1958 - THE LAW AND JAKE WADE, disappointing but okay western

Considering the talent in front and behind the camera, this should have been a much better western.  Reformed bad guy turned sheriff Robert Taylor rides into another town to free his bank robber buddy Richard Widmark playing another psycho killer.    Taylor has seemed to forget the Widmark is a real bad guy,  Widmark takes Taylor prisoner along with Taylor's girlfriend.  The girlfriend seems a rather improbable plot device to get a woman into what is essentially an all male story.  They all set out for an abandoned ghost town to get the loot from the last robbery they pulled together.  It all ends predictably of course.

What this story has going for it is on location shooting in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California This is a favorite place of the director John Sturges.  Sturges has also staged some decent gunfights and encounters with some Native Americans in a ghost town.  Sturges was at his peak as one of the best action directors in Hollywood.

The chief culprit in this film is the writer William Bowers whose best films were spoofs of the western genre in films like Support Your Local Sheriff and The Sheepman, Bowers seems a little out of his element scripting a film that is more a western action drama than a comedy.  Interesting enough Bowers played a Senator in The Godfather Part II.

 

John Sturges is a couple of years away from his masterpieces, The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, but his talent is very evident even in a rather tired western story like this one.  The film does have nice photography courtesy of old pro Robert Surtees.

The running time is a quick 88 minutes

1963 - THE GREAT ESCAPE, entertaining semi fictional account of a real event

Probably a high point for director John Sturges.  The Great Escape was a passion project for him for many years.

Sturges probably assembled one of the best casts ever.  Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Donald Pleasence, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, James Donald and David McCallum to name a few.

The film does take liberties with the actual events. But overall it is surprisingly faithful to the true story.

The credited writers were James Clavell and W. R. Burnett but the film apparently had a lot of uncredited writers.  In any case, this is an excellent war film.  Running time 172 minutes.

1958 - THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, a film about a big fish.

Ernest Hemingway's popular novella which probably helped him win the Nobel Prize in literature was purchased by Warner Brothers studio.  Classy film director Fred Zinnemann was hired to turn it into a prestige film.  A very miscast Spencer Tracy played the "old man."  Then everything went wrong.  Hemingway was hired to catch a marlin and that never happened.  The sea wasn't very hospitable to filming in Havana and decision was made to film in a tank with a plastic fish on a sound stage.  A frustrated Zinnemann quit the production.

 

John Sturges was hired to complete the film, and it's probably a miracle that he actually finished it. How's the end product?  Well considered all the problems and compromises made, not that bad.

The color photography is at times stunning, the score by Dimitri Tiomkin is good.  Spencer Tracy's narration isn't bad.  The film got decent reviews but the public didn't show up.  So much for art pictures I guess.

Peter Viertel wrote the screenplay.  The film runs 85 minutes.

1965 - THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL, big budget western comedy

 This large scale western/comedy wanted to be another Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but it's not really very funny.  The Hallelujah Trail was a disaster for the filmmaker John Sturges who up to this point was considered one of the best directors of action films during the 1960's.

Somehow Sturges got it in his head that the public wanted to see these kind of large scale epics.  The problem was that Sturges had never demonstrated any particular skill with crazy comedies throughout his career.

Although The Hallelujah Trail is generally considered a failure as a film I enjoyed it for the technical skill that the production team brought to the film.  Nobody knows how to stage a film in the great outdoors like John Sturges.

 

This epic film has an epic length, 165 minutes.  It was written by John Gay who usually wrote dramas.

1972 - JOE KIDD, tired Clint Eastwood western.

Nobody brought their A game to this disappointing western from Clint Eastwood and John Sturges.  Clint's the tough guy who's been hired to kill a Mexican bandit in a land rights swindle.

 

Sturges direction seems very tired and everyone has seen Clint do his silent tough guy shtick more than a few times.

The film has a decent action scene towards the end but that's about it.  Sturges occasionally shows his ability to frame individuals against scenic vistas and even in a tired film like this, he does stage some of the action scenes fairly well.

 

Elmore Leonard wrote the boring script but it doesn't help that everyone seems to be mumbling throughout the picture.  It's hard to tell what is going on.

Running time 88 minutes.

1962 - SERGEANTS 3, a remake of a remake

The last film containing all of 'The Rat Pack" before Frank Sinatra kicked Peter Lawford out of the group.  This film is a remake of George Steven's Gunga Din which was a remake of The Front Page.

 The director is John Sturges who had worked with Sinatra before and had probably knew what he was getting into or should have known.  For the most part the first half of the film works pretty well since it sticks to the first half of Gunga Din.  After a while the film starts to take a toll on my patience especially with the Sammy Davis Jr. character Jonah the freed civil war slave. 

The film has nice scenery since it was filmed Utah and Sturges as usual was good at deploying his actors in rugged landscapes.

 

An OK time killer.

112 minutes, written by W.R.Burnett.

1955 - BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK - in Cinemascope

The director John Sturges shows Hollywood how to film in CinemaScope in this thriller that doesn't over stay it's welcome.

This is an MGM production a studio not exactly know for open mindedness when it comes to technological innovation or story content.  So it's kind of amazing Sturges was able to shoot on location instead of some Burbank sound stage.

Again, Sturges use of composition in the wide screen format is very impressive.

81 minutes, written by Millard Kaufman and Don McGuire.

1965 - THE SATAN BUG, on Blu Ray

On Blu Ray this superior thriller looks very good with ace cinematographer Robert Surtees and director John Sturges location scenes looking fantastic.

The commentary by DVD review pro Glenn Erickson has some amusing insights.  Apparently Sturges was preparing The Hallelujah Trail during the film and The Satan Bug did not have his full attention much to the annoyance of the cast.

Still, you would never know Sturges was preoccupied during the filming the film turned out to be a superior thriller.

114 minutes, written by James Clavell.

1957 - GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL - a big budget Western from the 1950's.

If High Noon started the "adult Western" craze in Hollywood five years earlier, Gunfight at the OK Corral could be the peak of this sub genre.  Producer Hal Wallis hired the best talent he could get beginning with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster as Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp.  John Sturges starting to enter the best part of his career was the director and novelist Leon Uris wrote the screenplay.

However with all the talent involved this film really could have been a little better.  Probably the chief problem was the screenplay.  For all the attempts to make the film "adult" Uris loads the story up with the usual cliches, the lawman whose woman wants him to give up being a sheriff, the kid brother gunned down by the evil outlaws, the rival gunmen who respect each other so much they become friends etc.  Come to think of it Leon Uris was the author of Topaz which turned out to be one of the worst Hitchcock films made.

This film certainly has a mucho macho cast.   Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, John Ireland, Dennis Hopper, Martin Milner, Lee Van Cleef, Earl Holliman, Lyle Bettger and "Bones McCoy" DeForest Kelly.  There is enough manliness in that bunch to power about three westerns.  Lancaster is all straight laced virtue as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas is all over the place with his wild performance as the tubercular Doc Holliday.  If you are a woman in this cast trying to make an impression, you can forget it.

The previous version of this story, My Darling Clementine is considered one of John Ford's best films.  However Gunfight at the OK Corral won't ever be confused with that film. 

122 minutes.

1974 - MCQ, a very bad John Wayne film.

A very bad film made by John Sturges and John Wayne late in their careers.  Clearly the point of  McQ was to put the iconic actor in a contemporary cop film similar to Dirty Harry. But considering the talent, the film is a very poor rehash of that film.

A lot of the people involved in the film like John Sturges and composer Elmer Bernstein are working well below their skill level.  It's like hardening of the artistic arteries had set in with these old time professionals.  John Wayne in particular looks really out of it.  He seems barely engaged with the film and is incredibly stiff and slow moving throughout the film.  Wayne acts more like a senior citizen in need of a walker than a tough veteran cop. 

To add to the oldster status of the film, the rest of the cast features a bunch of old timers.  William Bryant, Eddie Albert, Diana Muldaur, Clu Gulager, David Huddleston, Al Lettiere, Julie Adams and Colleen Dewhurst.  It's like being at a celebrity senior citizens center.

 The plot is about drug dealing and dirty cops something that was on Quinn Martin TV shows every other week.  The action is unimpressive except for a final car chase along a Pacific Ocean beach.

The whole thing is just pretty depressing and bad.

111 minutes written by Lawrence Roman.

1959 - LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL, a good western

Kirk Douglas is the sheriff looking for the men who killed his Indian wife.  Anthony Quinn is his former friend who's son is the one who killed Douglas's wife.  Quinn runs the town of Gun Hill like a western despot.  Douglas comes to Gun Hill to arrest Quinn's son and has to wait until the Last Train From Gun Hill can get him out of town.  

 The film has two larger than life personalities completely dominating the story.  Kirk Douglas who snarls throughout the film and Anthony Quinn who seems to be ready to blow with some kind of smoldering parental anger.  The two of are also competing to see who can be the bigger bad ass.

Produced by Hal B. Wallis and directed by John Sturges.  This is a good looking production with lots of well directed action scenes.  A quality product all the way

94 minutes, written by James Poe.

1973 - CHINO, nearly plotless Charles Bronson western.

Bronson's a loner raising horses when a kid rides up looking for work.  Bronson takes him in and they sort of have a father son relationship.  Bronson's wife Jill Ireland shows up as usual and they fall in love, but Ireland's mean brother doesn't want her to marry a low life like Bronson, end of plot.

John Sturges produced and and directed but according to the IMDB it was co-directed by some Italian which would indicate some sort of problem during production.  In any case Chino ain't much of a film.  It takes over an hour before Bronson starts shooting guys as it marches to it's pointless conclusion. 

This is the period in Bronson's career where he was able to parlay the success of Death Wish into large paychecks for himself.  The problem for Bronson was that he associated himself with films that were basically crap.  Bronson's wife Jill Ireland frequently starred in these films in one of the classic examples of nepotism.  Reviewers would criticize her acting, but frankly I've seen a hell of a lot worse.

Chino was shot in Spain with an Italian crew which makes it an official spaghetti western.

98 minutes, written by Clair Huffaker.

1967 - HOUR OF THE GUN, excellent but forgotten film.

This is John Sturges and the writer Edward Anhalt's followup to Gunfight at the OK Corral the film Sturges made 10 years earlier.  Hour of the Gun  focuses on Wyatt Earp and what happened to him after the shootout at the OK Corral.

The film has very good performances from James Garner and Jason Robards Jr, along with typically excellent Sturges direction particularly in the action scenes.  Along with Anthony Mann, Sturges knew how to stage and photograph action scenes while incorporating strong scenic values within those scenes.

 

 

In Hour of the Gun, Sturges is interested in exploring the line between vengeance and justice, particularly how the law is used and manipulated by Wyatt Earp to achieve his goal, of bringing down the Clantons.

For a change this film is fairly faithful to the actual facts.  This is an underrated western film that never got the credit it deserved.

100 minutes.

1960 - THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is really the pretty good seven or maybe OK seven

Not much to add here, everyone knows that this is a remake of the Kurosawa film transported to Mexico as a western.  The director is John Sturges and while Sturges is a good director, he's no Kurosawa. 

At  over two hours watching the film was kind of a long slog.  Sturges strong points as a director were always in staging action and working with composition in wide screen.  Unfortunately Sturges probably should have put a little more time into the screenplay.  The film mostly takes the Seven Samurai plot line and condenses a  lot of that film's story structure which makes some of the film look a little choppy in places.  Towards the end the bandit leader traps the "Seven" and then lets them go with their guns.   The reasons the Mexican bandit leader gives for not killing the "Seven" make absolutely no sense and the scene itself really has no reason to even be in the film.

The dialog also leaves a lot to be desired,  there are some pretty corny lines that come out of the mouths of these tough guys.  The gunfighters in this film are so nice they would fit right into a Mary Kate and Ashley Olson movie.  The Seven Samurai runs over three hours so it probably should be expected that The Magnificent Seven would lose a lot of the emotion and characterization that the Kurosawa film had. 

What the film does have going for it besides excellent action scenes, is the super cool cast, almost iconic roles for every actor playing the "Seven."

The German actor Horst Buchholz plays a Mexican named Chico in a very silly piece of casting.  Horst Buchholz got stuck playing the inexperienced and reckless kid and he's OK although it's a pretty impossible part for any actor much less a German pretending to be a Mexican to play.

In the end the film is probably to mired in it's early 1960's conventionality to be the classic that a lot of people think it is.  Everything is spelled out and every plot point is very obvious throughout the film in that 1960's kind of way.

Sergio Leone must have watched this film a few times before he made the first of his spaghetti westerns.  The Mexican bandit leader played by Eli Wallach is clearly a warm up for Wallach's Mexican outlaw "Tuco" character in The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

128 minutes, either overlong or not long enough. Written by William Roberts and uncredited writers, Walter Bernstein and Walter Newman.