The Stalking Moon

A cross between Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians and a modern slasher movie, The Stalking Moon is the first horror Western I have ever seen.  Beautiful cinematography in vibrant colors and the sometimes haunting music, used judiciously, really complement the plot of this 1968 film that was partially shot on location in Nevada.

The Stalking Moon opens with a long shot of a man clambering over Vazquez Park-like rocks as he then helps the U.S. Army capture a band of Apaches in Arizona.  Gregory Peck stars as Sam Varner, an Army scout whom the audience soon finds out has decided to retire and return to his ranch in New Mexico. 

One of the Indians turns out to be a captive white woman, played by Eva Marie Saint, with a young half-Indian son.  She has evidently been with the Apaches for a long time because she has a hard time remembering how to speak English.

The soldiers herd the Indians to the Army camp, prior to sending them to the reservation at San Carlos.  On their way to the makeshift Army post, they come across a burned-out homestead and someone mutters the name Salvaje.

Not much is made of the plight of the Indians, however.  Instead, the plot of The Stalking Moon soon revolves around the white woman, whose name is Sarah Carver, and her attempts to accompany Varner to his ranch with her son.  There is a bit of a mystery as to why she wants to leave the Army encampment so quickly but, ultimately, she does and the journey to New Mexico reveals the openness and loneliness of the Old West. 

Red “Boyd” Morgan (Augie Helms in The Fifth Victim) has a small role as a stagecoach driver the travellers meet on their way to Varner's ranch.  Varner, Carver and her son survive a sandstorm in the desert that was just as bad, if not worse, than the one in Smiler with a Gun.  Eventually, they arrive at the ranch, situated in a forest near a river, and the old man who was taking care of the place and buying up cattle for Varner, greets them.

All seems idyllic—Sam is getting used to having a woman around and Sarah is regaining her voice and strength.  But soon mysterious, violent incidents occur and the name Salvaje is uttered again.  An Indian scout (played by Robert Forster), a friend of Sam’s, shows up, and after that, the suspense dramatically increases. 

There is a lot of scrambling through the forest and over rocks and in the river, as in High Lonesome Country, and it slowly becomes clear who Salvaje is and why he is there.  The Stalking Moon handles all of this very effectively in its 109 minutes.

Hang 'Em High

This is a surprisingly good movie!  I was surprised because I thought it would be a spaghetti Western, but the synopsis of the plot of Hang ‘Em High intrigued me so I decided to take a chance on it.  I’m glad I did; this 114-minute film from 1967 is well worth watching.  And there are lots of little reminders of Alias Smith and Jones, too.

Clint Eastwood plays Jed Cooper, whom the audience first sees as a cowboy driving a small herd of cattle across a river, just like in Twenty-One Days to Tenstrike.  Suddenly, a large group of men surround him and accuse him of rustling.  One of the men is played by immediately-recognizable Alan Hale, Jr. (Andrew Greer, the lawyer in The Girl in Boxcar 3).  Another man, Loomis, is played by L.Q. Jones (Clint Weaver in Stagecoach Seven) , not so recognizable as I mistakenly thought he was the man wearing an eye patch.  They don’t believe his evidence that he bought the cattle legally and hang him from a nearby tree.  This scene at the beginning of Hang ‘Em High was well-done and reminded me a little of The Ox-Bow Incident.

Fortunately, a marshal comes along, sees the man dangling and cuts him loose, only to have his deputy shackle his feet and dump him in the prison wagon with the other men he’s transporting to Fort Grant, Oklahoma Territory.  Much later in the movie the audience learns that the marshal’s name is Hayes.  After a few days in the pit-like jail, the judge (played by Pat Hingle) releases him.  Cooper wants revenge on the nine men who attempted to hang him.  But it turns out Cooper is an ex-lawman and Judge Fenton offers him a job that he can’t refuse: $250 a month as a Federal Marshal; he will be the twentieth marshal in the entire Territory.  The judge tells Cooper he can go after the men who tried to kill him but he must bring them in alive, and the remainder of Hang ‘Em High is about Cooper’s pursuit of them.  There is also a rather mysterious woman, Rachel Warren (played by Inger Stevens), who comes to play a significant role in the movie.

Other connections to Alias Smith and Jones abound: A character, seen only in one scene at the beginning of Hang ’Em High, is called Preacher.  The town where the bad guys are is called Red Creek.  Cooper and another man call each other “boy” but in this movie, it’s used as a derogatory insult, in contrast to the affectionate use of the term in the TV show.  At one point, Cooper is distracted from his mission of revenge by having to track down some murdering cattle-rustlers, and he brings all of them through a desert safely, though it’s clear when they reach Fort Grant that they suffered mightily.  One scene had L.Q. Jones inside a house engaged in a shoot-out with Cooper, in a fun twist from seeing him on the outside shooting in in Stagecoach Seven.  And Alan Hale was taking the law into his own hands when he supported the hanging of Cooper, in contrast to his role as a lawyer in ASJ.  In another irony, Mark Lenard (Jim Plummer in Exit from Wickenburg) is a prosecutor appearing before Judge Fenton’s court.

Fort Grant is a clear stand-in for the real Fort Smith in Arkansas and Judge Fenton is obviously a surrogate for the real Judge Isaac Parker, the “Hanging Judge.”  About half the plot of Hang ‘Em High consists of Cooper tracking down his nemeses and the other half deals with his relationship with the judge and his tendency to hang all the prisoners brought before his court.  The gallows is prominently located in the center of the town and the movie shows several scenes of people being hung.  At one mass execution, there is a party-like atmosphere, just as in The Day They Hanged Kid Curry; a vendor can even be heard hawking, not popcorn, but pretzels, licorice sticks for children, and cold beer.  There is a great shot of the shadows of several pairs of legs dangling; in fact, the quality of the cinematography and production design is very high in this film. 

There are no bonus features on the DVD I watched but there is a very interesting trailer for Hang ‘Em High; it is obvious that the movie is from the ‘60s!  All in all, this was a very enjoyable film and definitely worth seeing.

Biography of Judge Isaac Parker:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ar-isaacparker.html

History of the U.S. Marshal Service, with a focus on the Old West period:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/law-usmarshals.html

The Indian Fighter

The beginning of The Indian Fighter, a 1956 movie starring Kirk Douglas as Johnny Hawks, strongly reminded me of White Feather and Broken Arrow, two other films from the same decade.  And while this movie did often seem to be derivative, Douglas’ performance was good enough to keep me entertained throughout its 88 minutes. 

The generic plot of The Indian Fighter is a mash-up of: white man is friends with Indians but works for the Army, white scout leads pioneer settlers through tense Indian country, white man falls for Indian girl and problems ensue, unscrupulous white men search for gold, white girl falls for white scout but he is not interested, Indians attack Army fort, white man comes under suspicion by soldiers and settlers. 

Alan Hale (Andrew Greer, the lawyer in The Girl in Boxcar #3) co-stars as a suitor of the white girl; he’s the “best apple-grower in all of Michigan.”  The white girl has a son named—surprise!—Tommy, just like the boys in Exit from Wickenburg and The Men Who Corrupted Hadleyburg.  And Hawks shoots a rattler, in a scene reminiscent of Smiler with a Gun.

There were some interesting scenes in the movie that touched on the history of the West.  Over the course of The Indian Fighter, the state of relations between the whites and the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Shoshone were mentioned; some were friendly to the people invading their territory and some were not.  A subplot involved an Army photographer, a protégé of Mathew Brady, who believed that his photos would show the beauty of the land to people back East and persuade them to journey West in a venture to civilize the region.

The background music was generally overbearing and obvious but at approximately the mid-point of The Indian Fighter, a song was played by a character in the movie and a google search revealed it to be a song from the Civil War called Two Brothers.

Rio Grande

This is an odd movie.  Filled with father vs. son, husband vs. wife, Anglo vs. Apache, US vs. Mexico, officer vs. enlisted conflicts, Rio Grande can’t seem to make up its mind as to what sort of film it aspires to be.  Starring John Wayne—who sports a mustache--and Maureen O’Hara as husband and wife Kirby and Kathleen Yorke and directed by John Ford on location around Moab, Utah, I found it more interesting to identify familiar landmarks spotted throughout this 1950 movie than the plot was itself.

The Yorkes have a son, Jeff, played by Claude Jarman Jr., who flunked out of West Point and then enlisted in the Cavalry and got sent to, surprise, his father’s command in the Southwest.  Mom doesn’t approve and follows him West.  She reminds me of Mrs. Fielding in Six Strangers at Apache Springs—she is haughty and wants to return to the civilized East with her son.  Dad, who hasn’t seen his son in fifteen years, doesn’t immediately acquiesce and the rest of Rio Grande plays out as various battles among various groups of people. 

Chill Wills (Bixby in The Biggest Game in the West) is a doctor attached to the cavalry unit; his role is small but he is immediately recognizable.  Musical interludes sung by the Sons of Pioneers, masquerading as soldiers in the cavalry unit, are incorporated effectively into Rio Grande, which is 105 minutes long.  Links to their work are included below.

A twenty-minute bonus feature, The Making of Rio Grande, in color unlike the actual film, is well worth-watching.  Hosted by Leonard Maltin, it provides useful background information about how John Ford got Rio Grande made and includes interviews with some of the actors involved with the movie.

Sons of Pioneers website:
https://sonsofthepioneers.org/

The Train Robbers

A group of train robbers, a lady in need of desperate help, two boxes of dynamite, and mysterious people chasing a small band of treasure hunters…  Sounds like a cross between Return to Devil’s Hole and The Man Who Murdered Himself, right?  Unfortunately, both of those episodes were far better than The Train Robbers, a 1972 movie directed by Burt Kennedy and starring John Wayne and Ann-Margret.

Ann-Margret plays a woman, Mrs. Lane, whose husband helped rob a train but was subsequently killed; not, however, before he told her where the money was buried.  She hires Mr. Lane, played by John Wayne, a drifter who drifts because he’s good at it, to find the gold, which is somewhere in the Mexican desert.  He hires four other men, whose characters never really become distinct from each other except for the youngest man, played by Bobby Vinton. 

The Train Robbers then proceeds to fill up 132 minutes of time as they undertake the journey to retrieve the gold.  Naturally, other people are also after the treasure.  Much time—far too much time—is spent on long camera shots of the good guys riding their horses, accompanied by slow, peaceful music interspersed with shots of the bad guys, numbering twenty in one group as well as another man following on his own, accompanied by fast-paced and loud music.

There are a number of shoot-outs, including a climactic scene when the hardy adventurers return to the isolated, one-train track Texas town from which they embarked upon their trip.  The best part of The Train Robbers was the ending, which had a twist but not the one I was expecting.

Two bonus features are included on the DVD.  One is called “Working with a Western Legend” and it includes interviews with a few of the actors and stunt men who worked with Wayne along with scenes from The Train Robbers.  The second is called “The Wayne Train” and lasts about five minutes; it provides details about the train that was used in the movie and is an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the film.