Copyright 1958. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at sixty neighborhoods: 3 September 1958. U.K. release: 14 December 1958. Australian release: 4 December 1958. 7,477 feet. 83 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Alan Ladd plays a Dutchman (!) who wants to rob a mine in Prescott, Arizona. He hires Ernest Borgnine as his gunslinger. But Ernest falls in love with an attractive Mexican girl, Katy Jurado.
COMMENT: Well below what you would expect of a Daves western, especially as it was made so close to "Three Ten to Yuma" and "The Last Wagon". Daves claims that when he was making the movie, neither he nor any of the players or technicians were aware that the script was a re-hash of "Asphalt Jungle" with a number of extremely odd changes, including an astonishing finish in which the Sam Jaffe character rides off into the sunset with the Marilyn Monroe character.
It's hard to completely credit Daves' claim, because he seems to have done his best in certain scenes to out-Huston Huston. The extraordinary opening, for instance, featuring a fight among six convicts who are chained together, and the shot of Borgnine, an embittered prisoner, stumbling out of the opaque blackness of solitary into the blinding daylight.
Of course, Alan Ladd also exerted some influence on the movie, insisting on the hiring of the noted film noir cameraman, John Seitz, who has certainly contrived some striking effects.
Nonetheless, despite some fine slices of action, including the mine robbery and the climactic (but infuriatingly brief) gunfight, this is a patchy film.
SYNOPSIS: Alan Ladd plays a Dutchman (!) who wants to rob a mine in Prescott, Arizona. He hires Ernest Borgnine as his gunslinger. But Ernest falls in love with an attractive Mexican girl, Katy Jurado.
COMMENT: Well below what you would expect of a Daves western, especially as it was made so close to "Three Ten to Yuma" and "The Last Wagon". Daves claims that when he was making the movie, neither he nor any of the players or technicians were aware that the script was a re-hash of "Asphalt Jungle" with a number of extremely odd changes, including an astonishing finish in which the Sam Jaffe character rides off into the sunset with the Marilyn Monroe character.
It's hard to completely credit Daves' claim, because he seems to have done his best in certain scenes to out-Huston Huston. The extraordinary opening, for instance, featuring a fight among six convicts who are chained together, and the shot of Borgnine, an embittered prisoner, stumbling out of the opaque blackness of solitary into the blinding daylight.
Of course, Alan Ladd also exerted some influence on the movie, insisting on the hiring of the noted film noir cameraman, John Seitz, who has certainly contrived some striking effects.
Nonetheless, despite some fine slices of action, including the mine robbery and the climactic (but infuriatingly brief) gunfight, this is a patchy film.