Duel in Durango

In Duel in Durango, Will Sabre, played by George Montgomery (Curt Clitterhouse in Jailbreak at Junction City), is an outlaw who wants to go straight.  He wears a black hat with silver conchos, was known as the fastest gun around, and was the leader of an outlaw gang which robbed banks and stagecoaches throughout the West.  The other gang members, however, don’t approve of Sabre’s decision to get out of the business.

But at the start of Duel in Durango, the audience does not know this.  What viewers see is a man who finds a young boy beside a covered wagon, his pa dead.  Then the scene shifts to a group of men interrogating a homesteader about the whereabouts of outlaw Will Sabre and, once they get the information, one of the men, apparently the leader, shoots the homesteader dead.  Boyd “Red” Morgan (Augie Helms in The Fifth Victim) has a small role as one of the outlaws and also does some stunt work, according to the credits listed on IMDb. 

Meanwhile, the stranger who found the boy helps him bury his father and when a posse composed of Texas Rangers shows up asking about Will Sabre, both man and boy recognize the name as that of a famous outlaw but they plead ignorance as to ever having seen him.  Shortly after that, the other group of men shows up and finds Will Sabre, who is the stranger helping the boy.  They present him with an ultimatum: Return to the gang within thirty days or else…

Will Sabre adopts the alias of Dan Tomlinson and takes the boy Robbie (played by Bobby Clark) to Durango, where he used to have a girl.  Judy (played by Ann Robinson) is a successful rancher who, although initially angry at Will for leaving her, eventually softens up enough to acquiesce to his request to look after Robbie.  Unlike Clementine Hale, Judy is serious and not at all flighty in her demeanor.  Her home is a lot nicer than Clem’s cabin, too.  Duel in Durango spends a fair amount of time showing the domestic life of this trio that somehow becomes a family.

Dan gets a job as a teller in the local bank.  Before hiring him, the manager asks, “Have you ever done any banking?”  “Well, not your kind,” Dan replies.  Definitely shades of Hannibal Heyes here!  And Kid Curry, too, for Dan tells Robbie, “By the time you grow, [people] won’t be wearing guns.  They’ll live by the law.”  So not exactly an echo, as Duel in Durango was released in 1957, some fourteen years before the premiere of ASJ, but perhaps an ancestor.

But not everything is perfect forever.  Sabre’s old gang catches up to him; there’s a bank robbery and a gun battle on the main street of Durango.  Dan comes under suspicion—the sheriff, played by Frank Ferguson (Mr. Billings, the undertaker, in Bad Night in Big Butte), always did seem to have reservations about him.  And then, something happens to Robbie.  Sabre seeks out his former gang members at their hideout, which is called a “shack” in Duel in Durango and is much more rustic than Devil’s Hole.

Although this film is also known as Gun Duel in Durango, I think Duel in Durango is a better title because the duel refers to more than just the gunfight that occurs about two-thirds of the way through the movie.  Will Sabre duels with his alternate persona, Dan Tomlinson, who is meek as a mouse, as he continuously faces challenges in his attempt to go straight.  He also duels with Judy and with Robbie over matters of the heart and home.  Even Sabre’s verbal parrying with the sheriff was a duel between the law and outlaw. 

Ultimately, though, all these struggles come to a satisfying, if abrupt, end which fans of Alias Smith and Jones will cheer.

Stagecoach to Fury

The double meaning of the title of this 75-minute black-and-white 1956 movie soon becomes apparent.  Starring Forrest Tucker (Deputy Harker Wilkins in the Pilot) as cavalryman John Townsend and co-starring Paul Fix (Clarence in Night of the Red Dog), Stagecoach to Fury is typical B-movie fare with a few interesting touches. 

Forrest Tucker is immediately recognizable, not least because he is by far the tallest person in the cast.  He plays a shotgun messenger to Paul Fix’s stagecoach driver, Tim.  They are carrying a group of passengers through John Ford country, on a stagecoach from the appropriately-named Navajo Passenger Stage Lines.

Stopping at a waystation, they are captured by Mexican bandits who want the gold they believe the stage is carrying.  From then on, Stagecoach to Fury alternates between telling the personal histories of three of the passengers and showing the determination of the others to prevent the bandits from finding the gold. 

The three stories are told through flashbacks and reveal the reasons why those people ended up as passengers on this particular stagecoach.  There is little character development of the other four passengers — one of whom ends up dead very early on — or of the Mexicans, who frequently speak Spanish which isn’t translated, which, in my opinion, makes the movie more realistic.

There is a flashback scene in Stagecoach to Fury that reminded me of the scene in The Posse That Wouldn’t Quit when Belle Jordan confronts the sheriff of the posse tracking Heyes and Curry.  As in that episode, the scene here shows a woman stepping outside her home to confront two men who have been tracking someone.  However, who the good guys and the bad guys are is reversed in this movie's scene.

The premise of Stagecoach to Fury — a group of strangers trapped in a small room or building by some antagonistic force beyond their control — has been filmed numerous times.   Budd Boeticher’s The Tall T on the big screen and, on TV, The Virginian episode Strangers at Sundown immediately came to mind.  Despite that, the twists in this movie make it an enjoyable afternoon diversion.

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.