Reviews

For any fans of actress Colleen Miller, you have come to the right movie. Miller looks gorgeous, cinematographer Russell Metty filmed her as if she was a model at a fashion shoot. Now for the debit side of the ledger: this Western is a badly done copycat of other movies. Copying "Winchester '73," there is an interior scene at an isolated road house called "La Tienda" (remember "Riker's" ?) where John McIntire's character is playing solitaire in the background. Miller's character is traveling with her old codger father (Walter Brennan) in a set-up just like "Along The Great Divide," where old codger Brennan plays the father of character Ann Keith (played by another beautiful actress, Virginia Mayo). Star Rory Calhoun plays the leader of a bunch of incompetent outlaws who never make it close to the border. Two of the outlaws, George Nader and Jay Silverheels, engage in some rough housing that seems rather strange considering Nader's Hollywood career crashing after Confidential magazine outed him. Silverheels' part playing a dimwit Indian is an racist offense against this fine actor. And what of the Indians who go on the warpath and charge head on into rifle fire? Universal-International (U-I) was a studio that made crap Westerns in the 1950s marked by real cheapness. "Winchester '73" and "Man Without A Star" were exceptions because of these movies' big stars. Too bad Colleen Miller bailed out of making movies after her experience at U-I.

1977's "The White Buffalo" is both a Western and a Horror movie at the same time. A movie where death is the key character, in the form of the "white spike," the name writer Richard Sale uses to describe the rare giant albino buffalo that both Wild Bill Hickok and Sioux Indian Chief Crazy Horse want to hunt down and kill. In this movie, Hickok is being driven insane by nightmares of the white buffalo charging him. To disguise himself, he changes his name to James Otis, puts on a pair of wire-framed dark gray glasses and travels to the Black Hills by train to kill the white buffalo. Crazy Horse's reason for hunting the white buffalo is both to get revenge for the buffalo killing his young son during its rampage through an Indian village and to redeem himself after the Sioux rename him "Worm" for breaking down over his son's death.

This movie, like "Jaws," uses an animatronic recreation of the title character. That is the only similarity between these two movies. "Jaws" is a feel good movie that makes heroes of shark hunters who are as real as three dollar bills. In "The White Buffalo," grimness prevails, with both Hickok and Crazy Horse hardened killers. In one sequence, Crazy Horse ambushes a stage coach Hickok is riding in and tries to kill everyone on board. In a scene in a bar, Hickok guns down a bunch of soldiers his enemy, Captain Tom Custer, sent in to give him a hard time before killing him. Custer runs away rather than face Hickok.

Writer Richard Sale was the co-creator and chief writer (with his then-wife Emily Loos) of the 1958 TV series "Yancy Derringer," which featured the real soldier George Custer as the chief character in the episode "Longhair." The TV episode deals in part with Custer's one year court-martial suspension from active duty for disobeying orders that led to the deaths of soldiers in his command. In this movie, when asked by Crazy Horse if he is the one the Sioux call the "Shooter," "the one who killed Whistler the Peacemaker," Hickok says the Cheyenne call him Pahaska, "Longhair." Another connection to "Yancy Derringer" is that Bronson guest starred as an escaped killer in series episode 20, which was written and directed by Richard Sale. 18 years after episode 20 aired, Bronson was now an international star who could pick the movies he wanted to star in. And Bronson chose the script of "The White Buffalo," his last Western role. Richard Sale, Bronson's former director, wrote the screenplay.

"The White Buffalo" failed at the box office and critics savaged it, complaining especially about the bad special effects used to animate the mythical white buffalo. The same critics who, in many cases, said nothing about how crummy the great white shark animatronic model looked in "Jaws." IMHO, the real reason for the critical attacks on this movie is that "The White Buffalo" presents the American West as a nightmare country, where mountains of buffalo skeletons are on the side of the road, where sudden death is everywhere and where life is short. Always in the background is John Barry's haunting, sepulchral music, to remind you of that fact. The movie closes with side by side tintype images of Hickok and Crazy Horse, showing their birth and death years, looking like images put on tombstones.

To me,"The White Buffalo" is like a motion picture version of a Vanitas painting. Vanitas paintings were mostly 17th century still life paintings that symbolized the inevitability of death. These paintings featured signs of decay and sometimes skulls. One early example is Hans Holbein's "The Ambassadors," where an anamorphic skull is hidden in plain sight on the canvas. Remember those giant mounds of white buffalo skeletons? A Western like "The White Buffalo" could not be made now in a Hollywood where comic book characters predominate. As the Grim Reaper scythed through the lives of millions over the past two years (aided by Big Pharma and the New World Order), just try to think of one Hollywood movie that showed realistic images of grim and random death. Nothing is made now to match the horror quality of "The White Buffalo," with Wild Bill Hickok's revolvers blazing away but useless against the nightmare white buffalo.

In 1933, Warner Brothers movie studio under producing supervisor Darryl Zanuck was turning out movies on three week production schedules that are far better and more realistic than anything Hollywood has made since on a production slate schedule. Airline pilot Jim Blane loses his job because he had an accident and "pilot error" is ruled the cause. Blane lands his plane at a Cuban airport and the airport workers days, when Blane identifies himself at the check-in entrance, "You're not the Jim Blane?" Blane says he is just Jim Blane. Sally Eiler, playing his former girlfriend, has one of her best movie roles. She first hooks up with Blane after he leaves his bank job to be a pilot at the air show she works at. Later, Blane becomes a pilot for hire working in revolutions and wars. Action in this movie is with the minimum of exposition, events occur fast. Blane, constantly getting wounded as a mercenary pilot, is no superman. Like many of Warner screenplay writers, co-writer Rian James was a former newspaper reporter whose work experience provided a solid background to write interesting movies. Star Richard Barthelmess was great at playing characters hardened by their downturns in life. Although in real life, I doubt he thought he would go from being an above-the-title star to being cashiered by Jack Warner in under six months, his studio contract not renewed. Director William Wellman put in a lot of hard work to make this movie fast, one reason why after his Warner contract ended, Wellman went freelance. "Central Airport" was missing in action for decades until Turner aired the movie in the early 1990s. Now this old talkie is on DVD in an unrestored version which is good enough to show that 90 years ago, Warner Bros. Was at the peak of movie making.

I came across information on "The Talisman" accidentally. After reading a review of a new blu-ray box set of Carroll Baker's Italian "giallo" movies, I went to IMDb to check on the movies in the collection. At IMBb, there was also other information on Carroll, that she and Russ Tamblyn are the last surviving credited stars of 1962's "How The West Was Won" and that she had retired from movies and was now living in London. She moved there after marrying actor British actor Donald Burton. Looking up Donald Burton on IMDb for some strange OCD reason, I saw he was listed as a star in the 1980 BBC mini-series "The Talisman." Instead of quickly departing the site, I looked up the IMDb rap sheet on the "The Talisman," read the highlighted review, and found out this movie was in Amazon Prime's free movie library. Wow, I have Amazon Prime but I almost never watch any of their free movies. On my computer, trying to watch an Amazon Prime movie doesn't work, I get a message that I have a VPN which the Stasi at Amazon disapprove of. So, I decided to watch the mini-series on my TCL 55" TV, a very fine TV by a Chinese manufacturer that Amazon would approve of, TCL having formerly made portable TVs with clear plastic housings for use by prison inmates. You know, so jailers could see that no contraband was inside the TV. As to this mini-series, "The Talisman" is crap. This BBC production had a near zero budget for stuff like stunt performers, extras, set dressing and retakes. The actors all look like they are waiting on an unemployment office line to sign for their UI checks. One main set, a meeting room, has two big half-circular tables where the nobles sit. At every scene videotaped there, there are the same bowls, some with grapes and others with big salads. Days go by; still the same big salad bowls there. Baker's husband, Donald Burton, plays the Grand Master of the Knights Templar. At one point, he spends five minutes explaining his plan to poison King Richard. Of course, the goblet with the poison later gets knocked down before Richard drinks it. The actor who plays King Richard wears a fright wig and a raggedy beard, which makes him look like a lunatic asylum escapee. Why go on, every actor here is just going through the motions, knowing that the director is an incompetent, the script is a waste of paper and that the BBC is run by greedy imbeciles with family connections. I mean, an abandoned quarry seems to be the main location for much of the outside action. There is a good reason why the 1980 BBC mini-series "The Talisman" is forgotten. This long and dull movie was not worth remembering by most of its viewers.

On a near-zero budget, this episode races through the story of Homer Potts, a lawyer from the East, out West to meet his family, ranchers who are in trouble thanks to their water supply running out. Potts likes nothing about the West and tells his niece that he heading back home by the next stage. The hotel keeper thinks up a plan to keep him in town, by having the niece's boyfriend, the sheriff, lock up Potts by claiming he is the notorious counterfeiter Doc Bogus. In jail already are the members of the Billy Be-Hung gang, who are planning a jailbreak. Times were tough in 1954 Hollywood. Jack Chertok, the producer of "The Lone Ranger," played hardball with Clayton Moore, actor playing the Lone Ranger. When Moore asked for a higher salary, Chertok replaced him in 1953 with actor John Hart for season three, which was an incredible 52 episodes long.Moore returned for season four, the network and the show's viewers did not take to Hart. Hopefully, they chastised Chetok for his cheapness. Tom Brown, the actor playing Billy Be-Hung, played the younger brother of Richard Barthelmess' daredevil aviator in 1933's "Central Airport," an overlooked pre-Code great from Warner Bros. What a difference 20 years makes. In this TV episode, Brown acts rings around everyone playing a mean hombre. Kathleen Crowley, a former Miss America contestant, lights up the TV screen as the niece of lawyer Potts. Chick Chandler is just Chick Chandler, even with a goatee and wearing a top hat. You can't go wrong watching this episode on YouTube.

"The Case of the Wary Wildcatter" is one of the best Perry Mason TV series' episodes. Everyone in this story is out for money, a totally cynical story written by Robert Bloomfield. Bloomfield wrote 4 Perry Mason episodes and this one, his last, is the best of the lot. The story starts off with a guy sending a car over a cliff, the car containing the body of his murdered wife. Somehow, a nature photographer/blackmailer with a movie camera is nearby, camera recording the action.

William D. Russell directed this episode, so it is a class job. Somehow, Russell went from directing "Perry Mason" episodes (28 episodes in total through 1960) to directing the "Hazel" TV series (136 episodes, starting in 1961). Russell's presence could only have helped "Perry Mason" from Season Four on, when the series' quality and toughness declined under regular directors Arthur Marx and Jesse Hibbs before hitting rock bottom in Season Nine. Writer Bloomfield wrote a crime novel, "When Strangers Meets" (Pocket Book edition, 1957), that the producers of "Perry Mason" must have read. Bloomfield's career in American television ended around 1967. Bloomfield's credits also includes a 1965 play called "Portrait of Murder." This play is set entirely in the living room of a writer's home, which cuts down on staging costs. An Internet search shows this play gets produced pretty often by theater companies in Great Britain.

For those of us not traveling overseas to the UK in the near future, this Perry Mason episode is a super way to see writer Robert Bloomfield's best work.

1932, the darkest year of the Great Depression, is also the year the Warner Bros. movie studio hits its peak. With William Dieterle as the director of "Scarlet Dawn," and Anton Grot as the art director, "Scarlet Dawn" moves at breakneck speed amid great sets. The cynical attitude of this movie is best summed up by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s character, Lt. Krasnoff, in a line right after Russian checkpoint guards shoot the car he had just been tossed out of at gunpoint. Krasnoff had paid for a ride out of Moscow with a bunch of jewels. The driver decided to dump Krasnoff and his companion at the side of the road, keeping all the jewels. After the shot up car bursts into flames and crashes over an embankment, Fairbanks' companion (played by Nancy Carroll) says: "They killed him. How horrible." Fairbank's response: "Stop sniveling. What's one thief more or less in this world anyway." This sort of callous attitude toward death by the star of the movie is something you never saw in major studio Hollywood movies for 20 years after the introduction of the Production Code of 1934. "Vera Cruz" had that sort of cynical attitude but that movie was made in 1954 by an independent film production company (co-owned by star Burt Lancaster).

"Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend" is a 1957 Randolph Scott Western that is plain terrible. There is no real shoot out in this movie, just a movie with a disjointed script and a bunch of actors playing their parts like moving statues. Scott had made a bunch of Westerns at Warner Bros. in the early 1950s, usually with Andre DeToth or Edwin Marin as the director and usually in Technicolor. "Shoot-Out" has centenarian director Richard Bare (100 years one week ago, August 12, 2013, a belated Happy Birthday) and Bare directs this movie like it was a long episode of a TV series. Filmed in black and white, not expensive Technicolor.

A major plot element of this movie involves Scott and his Army buddies pretending to be Quakers to work undercover to find out who sold Scott's brother bad rifle ammunition. I wonder if the writer saw the movie "Friendly Persuasion" in 1956. Another plot element is that the town of Medicine Bend is isolated from everywhere, so the crook who runs the town can rob wagon trains passing through, travelers like Scott and anyone else with total impunity. There are no marshals, no lawmen in other towns and no newspapers printing stories about these robberies.

Beautiful Angie Dickinson plays the daughter of a general store owner. She goes through the motions but she doesn't have that angry look you see sometimes on Randolph Scott's face, as if he is wondering what he is doing in this cheap movie directed by an incompetent. I am pretty sure Scott fired his agent after Scott starred in this movie. James Craig plays the villain in this movie, a businessman who owns almost every business in Medicine Bend. Craig's movie career had tanked by the time he made "Shoot-Out," a long way from Craig's starring role in 1942's "The Devil And Daniel Webster." The abrupt way Craig pops in and out of the movie makes me think that all of his scenes were shot bunched together, so Warner Bros. could pay him for the least amount of weeks' wages possible. That cheapness would explain this movie being shot in black and white, less chance of lab problems requiring reshoots after Craig finished all his scenes. In the 1950s, studio boss Jack Warner had reached the zenith of his cheapness. Every dollar not spent by Warner on this movie shows up on the screen.

Something else I really did not like about this Western is that while through most of the movie, the criminals restricted themselves to robbery, at the end, they are busy planning murders. One possible reason for the change could be the way Scott's character killed one of the gang. Scott never made another movie for Warner Bros. after this picture and I can understand why. As I have written before, "Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend" is a very bad movie.