I'm back. Last night Grim came over, so no movie. You know the drill. Tonight I did watch one though, and Holy Smokes and My Goodness......it wasn't a Tarzan. Man, I can't believe I am all done with my Tarzans. What am I gonna do? :( The good news is that I still have two to watch from the original Weissmuller movies, because of those defective discs that wouldn't play. I suppose I'll have to buy my own copies of the Tarzan Collections just to get the two unseen films, but that's okay because then we can re-run all the other Tarzan movies, too. Oh boy! (or should I say Oh "Boy"?).
In the meantime, I may purchase some of the other collections, starring Gordon Scott and/or Lex Barker, just to get my Tarzan fix. But then again I may not, because there is only one true Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller. Accept no substitutes, unless you absolutely have to watch a new Tarzan movie and have already seen the originals.
But yeah, as I was saying, I did watch a movie tonight, called "Forty Guns" (1957), starring Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Samuel Fuller. This is a brand new Criterion release, so the black and white Cinemascope photography by Joseph Biroc looks incredible. Stanwyck is a Tough Broad of the type she played in "The Big Valley" TV series, except she is more cynical here. Director Fuller was notoriously macho and hard boiled, and this film comes across as a Noir Western.
She owns a ranch and half the land in Cochise County, Arizona. She also owns the Sheriff, and has forty ranch hands who also ride with her as gunmen, in case of trouble, so there is your movie title.
As the movie starts, three brothers have just ridden into town. Fuller has clearly modeled them on the Earps - Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil - but these men have a character all their own, led by the high-cheekboned Barry Sullivan as "Griff", a mercenary gunman paid to capture - or kill - bad guys. He is a very fast shot, and has come to town to arrest the crooked Sheriff's deputy, who has been robbing U.S. Mail stages.
Being that Barbara Stanwyck owns the Sheriff, his criminal deputy figures that Babs can get him cleared, too. To top it off, Stanwyck has a reckless, hothead kid brother, twelve years her junior, who takes out his jealousy of big sister's power by getting drunk and shooting up the town.
"Griff" the hired gun is intimidated by none of this because he has seen it all. He and his two brothers have a system for handling lawless bigshots in these frontier towns.....
But the problem is that the year is 1881, and according to the script (also written by Fuller), the way of the gunfighter is almost over, to be replaced by organized police forces in developing towns and cities.
Griff is hoping he doesn't have to kill anyone, but several of Stanwyck's forty guns are not cooperating, and her brother is a constant thorn. More than any of this, Barbara - tired herself of being a strong woman overseeing subservient men ( a woman alone, in other words) - sees Griff as a match, the strong man she has been waiting for. So even though he has come to arrest one of her employees, she sides with him because she has fallen in love, and within a short time the feeling becomes mutual.
Still, Griff and his brothers have a job to carry out - the arrest of the mail robber - and there are some in the town who like things the way they are, with Barbara making the rules and protecting her criminals, and these guys set up an ambush on Griff.
Samuel Fuller was a tough guy director from the East Coast who was also a WW2 vet. He made independent films with dialogue that was meant to forward his ideas about things. I've seen maybe five or six of his films, and while I can't call him one of my favorites, he is surely a skilled motion picture craftsman. In "Forty Guns" he is as his best, clocking in the picture at 80 minutes with a tight script that wastes no scenes. There is one involving a massive tornado that is a tour-de-force of staging and cinematography. I think Fuller could have been a big time director, had he played the studio's game, because his technical ability is beyond question.
I cannot possibly tell you anymore about this film, except to say that it is an exceptional Western, with some of the best B&W camerawork you have seen for a while.
We are all out of Tarzans for the moment, but Westerns aren't such a bad substitute, are they?
I mean - c'mon! - there was a time when all we watched was Westerns.....(and Sci-Fi, and Horror).
So now we will re-adjust for a Tarzanless future, but only for the time being.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Forty Guns". I have ordered some other new Criterion releases from the Libe, so we will watch them as soon as they arrive.
I am getting a little bored...(ahem)....with the Freezing Cold Weather (I mean, it's almost mid-February, c'mom already), but there seems to be no end in sight. According to weather.com, t'wll be chilly through the next ten days, and into a deep freeze tomorrow night. 32 degrees! Now that is some serious L.A. Cold.
My revenge will be 118 degrees come July. I seriously can't wait. :)
I need a French Organ Music fix, so I will find it on Youtube, post it on FB, and then I will see you in the morning, in church. Gigantic love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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