DAY OF THE EVIL GUN. MGM, 1968. Glenn Ford, Arthur Kennedy, Dean Jagger, John Anderson, Paul Fix, Nico Minardos, Dean Stanton, Pilar Pellicer, Parley Baer, Royal Dano. Screenplay: Charles Marquis Warren and Eric Bercovici, based on a story by the former. Director: Jerry Thorpe.

   Day of the Evil Gun is perhaps more enjoyable for the films it remembers than for the film it is, but I found it an agreeably entertaining ninety minutes or so when I saw it at the local grind-houses in my misspent college years and again when I revisited it last month.

   Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy star in this thing, and their iconic presences add a certain amount of dramatic weight to what would otherwise have been a rather insubstantial effort.

   How insubstantial? Well the plot is the well-worn one about a gunfighter (Glenn Ford) forswearing violence and returning home, only to find … well they always find one damn thing or another, and this time it’s that his wife and kids got carried off by Injuns t’other day.

   Well hell. So Glenn has to strap on his guns and ride off once again, following what clues he can find to rescue his family.

   What follows is rather cheaply done, with only a few sets and extras, simplistic action scenes, and even a dearth of horses. There are a few good ideas here and there, too often let down by uninspired execution.

   The Indians who have been marauding the countryside, appearing at will and then vanishing like ninja warriors when they decimate a troop of soldiers, get a bad case of the Stupids once Glenn actually catches up with them, and the rescue the film has been building to seems easy and anticlimactic.

   Lame script and fitful direction (by Jerry Thorpe, son of Richard Thorpe, a director who plodded around Metro for a generation) don’t help at all.

   But what does help is a cast that seems to remember better days, starting with Dean Jagger as a crazed (or is he?) drifter who gets along with the Apache — a direct reference to Old Mose in The Searchers. Then there’s Paul Fix as yet another weary marshal, John Anderson from Ride the High Country, Royal Dano from Johnny Guitar and James Griffith, who incarnated both Doc Holiday and Pat Garrett in the B movies at various times.

   All of whom are outshown by Arthur Kennedy as a neighboring rancher who’s been a-courtin’ Glenn’s wife whilst he was gone. Back in the 50s, Glenn Ford may have been the bigger star, always the savvy westerner, but Kennedy got the juicier parts, invariably as the likeable but weak-willed good/bad guy who gets corrupted in films like Rancho Notorious, The Lusty Men, Bend of the River and Man from Laramie, and it’s good to see him get out the Moral Disintegration bit one more time.

   The last face-off between Ford and Kennedy, two dusty veterans stepping out in the street for a last bout of gunplay, is done with authority and even a certain reverence, and it’s a real pleasure to watch, even if the ending is a foregone conclusion.

TWILIGHT IN THE SIERRAS. Republic Pictures, 1950. Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Pat Brady, Estelita Rodriguez, Russ Vincent, Foy Willing & the Riders of the Purple Sage. Director: William Witney.

   I was recently talking to a friend about the Hopalong Cassidy movies, and how he thought they were better than the B movie classification they’re lumped into. I still haven’t seen any of them recently enough to say whether I agree with him or not — and maybe I’m overstating his premise — but I just watched this Roy Rogers movie, and even though Roy was the “King of the Cowboys,” it’s a B movie all the way.

   You probably know how it goes without my much telling you. Roy and his gang spend the movie singing around the campfire or up in the bunkhouse, and every once in a while a story breaks out.

   In this case it’s a gang of counterfeiters Roy is after, and a parolee in Roy’s custody was once an engraver, if you get my drift.

   The parolee has a sister, and if the gang can get their hands on her, well sir, they’re in business. There is also a hunt for a vicious mountain lion, lots of fights, a shooting or two and a couple of runaway buckboards.

   What set Roy’s movies off from all the others, I think, is that they took place in the “modern” west, with buses coming into town instead of stagecoaches, and Roy, Pat and Dale communicating with each other by walkie-talkie. This is kids’ fare, all right, but even though I winced every so often at the wooden dialogue, I still thought it was neat.

  THE BARGAIN. New York Motion Picture Corp., 1914. William S. Hart, J. Frank Burke, Barney Sherry, James Dawley, Clara Williams, Charles Swickard, Roy Laidlaw, Herschel Mayall. Scenario by Thomas H. Ince and William H. Clifford; cinematography by Joseph H. August and/or Robert Newhard. Director: Reginald Barker. Shown at Cinevent 39, Columbus OH, May 2003.

   Hart’s first feature-length film, The Bargain, as the program notes aptly pointed out, established the basic elements that would be a hallmark of the Hart Western (notably the concept of the good-bad man who is regenerated through his love for a good woman).

   The film was shot in and near the Grand Canyon (with some sources claiming the cinematography was by Joseph August) and while the print was not always the sharpest, varying in quality from reel to reel, the Arizona landscape was captured in its startling beauty and awesome grandeur.

   I was immediately struck by the opening sequence in which each of the cast members is first shown in evening attire, then as they bend over, hiding their face from the camera, they straighten up in makeup and costume for their on-screen-roles. (Dan Stumpf commented that he had seen this device used in at least one other Hart film.)

   Hart plays outlaw Two-Gun Jim Stokes who, after he is wounded by a posse, is rescued by a farmer (J. Barney Sherry) who takes him to his shack, which he shares with his daughter Nell (Clara Williams).

   Stokes and Nell fall in love, are married, and Stokes leaves to settle some unfinished business (he plans to return the money from his most recent holdup), promising to return.

   He’s captured by Sheriff Bud Walsh (J. Frank Burke) but when Walsh, falling prey to temptation, gambles away the money he’s rescued from Stokes, Stokes strikes a bargain that will save Walsh’s reputation and allow Stokes to escape to a new life.

   In a sense, The Bargain was Ince’s response to DeMille’s The Squaw Man. It made Hart a star and confirmed the Western as a major film genre.

   Dawn at Socorro (1954), a thinly-veiled Earp/Clanton drama, covers much of the same ground as OK Corral and Hour of the Gun, with a fraction of the time and pretension. Rory Calhoun is the Doc Holliday figure, Alec Nicol is Johnny Ringo, and Lee Van Cleef is the last surviving Clanton.

   There’s a nice bit where Van Cleef arrives at a Swing Station to ambush the stage carrying Calhoun. As the stage draws near, he turns to the Station Man, jacks a round into his Winchester and says something like “My name’s Billy Clanton. Be sure and tell everyone you saw me kill Doc Holliday.”

   Footage of Calhoun offing the baddies in this film (Gee, hope I didn’t spoil the suspense!) was later used as flashbacks in Red Sundown (1956), directed by Jack Arnold with his customary flair for violence.

   Domino Kid (1957) features Calhoun as the guy out to get the men who killed his parents and looted their ranch while he was off to War. It starts out very fast and interesting, with fine cameos of two of the baddies, played by Roy Barcroft, fatalistically toasting his opponent before the gunfight, and James Griffith, psychotically snarling and justifying his actions as Frontier Law.

   This lasts about the first 20 minutes, and then the action just sort of stops. Dead in its tracks. Disappointing, but the first part is still quite nice.

   Four Guns to the Border (1954) is a Western Caper film, with Calhoun the head of a gang that includes Jay Silverheels, George Nader, and John McIntire. Their plan is to visit the town that Calhoun was run out of years ago by his erstwhile gunbuddy, the gutless Charles Drake, and rob the bank while everybody’s gathered at the stables watching Calhoun and Drake duke it out.

   There’s lots of moody, tenseful waiting around at a Swing Station outside of town, and what looks like a very grim climax indeed — at first.

   Calhoun wrote the script for an interesting Western, Shotgun (1955) featuring Sterling Hayden, Zachary Scott and Yvonne De Carlo, but his last good oater was The Gun Hawk, where he’s a wounded, burned-out gunfighter pursued by Sheriff Rod Cameron. In this one he gets the chance to reprise the ending of Four Guns to the Border and bring it to its logical conclusion.

● DAWN AT SOCORRO. Universal International, 1954. Rory Calhoun, Piper Laurie, David Brian, Kathleen Hughes, Alex Nicol, Edgar Buchanan, Mara Corday, James Millican, Lee Van Cleef. Director: George Sherman.

● DOMINO KID. Columbia Pictures (1957). Rory Calhoun, Kristine Miller, Andrew Duggan, Yvette Duguay, Peter Whitney, Roy Barcroft, James Griffith (the latter two uncredited). Director: Ray Nazarro.

● FOUR GUNS TO THE BORDER. Universal International, 1954. Rory Calhoun, Colleen Miller, George Nader, Walter Brennan, Nina Foch, John McIntire, Charles Drake, Jay Silverheels, Nestor Paiva. Based on a story by Louis L’Amour. Director: Richard Carlson.

● THE GUN HAWK. Allied Artists, 1963. Rory Calhoun, Rod Cameron, Ruta Lee, Rod Lauren, Morgan Woodward, Robert J. Wilke, John Litel. Director: Edward Ludwig.

NOTE:   Dan reviewed The Gun Hawk at much greater length here earlier on this blog. Another Rory Calhoun western recently reviewed by Dan was The Silver Whip. This post is a continuation of that one. You may go back and find it here.

THE SILVER WHIP. 20th Century-Fox, 1953. Dale Robertson, Rory Calhoun, Robert Wagner, Kathleen Crowley, James Millican, Lola Albright. Based on the novel First Blood (1953) by Jack Schaefer. Director: Harmon Jones.

   Been a mess o’ Rory Calhoun movies on lately, some pretty good. Calhoun was always the City Slicker’s idea of a Cowboy: Cool, well-groomed, morally ambiguous, often even the Heavy of the Piece, as in The Spoilers or River of No Return, but always playing his cards close to his vest in any case, his calculating eyes clearly on the Main Chance. Not a Great Actor by any stretch, but within his range quite competent and even memorable on occasion.

   Later on he began doing cameos in intriguing B-flicks like Angel, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Motel Hell, and Roller Blade Warriors, all of which are better than they sound, which is faint praise, I know, but well-intended. They’re worth a look, as is:

   The Silver Whip, an occasionally interesting western with Calhoun as a rough but proper Sheriff, Dale Robertson — incredibly macho-looking — as his less legal-minded but heroic buddy, and Robert Wagner as the identity-seeking youth torn between the two role models.

   There’s a fascinating bit of action where the three heroes are stalking the heavy across the badlands, a picturesque location all by itself, with boulders, crevices, arches and cave in a baroque panoply. You’ll see one of the characters move across this arresting background, dodging from cover to cover, moving from long-shot to close-up.

   Then, as he takes off, the camera stays where it is, and in the background you see one of the other heroes, previously obscured by the character in foreground, still half-hidden among the rocks, and follow him as he moves across the terrain from cover to cover, the camera tracking along and closer to him until he ends up in close-up, takes off again, and the camera stays put and in the background we see another hero, previously obscured by the character in foreground, still half-hidden etc. etc.

   This goes on long enough to get really entertaining.

Coming Soon to This Blog:   Several more Rory Calhoun movie reviews by Dan, including (wait for it) Hell Comes to Frogtown.

NORTH OF 36. Paramount Pictures, 1924. Jack Holt, Ernest Torrance, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, David Dunbar, Stephen Carr. Based on the novel by Emerson Hough. Director: Irvin Willat. Shown at Cinevent 35, Columbus OH, May 2003.

   Lois Wilson plays Taisie Lockheart, a Texas rancher who needs to get her herd of cattle to Abilene and across “a thousand miles of Indian territory.” Noah Berry, the villainous Texas State Treasurer (some things never change, I guess) Sim Rudabaugh, scheming to take control of her land by any means necessary, tracks the cattle drive with a crew of ruffians among whom is good guy Jack Holt aiming to thwart Rudabaugh’s plan.

   This was conceived as a sequel to The Covered Wagon and was to be directed by James Cruze, but a cut in the budget lost the company the director and its grandiose plans for another epic of the West.

   However, they were able to engage the last remaining herd of longhorn cattle for the drive and the excitement of the drive and the work of an excellent cast more than makes up for any budget deficiencies.

   The punishment meted out to Rudabaugh by the Indians he’s wronged is a truly horrific moment in film vengeance, and the audience responded with cheers and applause. They don’t make ’em like this anymore. And they should.

THE LAST SUNSET. Universal Pictures, 1961. Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten, Carol Lynley, Neville Brand, Regis Toomey, Jack Elam. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, based on the book Sundown at Crazy Horse, by Howard Rigsby. Director: Robert Aldrich.

   If you’re ever looking for something terse and violent in a Western, you may find it in Sundown at Crazy Horse (1957), by Vechel Howard (aka Howard Rigsby). Like most Gold Medals, it’s a fast, fun read, and Howard has a gift for conveying information with intriguing detail that notches this way above average.

   He knows the gritty details of moving cows around, and he can put them across without getting his foot tangled in the stirrup. He also shows a subtle gift for characterization that eludes many more successful writers — insert names here.

   In 1961 screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo added a layer of Greek Tragedy to this simple tale, and Robert Aldrich filmed it as The Last Sunset, with Rock Hudson as the lawman, Kirk Douglas the good/bad guy, Dorothy Malone the woman they both want, plus Jack Elam and Neville Brand as a pair of perfectly-cast owlhoots.

   They should have known better than to complicate a story whose chief asset was simplicity, as the movie slows up some, but it’s sustained by Aldrich’s flair for the perverse and westerns don’t get much kinkier than this.

PARTNERS OF THE SUNSET. Monogram, 1948. Jimmy Wakely, Cannonball Taylor, Christine Larson, Steve Darrell, Marshall Reed, Jay Kirby, Leonard Penn, J.C. Lytton. Screenplay: J. Benton Cheney. Director: Lambert Hillyer.

   Just so that we’re squared away with this right from the start, the title of this movie is purely generic. It has nothing to do with the story line at all.

   And for a movie that’s only 53 minutes long — and that includes five songs — it’s as full of as much villainous treachery, all-around bad-guy-ism and men on horses running here and there as any aficionado of the good old-fashioned B-Western could possibly want.

   Plus the comedy antics of Cannonball Taylor, not usually one of my favorite sidekicks, but he makes good use of a fishing pole on several goofy but well-timed occasions in Partners of the Sunset.

   What more could you want? As an actor, Jimmy Wakely was an awfully good singer, and when the singing cowboy began to disappear from the big screen in the 1950s, so did his movie career. Not that he probably noticed very much. As I say, he was maybe the best singer of all the singing B-Western cowboys, and he’s in good form here.

   He plays the foreman of a horse ranch in this movie, and working under budget constraints, Cannonball Taylor seems to have been the only ranch hand. The story begins in earnest when the owner of the ranch comes home with a new bride perhaps half his age, played by the beautiful Christine Larson. The ranch owner’s son (Jay Kirby) expresses a different opinion of the lady and is forcefully kicked off the ranch.

   Complications begin to mount precipitously from there, but it turns out the son is right. The lady may be beautiful, but she’s certainly no lady. She’d not even be out of place in a tough guy crime drama. Except for Cannonball talking too much out of turn, Jimmy Wakely’s plan may have…

   But watch the movie. It’s no High Noon, but even the kids at the Saturday matinee may have realized this particular entry in the Wakely resume may have been one of his better ones.

   (A small caveat, or Truth in Advertising: I haven’t watched them all, only this one and one other, which was fairly dull and uninteresting and will not be mentioned further.)

   As for screenwriter J. Benton Cheney, I don’t know much about him, but in 1948 alone, he wrote 12 small epics just like this one, presumably all for Monogram. By 1950, however, he was out of the business until TV really came along.

   Director Lambert Hillyer was equally busy in 1948; by my count he was at the helm of 11 western dramas, also presumably all for Monogram. But once again, after six more films in 1949, that was it for him until 1953. He had a short career in TV from then on, known most perhaps for directing 39 episodes of The Cisco Kid between 1953 and 1956.

“Punchy Cowpunchers” (1950). A Three Stooges short. Running time: 17 minutes. Shemp Howard, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Jock O’Mahoney (Elmer), Christine McIntyre (Nell), Kenneth MacDonald (Dillon), Dick Wessel (Mullins), Vernon Dent (Colonel), Emil Sitka (Daley), George Chesebro (Jeff, uncredited). Written and directed by Edward Bernds.

   The Three Stooges are definitely not for all tastes, so if you don’t like slapstick comedy just skip this review.

    “Punchy Cowpunchers” spoofs just about every cliche hitherto found in Western films: the outlaw gang looting the town; the stalwart, jut-jawed, guitar-playing, “aw shucks!” hero; the virginal love interest for the hero; and the U.S. Cavalry ready to ride in on a moment’s notice and save the day.

   Only the outlaws (“The Killer Dillons”) aren’t too bright — and neither is our hero (Elmer), a total klutz who can’t stay on his horse, constantly collides with objects and people (“I hurt mah knee agin”), forgets to load his guns (and when he does remember can’t shoot straight), and, let’s face it, doesn’t play his “geetar” very well.

   As for his “gal” (“Nell honey”), she’s far from being the “poor, defenseless woman” she claims to be. When one gang member after another tries to kidnap her (for nefarious purposes, no doubt), she decks them all and then each time demurely passes out — but not until she’s found something soft to land on.

   And forget the cavalry — they just got paid, and as the colonel says, “Well, you know, boys will be boys.”

    “Punchy Cowpunchers” takes the best of Stooges slapstick and distills it into less than twenty minutes of fast-paced nonsense. The only other short feature I really liked from these guys was “Dutiful But Dumb” (1941), a political satire featuring Curly’s epic battle with his supper, a bowl of chowder inhabited by a very rude clam (a masterpiece of timing and film editing).

   The klutzy “hero” was played by Jock Mahoney (1919-89), a former stunt man double for Errol Flynn, Gregory Peck, and John Wayne. Mahoney went on to appear many times in films and TV, including 77 episodes of The Range Rider (1951-53), 34 episodes as Yancy Derringer (1958-59), and several appearances in Tarzan films, sometimes as the villain and sometimes as the vine swinger himself. For a more intellectual Mahoney, see the sci-fi snoozer The Land Unknown (1957).

    “Nell honey” was played by Christine McIntyre (1911-84), who possessed an operatic-level singing voice (not employed in “Punchy Cowpunchers”). She spent most of her film career working in short features, many of them with The Three Stooges. She even appeared several times in Mahoney’s Western series, The Range Rider.

   Kenneth MacDonald (1901-72) frequently showed up in Stooges shorts as a bad guy. He went on to play the judge 32 times in the Perry Mason series, starting with the second show and finishing up with the very last episode.

   Mention should also be made of George Chesebro (1888-1959), whose film career started in 1915. Chesebro often appeared as a henchman (usually the third one through the door) or a cop. The IMDb credits him with over 400 titles.

   You can watch “Punchy Cowpunchers“ in two segments on YouTube: Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

LIFE IN THE RAW. Fox, 1933. George O’Brien, Claire Trevor, Greta Nissen, Francis Ford, Warner Richmond, Gaylord (Steve) Pendleton. Based on the story “From Missouri” by Zane Grey. Director: Louis King. Shown at Cinecon 36, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2000.

    In Life in the Raw, described as an “odd concoction of Western and nightclub drama with some Russian atmosphere thrown in for good measure,” Clare Trevor made her feature film debut. “The first thing I was told,” Trevor recalled, was not to fall in love with my leading man. And then I immediately fell in love with George O’Brien.”

   Trevor comes out West to join her brother (Gaylord Pendleton) who, unbeknownst to her, is involved in some very shady dealings. Before things are romantically resolved, O’Brien thinks she’s a baddie, and everyone thinks he’s one.

   Trevor’s role doesn’t require her to do much except look great in tight-fitting western outfits, but O’Brien gets to do some pretend romancing with Greta Nissen and carry off a rescue scam that makes the last couple of reels fun to watch.