ALBUQUERQUE. Paramount Pictures, 1948. Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, George “Gabby” Hayes, Lon Chaney, Russell Hayden, Catherine Craig, George Cleveland. Based on the novel Dead Freight for Piute, by Luke Short. Director: Ray Enright.

   Albuquerque is an eminently watchable Western film starring Randolph Scott. Adapted to the big screen from a novel by Luke Short, Dead Freight for Piute, the film is compelling, albeit not particularly sophisticated, story about a family feud, mining, and freighting in pre-statehood New Mexico.

   There’s just enough of everything one would expect from a late 1940s Western: a hero in Scott, a goofy sidekick in George “Gabby” Hayes, and a villainess-turned-heroine in the beautiful Barbara Britton. Add in a semi-realistic setting, a budding romance or two, and a memorable, well-choreographed and surprisingly brutal fist fight between Scott and Lon Chaney Jr.’s character and you’ve got yourself a significantly better than average Western.

   The plot revolves around Scott in his portrayal of Cole Armin, who relocates to Albuquerque from Texas to work for his uncle, John Armin (a rather unforgettable villain as portrayed by George Cleveland), in the family freighting business. Turns out Cole’s uncle is crooked and is working to put the local competition, run by brother and sister, Ted and Celia Wallace, out of business. Did I mention the local lawman is on the take as well?

   Cole’s a good guy and he’s got a good sidekick in Juke (Hayes), so naturally he tells his uncle off and goes to work for the Wallaces in their fledgling freighting business.

   As one might suspect, this turn of events doesn’t please John Armin all that much, so he has his henchman, Steve Murkil, portrayed by an exceptionally well cast, black-hatted, Lon Chaney Jr., cigarette constantly dangling from his mouth, and a recent hire, Letty Tyler (Britton) to plot and to scheme against Cole and the Wallaces.

   All of this culminates in the aforementioned fight between Cole Armin and Steve Murkil, a harrowing horse and wagon ride down a mountaintop, and an abbreviated final showdown on the streets of Albuquerque. The good guys win, of course. This was a 1948 Western, not a 1968 one, so there’s really no surprises here.

   It is clear from watching Albuquerque is that Scott was beginning to outgrow films like these. No surprise, then, then within a decade, he’d be working with directors such as André de Toth and Budd Boetticher in more, shall we say, serious and engaging Western films.

   Still, Albuquerque is not without its charms. Cleveland and Chaney make a good pair of villains that you’re happy to both watch to see what they’ll do next and to root against. Still, when it’s all said and done, sometimes it’s still nice to see the good guy win the fight and save the day. That’s Albuquerque for you.

Editorial Comment:   For my own take on this film, check out this post from about three years ago.

D.O.A. Buena Vista Pictures, 1988. Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Charlotte Rampling, Daniel Stern, Jane Kaczmarek, Christopher Neame, Brion James, Elizabeth Arlen. Directors: Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton.

   Recently saw this 1988 remake of D.O.A. with Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Daniel Stern, Charlotte Rampling and a few other fine actors whose names escape me. This movie has been almost universally panned — Maltin calls it “noisy and needless” and even TV Guide found it “pointless” — but I thought it worked much better than the original, and thus once again shall wait for Fashion to catch up with me.

   The plot, lifted from the 1948 film, has the protagonist indulge in a night of heavy drinking and discover the next day that he’s been poisoned; he has only another day or so to live and nothing can save him. That’s it. He gonna die and ain’t nothing for it. Faced with this, he spends his last day finding his killer — the Detective and Victim as One.

   It’s a great idea, but the 1948 film s a surprisingly pedestrian affair, with little momentum and a flat performance by Edmund O’Brien as a schlemiel who just looks toodam healthy to be dying. All through the movie, I just couldn’t believe him.

   On the other hand, the 1988 remake offers a fine turn by Dennis Quaid as a popular, sexy college lit professor who wrote some fine books a few years back, got a remarkable woman to marry him when he was younger, and might have been a good teacher once, but now he just tosses flip answers back to his admiring students, gives them A’s without reading their work, and his wife is leaving him because he just doesn’t act like he cares anymore.

   Thematically, this is really neat-o; the man has been dead for years and doesn’t realize it till someone poisons him. Add to this a couple of nifty sub-plots, snappy dialogue, some gratuitous sex and violence (always a golden page in my book) and you’ve got the beginnings of a very textured work.

   Directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel throw in a lot of artsy camera angles left over from the 6Os, pace the action for speed, and take time to evoke surprisingly believable performances from even the bit players. My only kvetch is the number of obvious homages to film noir and the length of time it takes me to italicize a sentence like that: Quaid’s character is named Cornell, the film starts and ends in Black & White, and there are two cops whose line of hard-boiled patter rolls so smooth and well-timed they sound like bit-players in a sitcom.

   This aside, it was a film I really liked.

THE TIME TRAVELERS. American International, 1964. Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, John Hoyt, Dennis Patrick, Joan Woodbury, Delores Wells, Steve Franken, Berry Kroeger. Screenwriter/director: Ib Melchior.

   The Time Travelers is a science fiction B-movie starring an assortment of character actors who were likely familiar to movie audiences at the time of its initial release, but who are less well remembered today.

   Although considerably dated in many ways, The Time Travelers remains a fun, albeit somewhat campy, low budget film about the possibilities and hazards of time travel. The film likewise provides a glimpse into an era before television shows such as Star Trek and Doctor Who brought these concepts to a wider audience.

   It begins with two scientists, a Teutonic-looking Dr. Erik von Steiner (Preston Foster) and Dr. Steve Connors (Philip Carey), along with their blonde female assistant, Carol White (Merry Anders), working in a Los Angeles university laboratory. What separates their workspace from others like it is a large window on the far end of the room. This window is designed to be the means by which the scientists, should their experiment work, can observe the future.

   Along comes a goofy technician named Danny McKee (Steve Franken, cousin to U.S. Senator Al Franken), who tells the scientists to end their experiment.

   It’s all too little, too late, of course. Something goes wrong. The group inadvertently creates not just a window, but also a portal, to the future. 2071 A.D., to be exact. (107 years forward from 1964). Suffice it to say, the future looks bleak. That, of course, doesn’t stop McKee from jumping through the portal into the foreboding landscape. The other three follow.

   Earth 2071 A.D. isn’t a particularly nice place to live. That’s the understatement of the year. A nuclear war has decimated the planet, leaving horrifying, mutant humanoids at ground level and a very small number of normal humans dwelling below ground.

   The underground human survivors are led by Dr. Varno, portrayed by John Hoyt wearing what appears to be a light blue jump suit of some sort. The colorful costumes, it should be noted, are just one of many aspects that make the film very much a product of the mid-1960s.

   In any case, Varno, along with the other survivors and an extremely creepy array of androids, are working on a plan to fly a spaceship to Alpha Centauri so as to build New Earth. Naturally, they plan to be in a state of suspended animation along the way. (It’s a long trip, after all.) Initially, the plan is for the stranded time travelers to accompany the survivors out beyond the stars.

   But, alas, that is not to be. A malicious politician, Councilman Willard (Dennis Patrick), ends that idea, forcing the four time travelers to rebuild their time machine. After a genuinely unsettling fight scene between mutants and androids, the four time travelers, along with Varno and others, end up returning to 1960s California, only to experience one of the paradoxes of time travel.

   It’s actually a clever little twist ending, one that I admittedly didn’t see coming. More significantly, it demonstrates that the filmmakers took science fiction tropes seriously. More to that point: well-known sci-fi guru Forrest J Ackerman makes a very brief cameo appearance.

   The Time Travelers may neither be a classic, nor a great film. But it’s far better than many other low budget science fiction of its time and significantly better than a lot of the science fiction cinema out there today. The movie definitely has its moments, such as when Dr. Varno states: “Time, itself, is an anachronism.”

   Silly at times, it’s worth watching, provided you know full well that you’re watching a B-movie designed to entertain rather than to provoke serious reflection and debate.

ARTHUR B. REEVE – The Ear in the Wall. Hearst’s International, hardcover, 1916. Wildside Press, softcover, 2014.

   A successful but now nearly forgotten mystery writer is Arthur B. Reeve, whose Craig Kennedy, “the American Sherlock Holmes,” was once enormously popular in magazines, books, and movie adaptations. A recent reading of The Ear in the Wall shows how dated Reeve is, though nostalgia is still a reason to read him. (I am not recommending a steady diet, however.)

   Many of his attitudes, too, bespeak the bigotry of their time and would be unacceptable today. Likewise the use of “white slavery” as an important plot device. Among the criminals are those with wonderful, if archaic, names like “Dopey Jack” Rubano and “Ike the Dropper.” Then there are such gems of dialogue as You libertine!”

   Kennedy’s popularity was based on Reeve’s use of scientific inventions, some real and some imaginary, albeit plausible. Here, there are bugging devices like the “detectaphone,” as well as machines for identification, such as the vocaphone to provide “fingerprints of the human voice.” There are tools to identify typewriting, special cameras, and new blood tests, all part of “the warfare of science against crime which he [Kennedy] had been waging.”

   If Holmes had Irene Adler, Reeve has provided Kennedy with his version of THE Woman, though also without romance. On this case, Craig Kennedy works with a female detective, Clare Kendall. Reeve refers to her as the “new woman,” while calling Kennedy “the new man.” Also, notice the similarity of their names. When Clare goes willingly into danger, Kennedy calls her “one of the gamest girls I ever knew.” Kennedy then reassures his Watson, Walter Jameson, “Don’t worry, my boy. She’s not of the marrying kind, any more than I am.”

THE CASE OF THE BLACK PARROT. Warner Brothers, 1941. William Lundigan, Maris Wrixon, Eddie Foy Jr., Paul Cavanagh, Luli Deste, Charles Waldron, Ernie Stanton. Based on the novel The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet, by Burton Stevenson. (Dodd Mead, 1912, but available online here.) Director: Noel M. Smith.

   I was disappointed with this one, beginning with the title, which I found misleading, though I suppose there’s no really good reason why I should have. For some reason, though, I was expecting a detective film with more of an exotic flavor than The Case of the Black Parrot turned out to be, something along the lines of a sinister Oriental thriller, perhaps, or even a case for a Charlie Chan wannabe that I hadn’t seen before.

   But no, this is a movie about a piece of furniture, a Boule cabinet, to be precise, and the Black Parrot is merely a criminal mastermind, albeit a notorious one. To quote from the movie itself:

   A gentleman named Paul Vantine, a wealthy collector of antique furniture, is bringing the cabinet to the US from Europe, but not as an authentic Boule cabinet, but deliberately as a Black Parrot imitation, complete with the Parrot’s secret signature. It seems that the imitation is so good that the cabinet, although fake, is only going to go up in value. But the lights go out, as they so often do in movies like this, and when they come back on, it is discovered that the cabinet in question is a real one, not the Parrot’s work after all.

   Now this sounded promising to me, with all kinds of interesting directions the story could go from here, but alas, it turns out that the dealer who sold the cabinet to Vantine had only made an honest mistake – an expensive one, true – but a mistake to which he readily admits, and arrangements are made to correct the error.

   So back in the US again, why do two mysterious deaths occur? Add to the mix a pair of beautiful women, a shifty-looking butler, a dark figure climbing in and out of a window, a stash of embarrassing letters, a master of disguise, not to mention a blossoming romance between a reporter named Jim Moore (William Lundigan) and the rich collector’s niece (Maris Wrixon), much to the disgust of Jim Moore’s comical sidekick, a photographer named Tripod Daniels (Eddie Foy Jr.).

   I don’t disparage detectives having comical sidekicks in movies like this. Even Charlie Chan had them; they were expected, and they were always there. The larger disappointment comes in realizing how prosaic all this is, with too much plot, too much story in too short a time, too many characters doing too many strange things, some connected, some not, but all centered around a large ugly piece of furniture.

NOTE: The book the movie was based on has been reviewed online by BV Lawson online here. Her review makes the book sound interesting. (It’s obvious that there were some serious changes between book and film.) Given the time, I’d like to read the book myself.

  IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? Selznick Pictures, released by Select Pictures, 1921. Eugene O’Brien, Winifred Westover, Arthur Houseman, George Lessey, Warren Cook, Arthur Donaldson. Director: Alan Crosland. Shown at Cinefest 26, Syracuse NY, March 2006.

   Based on “The Open Door,” a Saturday Evening Post story by George Weston, this attractive film traces the fortunes of a young office worker who’s framed for a crime and after unsuccessfully trying to make a fresh start selling typewriter ribbons, has his suicide all planned and ready to be carried off when he rescues a young woman who’s fainted from hunger in a park.

   He carries her off to his boarding house and puts her in the care of his sympathetic landlady. He keeps delaying his suicide as he establishes a business with the young girl’s help to convince her that she’s repaying his good deed. The business unexpectedly takes off and he becomes wildly successful. Then the man who framed him reenters his life, and it appears that the young man’s success may be short-lived.

   Lewis Selznick, David O. Selznick’s father, apparently liked the story in the Post so much that he rushed the film into production. I’ve not read the story, but I certainly liked the film that resulted from it. It’s basically an Alger story with some wry twists that lift it out of that time-worn groove.

   I suppose that much of the attraction of the film lies in innocence reestablished and generosity rewarded, with a healthy dash of rooting for the young couple. In any case, I thought the film was a standout for its sympathetic characters and compelling situation.

C. A. ALINGTON – Gold and Gaiters. Faber and Faber, UK, hardcover, 1950. No US edition.

   In Chapter Five, on page 65, the Reverend Cyril Alington says readers may complain that a novel without “a hero is one thing, but a novel without action quite another.” Action remains lacking for a goodly number of pages — until Chapter Nine, Page 97, in fact — but the appreciative reader won’t care.

   This novel should be read, as are the “crime” novels of P. G. Wodehouse, for the author’s style and humor. By the time the gold Roman coins are stolen from the Cathedral Library, which is in the charge of Archdeacon Castleton, that good man, the reader should be enjoying himself or herself far too much to worry about what is happening or not happening.

   Delightful froth.

Bio-Bibliographic Note: According to Wikipedia, “Cyril Argentine Alington (22 October 1872 – 16 May 1955) was an English educationalist, scholar, cleric, and prolific author. He was the headmaster of both Shrewsbury School and Eton College. He also served as chaplain to King George V and as Dean of Durham.”

   The Wiki page also contains an extensive bibliography. Of those a dozen are detective fiction, and of course they can also be found in Hubin, including one as by S. C. Westerham. If you’re interested, two copies of Gold and Gaiters are available on the Internet at the current time, both in the $20-30 range.

FRED VARGAS – The Ghost Riders of Ordebec. Penguin, US edition, softcover, June 2013. Police procedural: Commissioner Adamsberg; 7th in series. Setting: France.

First Sentence:   A trail of tiny breadcrumbs led from the kitchen into the bedroom, as far as the spotless sheets where the old woman lay dead, her mouth open.

   Comm. Adamsburg travels to Ordebec in response to a woman’s plea. Her daughter, Lina, has seen the Ghost Riders with four men. According to legend, this mean each of these men will meet a violent death. Adamsburg takes with him a young man he believes innocent of the murder for which he is accused, and his 18-year-old son, whom he recently met. Although entranced by the lovely Lina, one of the envisioned men does die and it’s time for Adamsburg to get to work.

   There is nothing ordinary about a Fred Vargas book. It begins with a unique murder, quickly solved by Adamsberg, which quickly displays his understanding of people and their behaviors.

   The Serious Crime Unit, of which he is the head, is a collection of strange and unusual individuals. It’s hard to imagine how they solve crimes, but solve them they do. Vargas even keeps the characters from her book “The Three Evangelists” included in this series.

   Legends, ghost stories, witchcraft, and the supernatural are included in the story, but don’t overtake the fact that this is, at its core, a police procedural. Yet her books are definitely character-driven focusing not only on their physical presence, but their personal characteristics.

   There is something mercurial and wise about Vega’s writing that can make you stop and think…”The world’s full of details, have you noticed? And since no details is ever repeated in exactly the same shape and always sets off others details, there’s no end to it.”

   The Ghost Riders of Ordebec started off just a bit slowly but quickly made up for it. It is, as are all her books, wonderfully weird and very French. You’ll either be completely entranced by Vargas’s writing, or she’ll just not quite be your cup of tea. Me? I’m firmly in the former group.

Rating:   VG Plus.

Editorial Note:   LJ previously reviewed the fifth book in this series, Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, here on this blog some time ago. You can read her comments by going here. That previous post also includes a bibliography through book six in the series.

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. Universal Pictures, 1943. Ilona Massey, Patric Knowles, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dennis Hoey, Lon Chaney Jr. Screenplay: Curt Siodmak. Director: Roy William Neill.

   Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man is a horror film starring Lon Chaney Jr. In this quixotic production, Chaney reprises his role as Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man, the eponymous character of Curt Siodmak’s 1941 horror classic about a man who, against his own volition, turns into a werewolf during the full moon.

   Along for the ride through this fairy tale land are Iloney Massey as Baroness Elsa Frankenstein, Patric Knowles as Dr. Frank Mannering, Talbot’s physician, and Bela Lugosi as a rather underwhelming Frankenstein Monster. Saving the film from its preposterous premise, encapsulated so clearly in the film’s title, is the skillful direction of Roy William Neill. (I reviewed Neill’s Gothic masterpiece, The Black Room starring Boris Karloff, here).

   The plot is basic enough. Grave robbers come across the Talbot tomb in a very eerie looking cemetery somewhat reminiscent of the one seen in the beginning of Lew Landers’s The Return of the Vampire (reviewed here). Their attempt to rob the family tomb is thwarted by Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man who turns out not to be so dead after all.

   Ever since he was initially bitten by a werewolf and transformed into one himself, Larry simply cannot die. He kills at night during the full moon and he hates himself for it. He simply wants to die. Indeed, that’s what takes up the majority of the film’s time — seeing a somewhat pathetic and moping Chaney/Talbot wonder around from place to place trying to find someone who will help him end his cursed existence. One person he seeks out is the elderly, mysterious Gypsy woman, Maleva, portrayed by the Russian actress, Maria Ouspenskaya, who had the same role in Siodmak’s The Wolf Man.

   Talbot and Maleva make their way through central Europe where Talbot encounters Baroness Frankenstein (Massey) and urges her to turn over her father’s records. He wants to learn how her father’s experiments might help him die. Talbot also inadvertently discovers an iced over Frankenstein Monster (Lugosi) and releases him from his frozen tomb. One really has to suspend disbelief to make it through this part of the film.

   Soon, Dr. Mannering (Knowles), who was Talbot’s physician earlier in the movie, shows up and decides that he’s going to become a mad doctor. He ends up both strengthening the Frankenstein Monster and, with the assistance of a full moon, turning Talbot into a werewolf on the same night.

   Finally, the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man go at it, fighting as monsters do. It’s actually a fun little sequence with memorable camera angles and a visually stunning Gothic laboratory setting. But the monster versus monster fight doesn’t last long. One of the townspeople, against the advice of the mayor (Lionel Atwill), decides he’s going to sabotage the Frankenstein Castle and kill the monsters.

   When the movie ends — too abruptly, it should be noted — it would seem as if both the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man have been laid to rest. (The 1944 sequel, House of Frankenstein, reviewed here by Dan Stumpf and by Walter Albert here, will demonstrate that this was not the case).

   While Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man isn’t a particularly good horror film, it’s actually a fairly decent monster movie. True: Chaney’s character really doesn’t do much but whine and beg people to help him die. And Lugosi is not Karloff. But Roy William Neill’s direction makes the film an enjoyable, if admittedly mindless, viewing experience. Quirky camera angles, great settings, and skillful uses of shadow and lighting make this transparent effort by the studio to capitalize on the successes of both Frankenstein (1931) and The Wolf Man significantly better than it could have been in a far less capable director’s hands.

KEOMA. 1976. Also released as Django Rides Again and The Violent Breed. Franco Nero, Woody Strode, Olga Karlatos, Donald O’Brien, William Berger, Gabriella Giacobbe. Directed by Enzo G. Castallari.

   An arty and allegorical Spaghetti Western with half a brain and good direction and cinematography, Keoma turns out to ultimately be more entertaining than annoying, and better acted than it has any right to be with an existentialist message at the end right out of Sartre.

   Keoma: “He won’t die, he’s free. And a free man can never die.”

   Okay, if he says so, but for all that, this proves to be a really good western of its type, with first class performances by Franco Nero and Woody Strode, and one stunningly beautiful pregnant woman (Olga Karlatos) named Lisa who bears the burden of most of the allegory about life, death, birth, existence, sacrifice, suffering, freedom, and hope (well, she is very pregnant).

   Admittedly that’s a lot for a western– even an Italian-made western shot in Spain — to bear, but this one manages better than most. It makes for some pretentious fun. It’s no where near as good as High Plains Drifter, but it’s nowhere near as bad as Pale Rider, as pretentious westerns go.

   Nero is the gray eyed long-haired (how those braids survive holding the mess back got a bit distracting I have to grant) half-breed Keoma, who returns home after the Civil War.

   â€œWhich side were you on?”

   â€œIt just happened I was on the winning side.”

   There he finds a spooky old Indian witch (Gabriella Giacobbe) who wanders in and out of the film like a silent Greek chorus as Keoma’s conscience and a sort of early warning signal of impending trouble. She warns him he should not have returned, but like any western hero in any western ever made anywhere, common sense isn’t his long suit, so he rides right into a group of ex-Confederate cackling coyote-mean escapees from Deliverance (are there any other kind?), taking prisoners with the plague to the mines to isolation and death.

   Among them is one pregnant woman, Lisa, the stunningly beautiful Karlatos, with eyes every bit as spooky as the wolf eyed Nero. Pregnant, with straggly hair, and in extremely unflattering clothes, she is still one of the most beautiful women you will ever see in any film.

   Typically he makes enemies fast, kills one of the ex-Rebs, and takes the woman to town, where no one wants her, and he promptly has to kill again and further annoy an ex-Confederate rancher and power mad criminal named Caldwell (Donald O’Brien, the film’s weakest link) who caused the plague with poisoned wells, and now holds the town hostage refusing to allow anyone to bring in medicine or help. No one ever explains just how this helps him since he has already grabbed all the land. I guess he’s just mean.

   In addition Keoma finds his childhood friend and mentor George (Woody Strode) a broken old drunk waiting to die in the streets.

   Keoma: “But you’re free now.”

   George: “I found out what freedom means.”

   Like heavy, man (well, it was the seventies).

   Keoma it turns out was a half-breed child rescued by a fast gun, William Shannon (William Berger), with three sons of his own. Of course they are no damn good — they tortured and beat Keoma — and as ex-Confederates themselves, they ride with Caldwell and their once proud and deadly father is old, afraid to die, and fears having to kill his own sons. But he’s glad to have Keoma back.

   Shannon: “We stopped slaughtering and butchering the Indians long enough to free the black man and now we are back to finish with the Indians.”

   That comes a bit out of left field, since other than the knowledge that Keoma’s village was slaughtered by white men and Keoma the only survivor, and all the bad guys, brothers included, go on about him being half-Indian, Indians have almost nothing to do with the plot except as shorthand for oppressed and exploited people, and that old Indian woman (great face) who keeps wandering in and out at key points often back lit by lightning and sunlight.

   This is a beautifully shot film. Visually it is great to look at and the print I saw was off an original 35mm letterboxed master in one of those collections of twelve films, this one including One Eyed Jacks, another pretentious western, but not as good as this one despite the cast and stunning cinematography.

   Keoma is about as much Tarzan or Conan here as a western hero, a sort of force of nature, the ultimate existentialist hero who worships only one thing, freedom at any price — no matter who he gets killed in winning it for them.

   It’s a very physical role for Nero, mindful of the kind of action film Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas often made full of running, leaping, fighting, and defying gravity, and in the stunts that are obviously Nero, he looks and performs the physical side more than adequately. Of course he was an old hand at this and even makes a sly cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s paean to the form, Django Unleashed (for anyone who didn’t get the joke Nero — among others — this was also released as Django Rides).

   You have to give the director and multiple screenwriters credit too, because this could easily have devolved into maudlin flashbacks of Keoma’s troubled childhood, but instead they chose a form of virtual Latin American Magic Realism where the characters in the here and now are physically in the flashback scenes with their younger selves. Once you get past the initial shock it is very effective and in some ways presages the famous ending of Robert Benton’s Places in the Heart.

   You can guess how the plot works out: there’s the good doctor who regains his nerve; George regains his manhood; Shannon stands by his good adopted son, Keoma; Shannon and George take on the entire Caldwell army in a well shot orgy of gunfighting and violence; and Keoma ends up crucified in the rain on a wagon wheel in the middle of town only to be rescued by Lisa, the dying pregnant woman.

   The final shootout in an old abandoned fort where the film opened, with Keoma battling his three adopted brothers is well staged with the screams of the woman in labor and the cries of her newborn muffling the gun fire (I warned you it was arty) and the old witch looking on.

   But don’t shoot me, it isn’t my fault that Keoma, having done everything but backflips to see the child is born, then deserts him with the old Indian woman with than nonsense about a free man can’t die. See how much milk and how many diapers existentialist philosophy will buy you; carrying existentialism a shade too far as far as I’m concerned.

   The major problem for me was the damn musical soundtrack, really lame senseless ballads I could barely understand that sounded like the mewling of the cattle from Red River done to music or the male part like a coyote with a sore throat trying to spit phlegm up (and that is being kind — “Do not forsake me oh my darlin'” it’s not), the woman singing alone had a vibrato on high notes that must be how Madame Castafiore sounds to Captain Haddock in Tintin. You will be amazed how many vowels she manages to squeeze into the name Keoma. She sounds like the love child of Joan Baez and Slim Whitman.

   That said, the dubbing was first class with Nero and Strode at least doing their own voices.

   But messy as it is at times, I more than recommend this one. It mostly succeeds at what it is obviously trying to do, there is some strong and effective imagery, plus stunts, good use of lighting and staging, and more often than not, it rises to what it seems to want to be. Granted the main villain is a bit lame, but he’s only an afterthought to the conflict between the brothers and Keoma.

   And if any of you have seen it and remember, maybe you can clear up whether Keoma was just rescued by Shannon, or Shannon’s son by his Indian mother. At one point that seems to be the implication, and then later I wasn’t so sure. I guess that happens when a small army writes the screenplay. They never clear up if the people at the mine dying of plague are saved either. Guess it wasn’t worth the bother.

   I enjoyed this one much more than I expected. If there is another half this good on the set then I won’t feel I wasted $5. This is one of the better thought of and appreciated later Spaghetti westerns, and it isn’t hard to see why.

   Still, I can’t help but wonder if Tonto — Keoma — would have fared better here with the help of the Lone Ranger.

   Just asking.