Sat 5 Feb 2022
JOE DAKOTA. Universal-International, 1957. Jock Mahoney, Luana Patten, Charles McGraw, Barbara Lawrence, Claude Akins, Lee Van Cleef, Anthony Caruso, Paul Birch. Screenplay: William Talman and Norman Jolley. Director: Richard Bartlett. Currently streaming on Starz.
When Jock Mahoney’s character rides into the small western town of Arborville, at first he finds it totally deserted. No one in the street. No one in any of the stores. No one anywhere. Until at last he discovers a girl (Luana Patten) sulkily standing near the general store. That she is not forthcoming as to where all the townspeople are is an understatement. Shrugging, he rides off.
Whereupon he finds the answer. A short way from town all of the men who live there are drilling an oil well. By hand. The women are sitting in the shade at the equivalent of a picnic table, watching. Jock Mahoney’s character asks if he can watch. After some discussion with the man in charge (Charles McGraw), it is agreed that no harm would be done if he did.
Pushing the boundaries of the agreement he has just made, Jock Mahoney’s character enters the small shack near where the men are working. This seems to annoy them, and Jock Mahoney’s character winds up in the oil pool next to the drilling site. Covered in black, he unceremoniously leaves. The next we see him, he is taking a bath back in town in their watering trough, with the girl secretly watching.
As it so happens, Jock Mahoney’s character is looking for an old Indian who calls (or called) himself Joe Dakota. It was his shack there near the oil well, but what he is told is that he sold right to the property just before leaving town.
If you stop and think about it right about here, you will probably know where the story is going from here, and you’d probably be right. You may even think of another earlier movie with a plot line that would be along the same lines as this one, and you’d be right about that, too.
It doesn’t mean that this one is not fun to watch, because it is. Nor can it be bad, not with a cast like this, and a storyline that’s clean and efficient and basically well told. Jock Mahoney makes no attempt to overplay his role; quite the opposite. The villain, of course, is Charles McGraw’s character, and Claude Akins and Lee Van Cleef play a pair of local louts for all they’re worth, as only they could.
February 5th, 2022 at 9:14 pm
This is a good movie.
Director Richard Bartlett is talented. His work can be atmospheric. And lyrical.
Richard Bartlett’s biggest critical champion is film critic Blake Lucas. It is from his efforts that I learned about Richard Bartlett.
So far this film, and two episodes of Wagon Train: The Daniel Barrister Story; The Sacramento Story – are what I like best.
Still lots to catch up on.
The image of Mahoney covered in black oil is visually unique.
February 5th, 2022 at 9:35 pm
What I wonder is what the gunk was they used to make Jock Mahoney look as though he’d been dunked in real live crude. It looked real, but I sure hope it wasn’t.
February 5th, 2022 at 9:22 pm
Done right the quiet man rides into town to avenge a wrong is hard to beat in a Western. Just add a good cast, some decent action, and competent director and it’s hard to miss.
February 6th, 2022 at 12:20 am
Steve, since crude is flammable, and the fumes are none to pleasant either and the effect is fairly common in films both set in wartime and in the oil field I assume it is some mixture of mud and dye with baby oil, lanolin, or something like it to make it shine.
Most special effects experts and make up experts would have their own formulas for this sort of thing.
Water and soap alone would be hard put to get crude off of anyone in the hottest bath. Oil field workers washed their clothes in gasoline for years to get it off so as you suggest it islikely something else..
February 6th, 2022 at 9:07 pm
Richard Bartlett directed an episode of the TV Western comedy LAREDO. It’s called “The Small Chance Ghost” (1967).
Our heroes go to a ghost town, and encounter a spooky mansion.
The mansion is the one from PSYCHO. I started laughing and laughing when seeing this.