No one will doubt that "Garden of Evil" has a great cast. Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark and Cameron Mitchell are leads; Hugh Marlowe and Victor Mendoza are in supporting roles; and Rita Morena has something a little more than a cameo. But a cast is only as good as their performances. And their performances depend a great deal on the script they have with which to work. This film fails miserably mostly because of a terrible script. And the acting is generally sub-par for most of the cast – and very bad by Gary Cooper.
The DVD I watched had a bonus with it on the making of this film. It is referred to as a morality tale about greed, good and evil. But the script is so terrible that it ruins everything about the story. A couple of other reviewers saw the same thing. The writers tried to make the Cooper and Widmark roles philosophical. Ergo, the terse, flat replies, especially by Cooper. They come across as wisecracks or put-downs. Then, Widmark's character waxes poetic frequently about any situation. Again, to what point or avail?
Susan Hayward's Leah Fuller is driven to find help to rescue a man caught in a cave-in. Well, is it her husband, or isn't it? He doesn't call her honey or darling, but "You," a person who came back. She doesn't call him darling or honey or husband. We don't ever know if they are man and wife until he's killed by Indians and they bury him on the trail. Leah takes her wedding ring off and presses it into the dirt over his grave.
Is she driven by love, gold or what? The screenplay raises many questions in the minds of the audience, and it never answers most of them. Hayward is OK in her role, even if we never learn exactly what her aims may be. Mitchell overacts, and Widmark's Fiske is a very talkative role that seems to be philosophical but doesn't make sense much of the time. We never know why Marlowe doesn't seem to have affection for Leah. Was he driven by her to look for gold? Did she marry him so that he would find a gold mine for her, or was it for love? Or both?
The most disappointing and frustrating role to me is Cooper's Hooker. Toward the end we find out that he formerly was a sheriff. But now he's a fortune hunter, along with the rest, heading West on a steamship for the gold fields of California. His lines are so poor, I can't believe he would take this part in a movie. They seem to affect his whole character and he is wooden throughout the film. Cooper was 53 when this movie was made, and he died seven years later of prostate cancer. I thought he may have been ill in this film because he seemed very old, and never is there a close-up of his face. Yet he made a few very good films after this one.
Then, there are the Indians. Did Apaches range as far south as the jungles of southern Mexico? When Hooker and Fiske shoot the Indians pursuing them on the cliff trail, they must have been terrible shots – or they shot the horses. I think every Indian that fell over the cliff screamed
The only reason this movie gets even five stars from me is for the scenery. This is one of the first films shot in Cinemascope, which was the invention of Fox Films. I remember reading or hearing a commentary recently about one of the top directors who didn't like the wide panorama format of Cinemascope. But this clearly was a movie for that. And, its sweeping panoramas and vistas shot in the mountains and jungles of southern Mexico are beautiful to behold. It's just too bad that Fox wasn't as interested in having a movie with a very good screenplay as it was in filming as many movies as it could in its new format.
In this case, the format is the only reason to see this movie. Unless one wants to see a top cast in a poor movie with a terrible script and some weak to very bad performances. If viewers are interested in seeing a Western about gold and greed, I recommend a couple of excellent films. "Mackenna's Gold" of 1969 has a top notch cast with Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Keenan Wynn, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massey and Julie Newmar. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" of 1948 won three Oscars and starred Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Bruce Bennett.
The DVD I watched had a bonus with it on the making of this film. It is referred to as a morality tale about greed, good and evil. But the script is so terrible that it ruins everything about the story. A couple of other reviewers saw the same thing. The writers tried to make the Cooper and Widmark roles philosophical. Ergo, the terse, flat replies, especially by Cooper. They come across as wisecracks or put-downs. Then, Widmark's character waxes poetic frequently about any situation. Again, to what point or avail?
Susan Hayward's Leah Fuller is driven to find help to rescue a man caught in a cave-in. Well, is it her husband, or isn't it? He doesn't call her honey or darling, but "You," a person who came back. She doesn't call him darling or honey or husband. We don't ever know if they are man and wife until he's killed by Indians and they bury him on the trail. Leah takes her wedding ring off and presses it into the dirt over his grave.
Is she driven by love, gold or what? The screenplay raises many questions in the minds of the audience, and it never answers most of them. Hayward is OK in her role, even if we never learn exactly what her aims may be. Mitchell overacts, and Widmark's Fiske is a very talkative role that seems to be philosophical but doesn't make sense much of the time. We never know why Marlowe doesn't seem to have affection for Leah. Was he driven by her to look for gold? Did she marry him so that he would find a gold mine for her, or was it for love? Or both?
The most disappointing and frustrating role to me is Cooper's Hooker. Toward the end we find out that he formerly was a sheriff. But now he's a fortune hunter, along with the rest, heading West on a steamship for the gold fields of California. His lines are so poor, I can't believe he would take this part in a movie. They seem to affect his whole character and he is wooden throughout the film. Cooper was 53 when this movie was made, and he died seven years later of prostate cancer. I thought he may have been ill in this film because he seemed very old, and never is there a close-up of his face. Yet he made a few very good films after this one.
Then, there are the Indians. Did Apaches range as far south as the jungles of southern Mexico? When Hooker and Fiske shoot the Indians pursuing them on the cliff trail, they must have been terrible shots – or they shot the horses. I think every Indian that fell over the cliff screamed
The only reason this movie gets even five stars from me is for the scenery. This is one of the first films shot in Cinemascope, which was the invention of Fox Films. I remember reading or hearing a commentary recently about one of the top directors who didn't like the wide panorama format of Cinemascope. But this clearly was a movie for that. And, its sweeping panoramas and vistas shot in the mountains and jungles of southern Mexico are beautiful to behold. It's just too bad that Fox wasn't as interested in having a movie with a very good screenplay as it was in filming as many movies as it could in its new format.
In this case, the format is the only reason to see this movie. Unless one wants to see a top cast in a poor movie with a terrible script and some weak to very bad performances. If viewers are interested in seeing a Western about gold and greed, I recommend a couple of excellent films. "Mackenna's Gold" of 1969 has a top notch cast with Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Keenan Wynn, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massey and Julie Newmar. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" of 1948 won three Oscars and starred Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Bruce Bennett.