Shoot Out

A cute orphaned kid plus an ex-convict gunfighter do not equal a wonderful movie.  Shoot Out has its moments, mostly because Gregory Peck plays the gunfighter, Clay Lomax (and what was he thinking when he accepted this role?).  This 1971 film, produced by Universal Studios, could have been much better if the villains hadn’t been played as caricatures.

Paul Fix (Clarence the undertaker in Night of the Red Dog) has a small role as a train brakeman who delivers the orphan girl to Lomax.  Jeff Corey (Governor Baxter in The Day the Amnesty Came Through) plays Trooper, a wheelchair-confined ex-soldier saloon keeper who knows where Lomax’s nemesis, Sam Foley, now lives. 

It was Foley, played by James Gregory, who was Lomax’s partner in a bank robbery; Foley shot him in the back and as a result, Lomax spent seven years in prison and is now out for revenge.  Bud Westmore  and Larry Germain were the make-up artist and hairstylist for Shoot Out and did the same for the Pilot.

Foley hires a cowpoke to follow Lomax and most of Shoot Out is about what happens on the trail.  Lomax finds himself caring for the little girl after his attempts to foist her off on the owners of the mercantile, the schoolteacher, and the preacher in a town are unsuccessful.  Perhaps it was the same with Heyes and Curry after they lost their folks and that’s how they ended up at the Valparaiso Home for Waywards. 

There are several encounters—including shoot outs--between Lomax and the bad guys as they all slowly make their way to Gun Hill, where Sam Foley lives.  The final shoot out of the movie is moderately interesting but other than Gregory Peck’s performance, this movie is not worth the 94 minutes it takes to view it.

As I was watching this film, it seemed almost like a mirror image of True Grit: Instead of a young girl hiring an aging marshal to get revenge, Shoot Out has an aging ex-criminal saddled with a little girl who wants revenge.  But then the credits reveal that the producer, director, and screenwriter responsible for True Grit had the same roles in this movie, and it was no longer such a coincidence.

A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die

What a great premise for a movie: An outlaw, tired of the life, decides to get an amnesty offered by the governor of the territory, and along the way, he has to avoid other outlaws, lawmen, and bounty hunters.  Unfortunately, the plot of A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die reads better than its execution on film.

This 1967 movie stars Alex Cord as Clay McCord, an outlaw who is lightning fast with his gun and has a $10,000 reward dead or alive on his head, but otherwise bears no resemblance to Kid Curry.  He does, however, suffer from periodic seizures, most noticeable in the uncontrollable shaking of his gunhand.  He thinks it is caused by epilepsy because his father had the condition and, because his father was laughed at and scorned, McCord tries, rather unsuccessfully, to hide his seizures when they occur.  Naturally, I was reminded of Pete Duel when seeing this in A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die.

McCord ends up in the outlaw-run village of Escondido, New Mexico, and various nasty things happen there.  He is eventually able to leave and makes his way to Tuscosa in the same territory, where Marshal Colby, played by Arthur Kennedy, offers amnesty and $50 to outlaws who give up their evil ways.  He is acting on behalf of the Governor, Lew Carter, ably acted by Robert Ryan.  This politician in A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die is quite a contrast from the Wyoming governors seen in ASJ.

The climax of A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die is set at an isolated cabin that was similar to the one in The Day the Amnesty Came Through.  Here, McCord waits for the Governor, just like Kid and Heyes waited for Lom in that episode.  But what actually happens is more similar to the events in Stagecoach 7 than the events in the third season episode.

A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die is a spaghetti Western--the credits show lots of Italians worked on this film—and it has the requisite long close-ups of unemotional actors’ faces and the overwrought music that swells at important plot points yet is absent for long periods of time in other parts of the movie.  But A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die never reaches the level of quality of the great spaghetti Westerns and at 98 minutes, just manages to avoid being too long.  However, the Italian version of this movie is twenty minutes longer and has a different ending, so the additional scenes might make it much more coherent and memorable.

No Name on the Bullet

Audie Murphy stars as John Gant, whom we first encounter riding alone on the prairie, stopping to ask directions to Lordsburg at an isolated farmhouse. The scene then shifts to a town which, as this is a Universal production, was obviously filmed on their Western set.

The hotel with gingerbread decoration on the porch and balcony railings, often seen in ASJ episodes, is clearly recognizable. There is a saloon on the corner but the surrounding architecture differs from that seen in the TV show so I am not sure if it is the same one depicted in many episodes. The interior of the hotel resembles that of the hotel in Dreadful Sorry, Clementine but again, since it’s not identical, I cannot be sure that it is the same set. The director of No Name on the Bullet, Jack Arnold, also directed several ASJ episodes: Something to Get Hung About, Which Way to the O.K. Corral?, The Clementine Ingredient, Bushwhack!, and What Happened at the XST?.

Gant, whose name conjures up Walter Brennan’s Gant in Twenty-one Days to Tenstrike even though that’s just a nickname, approaches a blacksmith’s forge to have his horse seen to. There, he meets Luke Canfield, played by Charles Drake, and his father, Asa, played by R.G. Armstrong (Max in The Bounty Hunter). Luke is a doctor and veterinarian and Asa is the blacksmith. They are the good guys of No Name on the Bullet.

Although baby-faced like Kid Curry, the similarity between Curry and Gant is only superficial. As Gant explains later in No Name on the Bullet, “I use my gun for money and I don’t like to use it for nothing.” It turns out that Gant is a hired gun, an assassin according to the sheriff. He has more in common with Danny Bilson since he is known for prodding men into trying to kill him, whereupon he then manages to kill his intended victim legally, claiming self-defense.

No Name on the Bullet is a psychological drama that maintains its suspense throughout. Everyone in town wonders who Gant has come to kill and slowly, like the chess game he and Luke play--an apt metaphor for the film--the pieces fall into place. As Gant says, “Everyone has enemies,” and he seems to delight in seeing townsfolk, such as the banker, Thad Pierce (interesting name, that!) fall apart. Luke, his fiancé and her ill father, a judge, along with the sheriff, all try to stop Gant in various ways. The climax and finale of this 1959 movie will surprise most viewers.

A few other notes about this 77-minute long film: It was written by Gene L. Coon of future Star Trek fame, the music at times seemed overwrought, and Bud Westmore did the make-up for No Name on the Bullet as he did for the Pilot.

Thanks to this film, I have finally figured out what those cone-shaped objects seen so frequently on tables in saloons in ASJ are. They are ashtrays! Early in No Name on the Bullet, there is a very clear close-up of one of them; the top is open and filled with matches, and the tray on the bottom had lit cigars resting in it. It is very nice to have at long last solved that mystery!

Rio Lobo

Howard Hawkes directed many great films; unfortunately, Rio Lobo is not one of them. This 1970 movie, starring John Wayne and Jorge Rivera, also includes Robert Donner (Preacher in Never Trust an Honest Man, Nate in The Bounty Hunter, and Charlie Taylor in The Day the Amnesty Came Through), who can be recognized by his voice, though not the white hair of his character, and Jack Elam (Boot Coby in Bad Night in Big Butte) in small roles, as well as Boyd “Red” Morgan (Augie Helms in The Fifth Victim) in an uncredited role as a train engineer. There are three female co-stars and since they all look alike, it is hard to tell them apart.

Rio Lobo opens with scenes of gold being loaded onto a train by Union soldiers during the Civil War. It is intercepted by Confederate soldiers in a daring and well-planned train robbery, which is the best part of the movie. Wayne, playing a Union colonel, vows to recover the gold and leads a troop of soldiers in search of it. However, he is captured by the rebels though ultimately he escapes and the rebels are the ones who are subsequently captured and spend the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp.

When the war ends, the colonel seeks out the Confederate captain, played by Rivera, and his sidekick because he wants to know who gave the rebels information about the gold. The rest of Rio Lobo deals with how the three of them find the man who betrayed the Union and what they do with him and his supporters, as they have taken over a town and run it like their personal fiefdom.

The women’s dialog is very 1970s and it is jarring to hear them speak that way. In my opinion, Jennifer O’Neill, who plays one of the roles, overacts most of her scenes. But in one of them, she faints and when she revives, she finds that she’s been undressed and is in a hotel bed. When she asks who took her clothes off, Rivera’s character says they—meaning him and Wayne’s character--flipped a coin and he won, which reminded me of the scene in The Clementine Ingredient where Heyes and Kid flip a coin over who is going to pretend to marry Clementine.

The music soundtrack in Rio Lobo sounds very 1970s--very modern—and out of place. In many scenes where there is fighting, that also looks fake—the punches that are thrown are obviously not real. In the second half of the movie, the action takes place in a sheriff’s office and is very reminiscent of Rio Bravo, which in my opinion was a far better movie. During the climax, a couple rifles and pistols are submerged in water but, miraculously, can still shoot with no difficulty.

Perhaps one reason I had a hard time sitting through this one hour and fifty-four minute film was because it ostensibly took place in Texas yet was filmed at Old Tucson Studios (and in Mexico) and I recognized the scenery and some of the sets from having twice visited there, adding to the sense of unreality of Rio Lobo.

McLintock!

There are many positive reviews of McLintock! but looking through the lens of 2011, I have a different view of the movie, which stars John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Since I had visited Old Tucson Studios while on vacation in August, where this 1963 Western was filmed and where one building used in the movie remains, I was eager to see McLintock!.

However, I was sorely disappointed. Theoretically, the plot sounds good: A prim and proper wife—she prefers Katharine but he likes to call her Katie--wants a divorce from her ranch-owning husband—George Washington McLintock, or GW. Their daughter (played by Stephanie Powers), returning from school in the East, finds herself in a tug-of-war between her parents, who both want her to live with them.

The girl, called Rebecca by her mother and Becky by her father, finds herself the romantic object of very different types of men and McLintock!’s subplot involves what she does about them. Unfortunately, many of the actors overact their roles, especially Maureen O’Hara, who actually makes Mrs. Fielding in Six Strangers in Apache Springs look good. In addition, several scenes go on much too long, especially the fight scenes and the chase scene at the end of the movie.

There are scenes with Indians and a Chinese cook, which seem to me to be stereotyping those ethnic groups. On the other hand, it is surprising to hear John Wayne’s character, the eponymous McLintock, refer to the Indians in a positive manner and to take their side in a dispute with the Army. One amusing point: McLintock! at one point refers to the Indians as Comanches but I heard them speaking Navajo!

Chill Wills (a rancher in The Biggest Game in the West) also appears in McLintock!. As a sidekick to John Wayne’s character. He does a decent job with his role but is given some silly things to say and do, just like all the other characters. Leo Gordon (Ebenezer in Smiler with a Gun) also has a supporting role in this movie. The word “insane” is frequently used, which reminded me of Louise Carson saying it in Everything Else You Can Steal.

An introduction by Leonard Maltin situates McLintock! in the context of Wayne’s other work and states that it is a take-off of The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare which, since I have not read that particular play, I had not known. I suspect the source material is much better than this remake! There are a few bonus features: one describes the work Michael Wayne, John’s son, did as a producer of McLintock! and many other films; the second bonus feature interviews Maureen O’Hara and Stephanie Powers about their recollections of the movie and working with John Wayne; and the third describes the stunt work done on the movie. There is also an audio commentary that accompanies the movie but I could not bring myself to listen to it even though many people associated with the making of the McLintock! contributed to it.

As a comedy, the slapstick did not work for me at all. At 127 minutes, McLintock! dragged and I was very glad when it finally and predictably came to an end.