I’d never heard of this film until it was announced that it
was being released. Looking it up in imdb .com I was able to read the synopsis
and a few reviews of the film but still had never seen it on TV, read about it
anywhere else or knew much about it. So when it arrived I was curious to find
out what it was all about.
The movie opens with the ending, a showdown between a
gunslinger and a man carrying a harpoon. Curious yet? It then moves into
flashback mode to tell how we got here. Money grubbing hotel owner McNeil
(Sebastian Cabot) is in the middle of forcing the local farmers to sell him
their land. When they don’t cooperate their barns suddenly catch fire and they
are beaten. With right hand man and gunslinger Crale (Nedrick Young) enforcing
his will, no one has much of a chance standing up to him.
When land owner Sven Hanson (Ted Stanhope) attempts to do
so, Crale kills him in his tracks. From then on no one attempts to prevent the
sales McNeil intends. And then Sven’s son George (Sterling Hayden) arrives.
Fresh from his time at sea he’s disheartened to learn of his father’s death. He
seeks answers and tries to find out what happened. And in the end he intends to
face off the same threat that his father did, with or without help from the
locals.
In reading on the film there is a number of things to know
about what was going on behind the scenes. First off the script was written
under a pseudonym by Dalton Trumbo, one of the blacklisted writers in Hollywood
at the time. Young was had also been blacklisted. Director Joseph Lewis was
about to retire and with this being his last film he didn’t care about the
standings of both men and set out to make the movie.
The film may seem like a simple tale of evil land baron
taking on dirt poor farmers but it reality it was as much a metaphor of the
times as the higher profile film HIGH NOON. The townspeople are being
railroaded into doing something they don’t want to, fearful of repercussions if
they stand up to the powers that be. Only one man is willing to do so even if
they won’t support him.
The story is well written and offers less black and white
characters than one would imagine. The character of Crale is especially
interesting. He’s the bad guy, the man in the black hat, the gunslinger we’ve
all come to associate with all things evil. And yet here, he simply wants to
make enough so that he and his girlfriend and saloon gal Molly can leave and
find a place of their own. The lines here between all out good and bad are
blurred with the exception of McNeil.
Still, the movie felt like it moved along slowly. The low
budget is apparent with sets that seem like leftovers from other productions as
a cost cutting method. The photography is good one moment and washed out the
next. The supporting actors do a decent enough job but nothing to write home
about. In the end the story behind the scenes will make this a movie that will
be sought after by film historians and lovers of westerns but not something the
average viewer will rush to find.
As with a number of films they’ve released, Arrow Video has
chosen to offer this long lost film in the best reproduction possible, a 2k
restoration from original film elements. The extras on hand make this edition
shine. Included are an introduction by Peter Stanfield, author of HOLLYWOOD,
WESTERNS AND THE 1930s, scene-select commentaries by Stanfield, the theatrical
trailer, reversible original and newly commissioned artwork by Vladimir Zimakov
and with the first pressing only an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring
new writing by Glenn Kenny.
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