Last night, we saw Johnny Mack Brown in "Desperate Trails"(1939), a Universal Studios effort with a bigger budget than we're used to for JMB. In the town of Denton, "Sheriff Big Bill Tanner" (Russell Simpson) is using banker "Malenkthy Culp" (another great Western movie character name!) to help him steal the profitable Lantry Ranch. They're also setting up stage robberies to help Tanner secure more land. What they do is send out the bank's cash deposits on the stage, ostensibly to be stored at the Wells Fargo headquarters, then they send out men to rob the stage, and they get the insurance money plus their original cash back. A U.S. Marshal named "Cort" (Ed Cassidy) is on to their scheme, but he can't pin the crimes on them without evidence. Meanwhile, in the desert, Johnny Mack sees a runaway wagon, chases it down, and of course there's a pretty woman at the reins. A Mexican Bandito is riding with her; he goes over the edge of a cliff and lands in the river with the horses (and they actually did this stunt, it looked like the horses were okay.)
Johnny is playing a special government agent named "Steve Hayden". After he rescues the wagon, he's sent by Marshal Cort to stop the ranch theft. He stays in Denton with a man named "Willie Strong" (Fuzzy Knight), posing as Willie's cousin, a cowhand. "Cousin" Willie works for "Judith Lantry" (Frances Robinson) the pretty girl on the wagon. She owns the Lantry Ranch. Well, Sheriff Tanner is trying to steal it, so he wants Hayden dead. He's also rustling the Lantry horses with the help of the ranch foreman "Lon" (Ralph Dunn), and the Mexican Bandito "Ortega" (Charles Stevens). The plot takes a rom/com turn when JMB goes to a bar and is captivated by the dancing of Anita Camargo as "Rosita" (who we just saw in "Lawless Land"). Ortega is offended, he thinks Rosita is his gal. This leads to another "pompous Bandito" showdown in which Johnny Mack dunks him in the horse trough. Water is a big motif in this movie. The horses fall into the river, Ortega and (later) Sheriff Tanner get dunked in the trough. Johnny Mack would rather humiliate (and therefore humble) the criminals than shoot them, but with Lon the foreman he has no choice. There's always one character on the bad guy side who won't go easily into the sunset.
Singing cowboy Bob Baker has a number during the bar scene that steals the show, it's classic Western ballad material that soars above the hijinx. Baker, who also plays a cowhand, repeats this song as the credits roll. If he had any albums out, I'd buy 'em. He's that good.
The characters of Sheriff Tanner and Malenkthy Culp (Clarence Wilson) are paired as a comedy team when they aren't planning dastardly deeds. The true western tough guy conflicts are supplied by Lon and his henchmen. They're the stage robbers, working for Culp and the Sheriff, but they aren't any match for Johnny Mack Brown. He's all decked out in a button up black gunfighter outfit. As noted, the budget is higher, so the clothes give him the aura of a superhero. The violence is low key, no one gets killed, it's all about the pizzaz of Steve Hayden and his skills with a horse, rope and rifle. Early on, when he's being chased by the stage robbers, he rides away and does some fancy trick rifle movements, shifting the gun's direction with one hand, and moving his hand from trigger to grip and back.
Once again, it adds up to a tremendous night at the movies. Frances Robinson is stunning as "Judith Lantry", owner of the Lantry Ranch, and Fuzzy Knight reminds one of a cross between Slim Pickins and Chill Wills. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Desperate Trails", verging on Two Huge. It's highly recommended and the picture is almost brand new. ////
The previous night, we found a highly unusual Noir, high-concept in nature, packed with symbolism and two fine lead performances and weird characterizations from the supporting cast - almost like an Orson Welles movie. Van Heflin is 'The Prowler"(1951), a cop who hates his job. From the get go, he's coveting "Susan Gilvray" (Evelyn Keyes), whose house he set up for a police visit by prowling it earlier in the evening. He's like the fireman who sets fires. Susan lives in Hollywood in a nice house. She's the trophy wife to an older man, a well-to-do radio host.
It isn't stated in the dialogue, but Heflin must've looked Susan up before he prowled her. When he makes a return visit, "to check that everything's okay", it turns out that they're both from Terre Haute, Indiana and went to the same high school. Susan remembers him from the basketball team and even had a crush on him. So you can either suspend disbelief at the improbability of all that, or there's a chance that Heflin's been stalking her for quite a while, maybe after he found out she was living in Los Angeles, but again, no info is given.
Boy oh boy, he is one creepy cop, especially in the early going, the way he installs himself into Susan's life. He comes over whenever he feels like it, in uniform or off-the-job. Eventually he makes a move on her and she slaps him hard, three times. Three is a key number in the film, symbolically, because when you were a cop in the old days, you had to yell halt three times before shooting a guy. Heflin convinces Susan that she doesn't love her husband. Eventually, she forgives him for getting fresh, and keeps seeing him on the sly. Heflin commiserates with his nerdy older police partner about how much he hates being a cop. The partner (John Maxwell) is a geology nut who takes trips to the desert on his days off, to collect rocks. This will figure big in the late going.
Eventually, Heflin wants Susan so bad that he sets up another fake prowler call to lure her husband outside. Then, responding to the call himself, he kills the husband in a shootout, and at his police hearing he claims he thought the husband was the prowler! Holy switcheroo, Batman! This is what I mean by high concept. Heflin has the whole thing set up, and is cleared on a charge of accidental homicide. At first, Susan hates him for killing her husband, she thinks he did it deliberately, and he did. But because she's so wishy-washy and gullible, Heflin is able to play to her sympathies once again. I'm telling you, this is one of the most nuanced, strange and great performances by a lead actor in the history of Noir. Too many people only remember Van Heflin when he was older and playing grumpy introverts. Having seen his range over the years, I always point out that he could do song and dance, he could do screwball comedy, he could do Westerns, he could basically do it all and then some. The guy was a phenomenal talent, and here, he turns on the leading man charm, again and again, to keep pulling Susan back to him, even when she hates his guts.
Then, in a Wellesian twist that you really have to suspend disbelief to believe, they end up out in the desert in Calico, California, a ghost town, after Susan divulges she's pregnant. They can't have the baby in public because of the timing. Everyone will know she got pregnant while her husband was still alive. This is as "Joseph Losey" as it gets (he directed), with all kinds of symbolism and social commentary. Losey, who was blacklisted for allegedly being a Commie, can be great - as he was with the exceptional "Mr. Klein" - but he can also sometimes be too self-indulgent, as he is here with some of the stranger plot shifts.
As far as Heflin's character goes, at first he's super creepy, but as he wins Susan over, you can't help but root for him because suddenly he's not creepy anymore. He's gotten what he wanted, which was her, and now they're married (after he kills the husband), but the thing is, for a while he seems to truly love her. This is some great, great acting by Heflin because he's not faking either the creepiness or the love. But in the end, when she's gonna have a baby and the whole world will know it was conceived while her husband was still alive, Susan has a difficult delivery and Heflin has to drive away to get a doctor. He finds an old guy in the boondocks, and is gonna shoot him after he delivers the baby (so he won't talk), but by this time Susan has finally had enough, and rats Heflin out to the doctor, who drives away and calls the cops. Heflin's final climb, up a steep dirt hill, is way too symbolically obvious (he's climbing the mountain of greed/capitalism/envy/call it whatever you want, and then he's shot dead at the top and slides down).
What a weird, but really good movie. Not great, because 90 minutes felt like almost twice that (we're too used to getting the job done in 60 minutes, and I don't think I like longer movies anymore), but again, it's one of the most original Noirs we've seen. Joseph Losey is a bit of an acquired taste, because he always "Joseph Loseys" his movies to be different from what they should've been. I think he was trying to be like Orson Welles, and he was good, but.......here he goes on too long. Still, Two Big Thumbs Up. The fans at IMDB would give it Two Huge, and you can't beat Evelyn Keyes as an actress. See it for Heflin's performance and hers, and for it's sheer originality. It's highly recommended but be prepared to do some time checking, the picture is razor sharp. ////
Well, that's all for tonight. I'm excited that Porcupine Tree have reformed for an album and a tour, and will be playing the Greek Theater in September. I'm reading the official biography of Emerson Lake and Palmer, which was overseen and edited by Carl Palmer himself. It's great and has loads of photos and history. I hope you are enjoying your week, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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