Mon 29 Jun 2015
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: WALK LIKE A DRAGON (1960).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[8] Comments
WALK LIKE A DRAGON Paramount, 1960. Jack Lord, Nobu McCarthy, James Shigeta, Mel Tormé, Josephine Hutchinson, Rodolpho Acosta, Benson Fong, Michael Pate, Lilyan Chauvin, Don “Red†Barry and Lester Matthews. Written by James Clavell and Daniel Mainwaring. Directed by James Clavell. Yes, that James Clavell!
Not entirely successful, but interesting enough to keep you watching, this plays out like an extended episode of Have Gun Will Travel; it even starts in San Francisco in the 1870s, as Jack Lord is touched by the sight of a Chinese girl (the talented and subtly touching Nobu McCarthy) being auctioned off in a slave market and impulsively buys her to set her free.
Things of course just ain’t that simple; Nobu got no place to go to (see what I did there?) so Jack takes her back to his small town, where she encounters racial prejudice and slowly wins his heart — betcha didn’t see that coming, didja?
But they’re only two sides of the equation; there’s another refugee Chinese in town (James Shigeta) trying to earn the respect of the white bigots around him. He loves Nobu too, and I don’t blame him, but he figures the way to go about it is to acquire prowess with a gun so he can face off against Jack Lord.
There’s also Mel Tormé as The Deacon, a black-clad philosopher-gunman (another nod to Have Gun Will Travel) who sometimes sings(?!) and undertakes to educate James Shigeta in the ways of the gun.
Well it’s an earnest little film, and off-beat enough to keep the viewer alert, but the problem is that not much happens. People talk, they look askance, they talk a little more, go to Church, talk about going to Church, go shopping, talk about shopping…..
You get the idea: no chases, fisticuffs, gun battles… not so much as a dogfight to liven things up till near the end, when we get a bit of nicely done and very dramatic gunplay. In fact, as the climax approaches and the three protagonists face off, all motivated by love, Walk achieves some real intensity as – for once in a gunfight — one doesn’t know what to expect.
The acting is uniformly good here, or maybe it’s just that the characters are better-written than usual. Rodolpho Acosta, normally a villainous Indian or Mexican Bandit, makes a fine cynical lawman. Lilyan Chauvin is a rather complex “saloon gal†and Benson Fong (Tommy Chan in the Monogram Charlie Chan films) gives real depth to his subservient Chinese Laundryman.
The only one I’m not sure about is Mel Tormé; he’s relaxed, self-assured and handles his lines capably, but he just looks like a jazz singer plunked down in a Western — sort of a cross between a hipster and a singing cowboy.
This aside though, and if you make allowances for a rather quiet time of it, Walk Like a Dragon will hold your attention and even offer a few surprises.
June 29th, 2015 at 11:29 pm
Writing and directing credit on this are more interesting than the film in some ways since Daniel Mainwaring is mystery writer Geoffrey Holmes as in BUILD MY GALLOWS HIGH aka OUT OF THE PAST, quite a team with Clavel (THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE SATAN BUG).
I cant say this odd little western works, in many ways it does not, and yet again they have Japanese Shigeta playing a Chinese.
Mel Torme is okay, but he doesn’t have the weight for me the role called for. His presence is a stunt more than a brilliantly odd casting coup.
But it does build to a curious intensity and something of a flare at the end, and all things considered it is fairly frank racially for a 1960 Western.
I noted the HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL feeling as well, but kept thinking how much it would have benefited with an actor of Richard Boone’s moral weight in the lead despite Lord’s obvious skill here.
Lord did yet another western in this period where he is a masked bandit, but the name escapes me, and it’s a bit of an oddity too come to think of it.
June 29th, 2015 at 11:41 pm
Might it be The Hangman, a Robert Taylor western from 1959? I’ve not seen it, but from what I can tell from a description online, it seems as though it might fit.
Here’s the Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hangman_%281959_film%29
June 29th, 2015 at 11:45 pm
This movie (as well as The Hangman) falls in the time of my life that I stopped watching westerns on the big screen, being content (if not over saturated) with GUNSMOKE, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, RESTLESS GUN and all the others that were on TV at the time. I’m doing my best to get caught up now, but every time one gets reviewed on this blog, I seem to add anther two or three or more to the TBW list.
June 30th, 2015 at 8:28 pm
Sort of a side note:
I remember reading somewhere that Mel Torme had an extensive collection of guns from the frontier era, and was considered to be kind of an expert on the subject. That he might have served as an on-set technical advisor and armorer couldn’t be ruled out here.
I believe I saw this one when it first played network TV in the mid-’60s, between Stoney Burke and Hawaii Five-0, well before Jack Lord had his hair vulcanized.
Made-for-TV movies were just coming in about that time, and I thought that this was one of them. Well, live and learn …
July 1st, 2015 at 8:59 pm
I think James Farentino is in the Lord Western I am thinking of and they are the leads. HANGMAN is clearly Taylor’s picture and serious while the one I am talking about is a bit of a comedy at times and looked to me (its been ages) as if it was using footage from COPPER CANYON where Ray Milland wears a mask part of the time.
Lord’s best screen performance is the sniveling backstabbing creep in Lee J. Cobb’s gang Gary Cooper beats the crap out of, strips, humiliates, and drags through the fire in Anthony Mann’s MAN OF THE WEST. It’s far and away the closest I ever saw him get to acting and not just being a screen presence. It is a remarkably savage scene even for Mann and you won’t forget it once you have seen it, or how Lord’s arrogance and brutality are viciously stripped down to tears and hysteria.
It is one of the most disturbing scenes I can recall in a Western in that sense, much more powerful than any of the exaggerated violence in a Spaghetti Western or even something like Eastwood’s UNFORGIVEN, just for being in a Western from that time period. It’s as if Mann let loose with Cooper all the repressed savagery he had been suggesting beneath James Stewart’s skin in earlier films and aimed it all at Lord’s savage semi cretinous character (not for from his role in GOD’S LITTLE ACRE).
To Lord’s credit he plays the role to the hilt and dares to walk close to overplaying with a performance that has to have been a little inspired to Mitchum’s final moments in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER.
July 1st, 2015 at 11:28 pm
The only film James Farentino and Jack Lord have in common is Ride to Hangman’s Tree (1967), which is of course a western.
I have not seen Man of the West, and from your account of it, I’ve already made a note to myself to track a copy down. Jon may have a copy already.
July 2nd, 2015 at 1:56 pm
Say, isn’t that the BONANZA street in the first poster and the second photo? I’ve often wondered if that was really a high hill in the background or a prop (a painted flat, perhaps?).
July 2nd, 2015 at 4:15 pm
Yeah, Steve, drop whatever you’re doing & see MAN OF THE WEST within the next few hours anyway, & write us a review!