Wed 3 Jun 2015
A Western Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: THE LAST CHALLENGE (1967).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[5] Comments
THE LAST CHALLENGE. MGM, 1967. Glenn Ford, Angie Dickinson, Chad Everett, Gary Merrill, Jack Elam, Delphi Lawrence, Royal Dano. Screenplay: John Sherry, based on his novel Pistolero’s Progress (Pocket, 1966). Director: Richard Thorpe.
Late 1960s oaters don’t have all that much to recommend them. Made at a time when the Spaghetti Western was reinventing and reinvigorating the genre, many of these films are more compelling as cultural artifacts than as compelling movies in their own right. Such is the case with The Last Challenge, a mediocre and formulaic Western featuring Glenn Ford as an outlaw turned lawman.
Directed by Richard Thorpe, who had a long career at MGM, The Last Challenge was the veteran director’s final film. Unfortunately, it has almost nothing in it that you haven’t seen before. Ford portrays Dan Blaine, an aging gunfighter and former bank robber who installed himself as marshal in a small town. He’s also shacked up with the local brothel owner, Lisa Denton (Angie Dickinson). Then along comes upstart gunman, Lot McGuire (Chad Everett) who challenges Blaine to ascertain who is the better pistolero.
At a running time of just over ninety minutes, the film offers up the typical – one might say even say stereotypical – tropes of 1960s B-Westerns: a crooked poker game, violent Indians, a man unable to fully escape his past. Truth be told, Glenn Ford, a presence in his own right, is just about the only thing that makes The Last Challenge worth watching. As for Dickinson, she looks completely bored, which is understandable when comparing how uninteresting her character is in this altogether forgettable film.
June 4th, 2015 at 3:38 am
I have to agree, Jon: Flabby & familiar.
June 4th, 2015 at 4:32 pm
Except for Glenn Ford, there was no real reason for this movie ever to have been made in 1967. Maybe 1952
June 5th, 2015 at 10:18 pm
Hollywood could not let go of the oater even when they really had no business making this kind of minor A picture from the fifties.
This is tired and trite, and despite the cast now seems like it was made for television and not the big screen.
But it isn’t just that it’s tired and that it’s overly familiar, the Westerns of the fifties had a feel suddenly lost in the sixties. Maybe it was innocence, maybe it was the post war era and the heroes representing American’s coming home from war and one good man standing alone, whatever, by the sixties the Westerns that made it were bigger in scale and small westerns like this didn’t work.
June 6th, 2015 at 12:39 am
The Last Challenge is a compromised film, not because of Thorpe or those being photographed, but because of the suits at that studio at that time. I could tell by looking the paid ads. It had very little to do with scale, the western romance was over, and pretty well stayed that way, with a few exceptions. The European variety were, in my view, overly violent and stridently anti-American, so there was a built in university education audience to absorb the self hatred.
June 8th, 2015 at 4:00 pm
David, I had the same feeling you did watching this. Feels like a made-for-TV film. Glenn Ford would star in yet another Western with a made-for-TV feeling, an oddity called SANTEE. Will post my review of that one in a day or two