1955 - STRANGER ON HORSEBACK, enjoyable B Western

Joel McCrea is a circuit judge who rides into a small town which is completely owned and controlled by a rich banker.  McCrea investigates the death of a man who was shot by the rich rancher's son.  The judge takes the rancher's son into custody and a standoff occurs as the rancher and his hired men try to break the son out of jail.  The screenplay of this film has a lot in common with the better known Howard Hawks film Rio Bravo which was produced four years later.  

The actor Joel McCrea had been working in film since the 1930s.  He played a variety of roles in comedies, dramas and of course westerns.  McCrea had worked with Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, King Vidor and George Stevens.  He was an excellent leading man in two of Preston Sturges's best films, The Palm Beach Story and Sullivan's Travels.  As McCrea got older he gravitated exclusively to the western genre.  McCrea was proud of his image as a western hero and worked hard to uphold it.  He appeared in probably Sam Peckinpah's best film Ride The High Country which was an excellent summation to his western hero career.

Stranger On Horseback is a fairly standard small scale western.  It's got good guys and bad guys and a shootout at the end. McCrea has a fairly interesting love interest in this film a Mexican performer Miroslava Stern.  She was born in Czechoslovakia but her family emigrated to Mexico when she was 15 years old.  She apparently had a rather troubled life and committed suicide when she was 29 years old. 

Stranger On Horseback was directed by Jacques Tourneur a good director who had been associated with Val Lewton's classic RKO horror series.  Tourneur has a couple of classic films to his name Out of the Past and Night of the Demon.   Tourneur worked with McCrea in some other films and directed him in what McCrea called his favorite film, Stars In My Crown a very good film by the way.  

The film was written by Herb Meadow and Don Martin, the running time is 66 minutes. 

1964 - THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, horror comedy from American International Pictures

The Comedy of Terrors is the writer Richard Matheson's idea of mixing horror and comedy together in one film.  The veteran director Jacques Tourneur did an excellent job directing this film.  The four iconic actors Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff are fun to watch.  The problem is that this film is more amusing than funny.

Vincent Price is a down on his luck undertaker who has Peter Lorre as an assistant coffin maker who's coffins fall apart.  Price is really pretty good at spinning Matheson's dialog to make it seem funnier than it is.  Price is married to a big breasted blonde who happens to be the daughter of Boris Karloff.  Price has no sexual interest in her a joke that kind of misfires for the film. 

Anyway, Price gets the idea to speed up the deaths of some of the citizens of the town to make some money but meets his match in Basil Rathbone.  Rathbone suffers from some sort of condition that makes it look like he is dead when he actually isn't. 

Richard Matheson was a good writer but even he had some misfires in his career.  It's depressing to see a great director like Jacques Tourneur getting assignments like this towards the end of his career.   

Comedy of Terrors is a pretty good looking production for a cheap AIP picture that was shot in about 10 days.

84 minutes.

1946 - CANYON PASSAGE making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, part 2.

The previous post on Wichita, looked at the director Jacques Tourneur's attempt to take a minor western film and bring some visual flair to it with somewhat disappointing results.

Canyon Passage was Tourneur's first shot at a western and his first color film.   Tourneur was very lucky to be associated with two talented individuals, the producer Walter Wanger and the writer Ernest Haycox.  The differences in these two western films are pretty amazing.

Walter Wanger was an independent producer who was known for making quality films without being associated with any particular studio.  Wanger would prepare a script, assemble the production team, hire the director and most importantly leave everyone alone to make the film.   Wanger worked with some pretty strong willed directors like Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Fritz Lang.

The author of Canyon Passage was Ernest Haycox, he was a quality writer of westerns and is mostly remembered as the guy who wrote the story for Stagecoach.  With support like that behind the camera, Jacques Tourneur couldn't miss with this western.

Tourneur brought his amazing visual sense to this film using color and composition.  Tourneur is now known as a director who knew how to achieve interesting 3D depth of field effects by placing props in certain parts of the camera frame.  Canyon Passage has many examples of this.  The scene below with Dana Andrews and Ward Bond has a bottle carefully placed in the frame.  Attention is also given to lighting the set and the actors, it does create an interesting look. 

A very good high quality western,  Canyon Passage has lots of beautiful on location filming, the film also has the legendary composer/performer Hoagy Carmichael in a small role.  Carmichael's actually pretty good and he sings "Ole Buttermilk Sky."

1955 - WICHITA, trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear part 1

The director Jacques Tourneur was a master filmmaker for a while in the 1940's.  He made a series of classic film noir and horror films where he demonstrated his ability to create mood and very interesting visual effects with editing and lighting.  By the 1950's Tourneur was no longer getting the good scripts.

Wichita was the definition of a 1950's B movie western.  The star Joel McCrea was pretty much past his prime, the script was a bunch of western cliches and the producer was the legendary cheapskate Walter Mirisch.  Mirsch was good at making something out of next to nothing budget films and he gradually worked his way up to A class productions working with directors like Billy Wilder and John Sturges. Walter Mirsch even won an Academy Award for In The Heat Of The Night.

As cheap as the budget was for Wichita, Walter Mirsch gave Jacques Tourneur the money to shoot the film in Cinemascope.  Tourneur was able to get some pretty interesting visual effects in some scenes.  He particularly seemed to understand the way to compose for the horizontal nature of the frame.

The problem with Wichita is it's basic mediocrity as a western and a film.  Joel McCrea is barely going through the motions playing Wyatt Earp and there is a certain seen it all before quality to this film that even Tourneur couldn't bring to life with all of his visual skill. 

Jacques Tourneur eventually ended up working in TV, where he directed episodes of Bonanza and The Twilight Zone.

The producer Walter Mirsch ended his career with Midway.  Mirsch took footage from old World War II newsreels, Tora Tora Tora, The Battle of Britain and some old Toho war films to produce a very poor film about the Battle of Midway.

 81 minutes, written by Daniel B. Ullman.