarters over the years, but in today’s world of mystery fiction, I’m afraid it would be considered an old-fashioned and dated relic of its time, all for the reasons previously suggested or pointed out, nothing more, but nothing less, either.

THE HOUR OF 13. MGM, 1952. Peter Lawford (Nicholas Revel), Dawn Addams (Jane Frensham), Roland Culver, Derek Bond, Leslie Dwyer, Michael Hordern. Based on the novel The Mystery of the Dead Police, by Philip MacDonald. Director: Harold French.

   I have been told, but I do not know how true it may be, that this later film follows the earlier quite closely. If so, then even without seeing it, I can tell you that I’d be disappointed with the earlier one, too.

   Some of it has to do with Production Code. In the book [SPOILER WARNING] Revel gets away with his plan. In the movie, he is not so lucky. The final scene was the final straw, as far as I was concerned.

   Other changes: It is clear from the beginning of the movie what Revel’s plan is. It was revealed sooner in the book what he is up to than I would have liked, but for quite a while it causes quite a mystery if not a challenge to reader to figure it out on his or her own.

   The semi-romance between Revel and the police commissioner’s daughter (Dawn Addams) is nipped in the bud far from the end of the movie. Revel and the fiancé shake hands, and neither the latter nor the girl are mentioned again. In the movie, the killer is given a motive; in the book as I recall he was imply a madman. The time frame has been changed also, from the 1930s to Victorian England.

   But the biggest change, I think, was bigger than any of the above. In the book, a great amount of emphasis was placed on the serial killer, and the inability of Scotland Yard to capture him was such a sensational story that it threatened to bring the government down. In the movie, very little attention was placed on this. The byplay between Revel and the gentlemen at Scotland Yard is the complete story, somewhat amusing but much more trivial than what the larger impact the book intended to provide.

   Your opinions may vary on this. In terms of your enjoyment of the movie, it might be helpful if you have not read the book. It also might help if your opinion of Peter Lawford’s acting ability is greater than mine. He has a great speaking voice, but I have never found any depth in any of the characters I have ever seen him portray.

SIROCCO. Columbia Pictures, 1951. Humphrey Bogart, Marta Toren, Lee J. Cobb, Everett Sloane, Gerald Mohr, Zero Mostel. Screenplay: A.I. Bezzerides & Hans Jacoby, based on the novel Le coup de grâce by Joseph Kessel. Director: Curtis Bernhardt.

   Sirocco was hardly Humphrey Bogart’s finest hour. Directed by Curtis Bernhardt, this espionage thriller features Bogie in a role eerily similar to that of Rick Blaine in Casablanca. But Casablanca this is not. Rather, Sirocco is a rather tepid, occasionally soporific affair, about a Harry Smith (Bogart), a cynical high living arms dealer, based in Damascus in 1925 at a time when Syrian Arab nationalists were battling the French military stationed there.

   There is, of course, a girl and a romantic rivalry that has political overtones. In this case, the girl is Violette, a Frenchwoman portrayed by Swedish actress Märta Torén. A fine actress, to be sure; alas, she simply doesn’t have the screen presence of Ingrid Bergman. But then again who does?

   Lee J. Cobb, a fine character actor in some roles, portrays a French Army officer in love with Violette. Did I mention he’s also tasked with rooting out who is selling arms to Arab leader Emir Hassan? Hint: it’s Bogie’s character. That’s basically the whole plot.

   Then again, Sirocco isn’t a total wash. The cinematography is occasionally quite stellar, and Zero Mostel’s scenery chewing performance as a local merchant is quite memorable and downright enjoyable to behold. It’s just that one cannot help but compare this mediocre film with that of Bogart’s best films. Even if they named it Damascus – a far more fitting and preferable title – Sirocco would pale in comparison not only to Casablanca but also to one of my personal favorites, To Have and To Have Not. So, take it from me. It’s okay to forget Sirocco. After all, we’ll always have Paris.

MAX COLLINS – Hard Cash. Nolan #5. Pinnacle, paperback original, 1982. Reprinted as by Max Allan Collins, Perfect Crime Books, softcover, 2012.

   Professional criminal Nolan is going straight now as co-owner and manager of a seafood restaurant “on the banks of the Iowa River,” but his criminal past confronts him in the person of George Rigby, president of a local bank that Nolan had held up a couple of years earlier.

   Rigby is being eased out of his executive position and, knowing that his unfortunate habit of using bank funds for his own purpose will be disclosed in the next audit, wants Nolan to bring off a hit that will enable Rigby to restore the missing funds and support him and his ambitious mistress in his new life. His lever with the unwilling Nolan is a series of compromising photographs, so Nolan and Jon, Nolan’s young comic collector and artist side-kick, agree to co-operate and begin to set up the operation for Christmas Eve.

   Collins’ second plot line also concerns an incident in Nolan’s past, with murderous Sam Comfort and his surviving son, Terry, out to avenge their treatment by Nolan and his friends in an earlier drama of betrayal and revenge.

   The two plots — the bank job and the Comforts’ vengeance — coincide at the bloody climax of a sordid, improbable, and entertaining web of deceit and coincidence.

   Collins returns here to the competent form of the first two Nolan novels, and my only complaint concerns the padded exposition (for the convenience of readers unfamiliar with the earlier novels) and the coincidental deliverance of Nolan and Breen in the climax and denouement.

   Everyone’s plans go awry in this novel, and Nolan is as much a victim as the other characters, although he is luckier than any of his antagonists. The fates do conspire to do in the “truly” wicked, but they also do in one of Nolan’s confederates and spare Nolan himself a couple of turns of the wheel that seem intended only to leave the way open for the next book in the series. Sidekick Jon is still an appealing character, made all the more so by his reluctance to continue his life of crime.

   Nolan has been compared to Richard Stark’s Parker, but the Collins’ series lacks the bitter edge and power of the Stark novels, although this is a good suspense melodrama in a minor key.

FORT APACHE, THE BRONX. Time-Life/20th Century Fox, 1981. Paul Newman, Edward Asner, Ken Wahl, Danny Aiello, Rachel Ticotin, Pam Grier, Kathleen Beller. Screenplay: Heywood Gould, suggested by the experiences of Thomas Mulhearn and Pete Tessitore. Director: Daniel Petrie.

   I would venture that Fort Apache, The Bronx is one of those movies that elicits either strong positive or negative reactions, with few observers taking a neutral position on this gritty police procedural. Part of it, I suppose, concerns the subject matter; namely, the NYPD and its efforts (or lack thereof) to police the decaying, drug-infested, burnt-out South Bronx in late 1970s/early 1980s.

   The other aspect that likely provokes strong reactions is the fact that Fort Apache, The Bronx is less a plot-driven story than it is a character study of a middle aged cop trying to find meaning both personal and professional life. Indeed, the movie veers from crime film to romantic drama in the blink of an eye and then back again to crime film, often leaving the viewer less that surefooted as to where the movie is headed and what’s coming up next: more personal drama or a nasty, violent sequence showing the utter depravity of the criminal element in one of (at the time) New York’s roughest neighborhoods.

   Count me in the (all things considered) strongly positive camp, albeit with some caveats.

    Fort Apache, The Bronx was not directed by a well-known auteur and it certainly doesn’t have the same emotional punch as the grindhouse classic, Death Wish (1974), let alone Martin Scorsese’s brilliantly bleak Taxi Driver (1976), gritty New York films both.

   It does, however, have some exceptional standout performances by not only leading man Paul Newman, but also by supporting cast members Ken Wahl, Ed Asner, and Pam Grier.

   Newman, a fine actor more than capable of taking on demanding roles, portrays Murphy, a cynical, world-weary middle-aged cop stationed in the South Bronx. The precinct house, his real home, is nicknamed “Fort Apache” signifying that the station is less akin to a “normal” police station and more like a Western cavalry outpost in hostile Indian territory. Unfortunately, it’s a theme that doesn’t get played up as much as it might have.

   The plot basics: After a strung-out prostitute named Charlotte (Grier) murders two cops in broad daylight, Murphy and his young partner, Corelli (Wahl) are tasked by their new by-the-book boss (Asner) with rooting out the criminal element from the neighborhood and shaking them down for information on the cop killer. Little do the cops know that the killer isn’t a male suspect; rather that it’s the devilishly sociopathic hooker who has been responsible for an entire series of seemingly senseless grisly slayings. Complicating matters for the mismatched duo is endemic police corruption, the local heroin trade, and Murphy’s burgeoning romance with an emergency room nurse.

   Eventually, all the various subplots come together, some neatly and others not so comprehensively. All of this may give some viewers a sense of incompleteness, as if the various strands were never adequately resolved. But that, in my estimation, was the whole point of the film. Police work, especially in a beleaguered neighborhood in a dying part of town, is never really going to provide its participants with a total sense of closure.

   Overall, Fort Apache, The Bronx is a solid piece of filmmaking. Largely filmed on location, what the movie lacks in imagination, it more than makes up with stark images of decay and dilapidation. There’s one scene in particular, located toward the end of the movie that remains etched in my mind. Murphy (Newman) is walking alone on the sidewalk just below the elevated subway tracks. In the context of what has recently happened to his character, it’s a beautifully haunting scene begging the question as to what possible impact a solitary man can have in the midst of such sadness and disorder.

ROSS THOMAS – Voodoo, Ltd. Durant & Wu #3. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1992; paperback, 1993.

   Well, it’s out: Ross Thomas’s twenty-fourth book, and the third featuring the team of the lean, scarred Quincy Durant and Arthur Wu, pretender to the Chinese throne. What more needs to be said?

   The story takes place about five years after events of Out on the Rim. Durant and Wu are partners in WuDu, Ltd., a London firm that does for you which you might not want to do yourself. They are hired by Help! (a sort of headhunter firm for those with delicate, out-of-the-ordinary, and confidential needs) to find a pair of missing hypnotists. The hypnotists were also furnished by Help! to Ione Gamble, a famous actress-director accused of murdering her ex-lover and producer. Blackmail is feared, among other things.

   Recruited by Artie and Quincy to help are Otherguy Overby, an amiable but ruthless con man (“It was some other guy”), Georgia Blue, a thoroughly ruthless ex-Secret Service agent, and Booth Stallings, the international terrorist expert; all of whom appeared in the preceding Wu-Durant adventure. The interplay of characters among these five forms an integral part of the book.

   All of the things we’ve come to expect from Thomas are here to one degree or another. a convoluted fast-paced plot, thoroughly amoral characters (though usually charmingly so), and all imbued with Thomas’s wryly cynical way of looking at the world and its creatures.

   On the other hand … If you haven’t met the players before, you won’t find the usual carefully built and illuminating characterizations that are one pf Thomas’s strengths, and none of the supporting characters are strong enough to compensate. Too, the plot seems rather standard — for Thomas, anyway.

   Overall, it’s the weakest book he’s done in a long while. But it’s still damned good, and well worth your time.

Editorial Comment:   Barry’s author profile of Ross Thomas, which anticipated this as his next book, can be found on this blog here.

HOUSE OF 1,000 DOLLS American International Pictures, 1968. Originally released in Spain as La casa de las mil muñecas, 1967. Vincent Price, Martha Hyer and George Nader. Written and produced by Harry Alan Towers. Directed by Jeremy Summers.

   You know a movie’s in trouble when the hero of the piece gets third billing. You know it’s really desperate trouble when that billing reads “George Nader,” an interesting man perhaps, but never the most electrifying of actors.

   Actually, House of 1,000 Dolls has a few stylistic flourishes that make it just about worthwhile. It’ll never make anyone’s “10 Best” list, but it’s an okay time-killer if you’re in the mood.

   Vincent Price and Martha Hyer play traveling magicians in the employ of a shadowy figure known only as “The King of Hearts” using their act to lure beautiful women into sexual slavery in a Tangiers Brothel. This not only gives Price a chance to strut about in cape and top hat, looking regally sinister, but also gives writer/producer Towers ample opportunity to show lotsa young ladies running around in their undies, a win-win situation if ever there was one.

   I have to confess that I’ve only come across one real-life “white slavery” operation and it was a pretty tatty affair involving a few rather unattractive and not-very-bright young ladies (not all of them white, for that matter) held in the thrall (and ratty apartment) of a rather unpleasant and not-very-bright old guy. So maybe I don’t have a sound basis for comparison, but it seems to me that House not only sanitizes the concept but positively glamorizes it.

   In this film the women are all beautiful, the brothel lavish and well-staffed, and the operations positively baroque; one slave is actually delivered to the villains in an ornate coffin transported by a hearse, which strikes me as a lot of overhead for an enterprise like this.

   In keeping with the spirit, Price and Hyer do their act in the finest nightclubs, travel in style and employ a seemingly limitless army of black-clad nasty guys who travel in pairs and prove completely unequal to the task of eliminating George Nader.

   Ah yes: George Nader. It seems he’s a forensic examiner for the NYPD and this makes him an expert in all sorts of crime-fighting, following clues, trailing suspects, wise-cracking at the expense of local cops and bashing about a bit when the occasion calls for it. Yes, of course it does.

   Well you don’t go to a movie like this for stark realism, and I’m happy to say that House of 1,000 Dolls doesn’t bother with any. There’s a fairly rudimentary plot about George’s wife getting enlisted in the brothel’s Ladies Auxiliary, some mystery about who The King of Hearts will turn out to be, a few fights, chases, murders and a slave-girl revolt (are there echoes of Spartacus here?) all handled passably, sometimes stylishly… but somehow never memorably. This is a film you will soon forget, but it’s painless and sporadically fun to watch.

THE HILLS RUN RED. C.B. Films S.A., Italy, 1966. United Artists, US, 1967. Original title: Un fiume di dollari. Thomas Hunter, Henry Silva, Dan Duryea, Nando Gazzolo, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Gianna Serra. Screenplay by Dean Craig (Piero Regnoli). Directed by Lee W. Beaver (Carlo Lizziani)

   Imagine a Spaghetti Western without the jangling percussive score or the arty cinematography and directorial flourishes and with a more or less standard Western plot from an average lesser A Western of the fifties, and you pretty much have this. The Hills Run Red is a decent minor Spaghetti Western from producer Dino De Laurentiis shot handsomely in color and on more or less classical revenge Western lines, despite some over the top bits you expect of the sub genre.

   I would warn you of spoilers from here on, but honestly if you can’t figure this one out you have never seen a Western.

   Jerry Brewster (Thomas Hunter) and Cam Siegel (Nando Gazzolo) are ex Confederate soldiers, you can tell by their over the top Southern dubbed accents, who have stolen $600,000 from the U.S. Army and are on the run from pursuing soldiers when just north of the border the Army catches up with them. Brewster loses a game of high card draw and agrees to lead the Army away while Siegel will take the money and promises to take care of Brewster’s son and wife if the latter is captured.

   If you don’t see where this is going, you haven’t been paying attention all these years.

   Sure enough, Brewster is caught and sent to prison where he spends five years in hard labor and inhuman conditions well illustrated during the titles. When he is finally let go he heads home to find his home deserted (and no wonder he needed the money it is pretty palatial for the post Civil War West) and is promptly ambushed by two killers sent by his old pal Siegel who has been waiting five years. He is saved by the timely help of Winnie Getz (Dan Duryea), an out of work drifter who happens to be sleeping in the remains of Brewster’s barn, and learns from a dying killer that his wife died four years earlier never knowing Jerry Brewster was in prison as Jim Houston or had stolen the money and his son was taken in by Siegel, now known as Milton, who let poor Mary starve to death rather than share the money.

   This is accompanied by a half decent song about a golden haired woman.

   Either quite a few scenes of connecting material are cut from the film or the screenplay was written during a weekend binge, because no one ever asks questions like what is an aging man doing sleeping in the deserted Brewster barn in the middle of the day in the first place, or why the gun he provides the unarmed Brewster during the battle with the killers only has two bullets.

   For that matter why didn’t Duryea’s character just kill the two killers himself? There is an answer, but you have to fill it in for yourself because the screenplay leaves you to guess all the stuff most writers would take the time to fill in. I have to wonder if the screenwriter was a son-in-law or nephew or some other relation of Di Laurentiis, if not I hope he wasn’t allowed to write anything after this.

   Brewster swears revenge, and Getz, seeing a chance to get money out of it (exactly how is never explained, but turns out not to matter because … but then I don’t want to give away the big non-surprise), convinces him to play dead while Getz claims to have killed him and gets a job on Milton’s ranch in Austin. There is a fairly nasty scene where they get proof Brewster is dead by carving a tattoo off of his forearm and cauterizing it, but as Spaghetti Westerns go, it is pretty tame. I’ve seen much rougher stuff in American Westerns from a decade earlier. Hell, Gary Cooper lancing the boil on Karl Malden’s ass in Hanging Tree is more disturbing, and its played for laughs.

   From there, it is off to Austin where Milton has his ranch, and is pressuring the other ranchers trying to take all the land in standard Western bad guy fashion, aided by his chief henchman Garcia Mendez (Henry Silva) a sadistic hyena of an assassin and ranch foreman in black who covets Mary Anne (Nicoletta Machiavelli) Milton/Siegel’s sister. Apparently it has never occurred to Mary Anne to ask her brother why they had to change their last name, but she frankly never seems very bright anyway. Even by the standard of Spaghetti Westerns, Mary Anne is dumb as a rock.

   I won’t even bother with the fact this film is supposed to be taking place in at most the 1870‘s yet everyone is carrying hand guns not in common use for another decade. Those are pet peeves of mine and not really fair to the genre under discussion here.

   Brewster, now calling himself Jim Houston, the name he used in prison, shows up and promptly kills two of Mendez men aligning himself with the ranchers and a saloon owner. We are told the sheriff is dead, which still doesn’t explain where the Texas Rangers and Army are, since Austin is the capital of Texas — sorry, keep forgetting it is a Spaghetti Western and they don’t have books in Italy to use for research.

   In short order Brewster finds his son Tim (Loris Loddi), living in poverty working for a brutal smith on the Milton ranch, and after proving himself by beating up about eight of Mendez men is befriended by Mendez the cheerful laughing psychopath — you have to wonder Duryea didn’t keep suspecting he was cast in the wrong role, as Silva seems to be playing a Dan Duryea part but as a Mexican bandit.

   Of course Milton’s sister has eyes for Brewster (who keeps lingering on the Mary part of her name so we get the connection in case we are as dumb as she is) almost as soon as she sees him setting up a rivalry with Mendez that the screenplay lays on but then promptly forgets to follow up on as it hurries to the finale. Silva tries hard but can’t quite master the Duryea leer — or even the Jack Palance leer. I kept wondering if some of the laughing was directed at himself stuck with this screenplay.

   There are a number of big twists in the film that are only twists because the director and screenwriter weren’t familiar enough with the genre to properly set them up. At times it feels as if Di Laurentiis himself must have been shouting at them that they had a movie to make and not to bother with the plot. Quite a few things are never explained and never connected.

   Skipping some of the details of the plot, eventually a big gunfight takes place and the two men wipe out Mendez men in one of those over the top Spaghetti Western blood bath gunfights rather dully staged, save Duryea is enjoying not getting killed for once. He, or his stunt man, even gets to jump off a roof onto a bad guy on a horse. You know Duryea must have wanted to be the jumper and not the jumpee in that scene at least once in his career. Brewster then chases Mendez back to the ranch where Henry Silva gets a ridiculous death scene, involving enough lead to sink the Titanic.

   We have to hope he was getting paid a ridiculously high salary for this.

   Meanwhile a whore (Gianna Serra, who gets the single worst musical number I have ever seen in a Western early on in the film) who helped Mendez trap Brewster by waylaying Tim, has shot Mary Anne when Mendez tried to kidnap his bosses sister and ride away, Mendez has killed the whore/dance hall girl (once you hear her song you know where her talents lie and it an additional motive for Mendez to kill her), and Brewster comforts the wounded Mary Anne before, dressed as Mendez (and I wouldn’t have put those clothes on after putting six or eight holes in Henry Silva), he finally confronts and kills the cowardly Milton (we know he is a coward because earlier he nearly faints at the sight of his own blood) in a decently shot interior gunfight in the dark.

   At this point we discover Mary Anne is alive and it looks like she will end up with Brewster and his son Tim (what’s a dead brother among friends), the ranch is turned over to the Army to make up for the lost $600,000, the Army is told Brewster is dead and the now Jim Houston gets a reward and a badge as sheriff of Austin. (But wait, you say, the Army never knew who Brewster was and thought Jim Houston did the crime and the time so why … better still try not to think about it, it’s one of those uncrossed t’s or undotted i’s which abound in this films screenplay.) It’s a happy ending, shut up and enjoy it.

   Then there is a twist involving Winnie Getz that is never even hinted at in the film, Getz is Colonel Getz, an undercover Army officer trying to recover the stolen money all this time, explaining quite a few things which the screenplay finds so obvious it leaves for us to guess on our own. Most importantly this allows for possibly the only time in his long career of Westerns for Dan Duryea to not only be proven to be a total good guy, but get to literally ride off into the sunset as a bona fide hero. I admit I wanted to tear up a little at the prospect. It’s one of the few films where he even gets out alive, much less a hero.

   Got me right here — I’m tapping my chest, and it isn’t heartburn, though with this film it is hard to tell.

   Hunter overacts terribly at times — screaming his dialogue at other actors is his specialty, and it is a wonder Silva didn’t gain weight, he chews so much scenery, come to think of it he looks a little stuffed here, probably all that pasta, those cheekbones are positively rosy. Duryea seems happy to be getting paid for very little and not getting killed for once.

   The film is not in a class with any of the Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef films, certainly not most of the Django, Sartana, Nobody or other series, but it is not a bad Western, more like a classic Hollywood type than the ultra violent, cartoonish, and at times psycho sexual Spaghetti Western we know and love. It’s just above a passing grade as such things go, a bit like a shaggy puppy that wins you over by wagging its tail harder than it has to despite knocking over a few lamps in the process.

   Jack Elam claimed Henry Fonda called him when they were filming Once Upon a Time in the West and told him to come to Italy, they were paying them for doing nothing. You have to imagine someone told Duryea the same thing.

   But for me The Hills Run Red is worth seeing just to see Dan Duryea get to ride away into the sunset. It was a long time coming, and he honestly seems to be enjoying it, I know I did. Way to go, Dan, you made an entire Western without once shooting anyone in the back.

BLACK ORCHID. General Film Distributors/Kenilworth Film Productions, UK, 1953. Ronald Howard, Olga Edwardes, John Bentley, Mary Laura Wood, Patrick Barr, Sheila Burrell, Russell Napier. Director: Charles Saunders.

   Other than the leading man, Ronald Howard, on occasion known as Sherlock Holmes, the cast consisted of total unknowns to me, but this 60 minute detective thriller, within its limited range, made for an hour’s worth of good watching time. Not only that, I now know the names of two lady players to look out for in the future.

   In Black Orchid, Howard plays a research doctor whose marriage to a society class wife (Mary Laura Wood) is crumbling, and when the woman’s sister (Olga Edwardes) finds his medical research as fascinating as he does, he finds the attraction mutual. Divorce proceedings quickly ensue, but marriage unfortunately does not. It seems as though there was a law in England at the time forbidding men from marrying sisters of divorced wives.

   Until they die. The divorced wives, that is. You can guess what happens next, the police being prodded on by the dead woman’s devoted maid (Sheila Burrell). One clue to attest to the doctor’s innocence is, and maybe you can guess this, too, is a black orchid.

   The satisfaction you can get from watching small compact thrillers such as Black Orchid depends a great deal on your willingness to accept small jumps in logic and a certain trust in the fact that coincidences do happen. Set those aside, and you may have, as I say, a nifty little detective drama on your hands.