The Wild Bunch (1969)

Preview audiences reportedly were roused by such strong reactions to this film that many left the theater in protest. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch immediately won a reputation for its graphic violence. Because of or in spite of that, it quickly found a place on most western fans’ top 10 list. Over 40 years later, it remains a powerful and absorbing story.

Plot. Part of the impact of the story is its simplicity. Without a lot of twists and turns, it follows a gang of thieves led by William Holden from a failed railroad robbery to a successful one and then on to their deaths. In a parallel subplot, they are followed into Mexico, where most of the story takes place, by a raggedy group of hired guns, led by Robert Ryan.

That’s pretty much it.

It’s 1913 or thereabouts, and Mexican federal troops are fighting a losing battle against revolutionaries led by Pancho Villa. Holden and his gang (Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Jaime Sanchez) agree with a Mexican general to steal a shipment of arms from a train just north of the border. The train is guarded by a contingent of U.S. soldiers.

William Holden

A half hour in the middle of the film is a hold-your-breath portrayal of the train robbery and an escape with the guns across the border, Ryan and the troopers in hot pursuit. The sequence is beautifully shot and edited, with moments of both nail-biting suspense and comedy.

Character. With over two hours at its disposal, the film has time to thoroughly explore its characters, and it does. We first see the members of the gang disguised as cavalrymen. In Mexico, they gradually shed the uniforms and dress as very different individuals. From a distance you can tell them apart by the hat each has found to wear.

William Holden is especially strong as Pike Bishop (wasn’t there a famous Bishop Pike in the 1960s?), a man of easy stature who happens to be an outlaw. By the way he carries himself, you can see he has the intelligence and the experience to command this group of men. He seldom needs to raise his voice, but when he does, it keeps them in line.

Without question, he is the most admirable man in the film. His leadership of the gang is both firm and fair. When Johnson and Oates want to cut Sanchez’s share of the take, because he’s young and Mexican, Holden sets them straight. The deal was equal shares for everybody, period.

Robert Ryan

By comparison, Harrigan the railroad man (Albert Dekker), is a cheap bastard who hires Ryan to bring in Holden’s gang, but hamstrings him with the support of incompetents. The townsfolk are a pious bunch of temperance advocates. The U.S. Army troops are no more than unseasoned and disorganized young recruits. The Mexican general is a drunken, womanizing despot, and his men are no better.

Sympathy, where there is any in the film, goes to the poor villagers who are at the mercy of the Mexican federales. And we are meant to sympathize with Ryan. He and Holden are former partners in crime. Saddled with an impossible job, Ryan is threatened with being sent back to Yuma prison if he fails. From the look on his face, we know that his respect for Holden gives him feelings that are more than mixed.

Evil. Peckinpah’s wild bunch is not so much wild as they are simply day-by-day survivors in a dark and amoral world. In the opening scenes, a gathering of small boys and girls watches with fascination as two scorpions are being tormented by a swarm of ants. Far from being sweetly innocent, they’re shown as happily participating in human cruelty. 

Day of the Outlaw (1959)

This gem of western noir stars Robert Ryan in another of his hard-bitten and slightly psychotic roles. Shot in black and white, the story is set in a small mountain town knee-deep in Wyoming winter snow. The location photography gives the film a gritty realism. So does the adult material. This is not a western for kids.

Plot. The first 20 minutes introduce us to the town’s residents, and tensions are running high. Cattleman Ryan is enraged by the encroachment of ranchers fencing off the open range. He says he intimidated and killed Indians and outlaws 20 years ago to defend himself. He’s ready to do it again.

His chief adversary is a determined settler, Crane, whose wife (Tina Louise) has some history with Ryan. To avoid a confrontation, she tries to fan a little spark of sympathy in Ryan and maybe a bit of the old romance, but he’ll have none of it. “You don’t have much mercy,” she says. “You won’t find much mercy anywhere in Wyoming,” he replies.

Just as a shootout is about to settle matters, a gang of surly outlaws arrives led by former Army captain Burl Ives. They have come into possession of a fortune in stolen gold, and the cavalry is in hot pursuit. Ives has taken a slug in his chest and needs a doctor. Under his orders the town’s residents are taken hostage, the local veterinarian removes the slug, and the weather worsens.

Tensions are now over the top. Only Ives is able to restrain the most libidinous and murderous of the men in his gang, and we learn that his time is running out. From what the vet tells Ryan, Ives is apparently dying from internal bleeding, while morphine keeps him miraculously ambulatory.

Burl Ives in his other career as a folksinger

After the gang persuades Ives that a dance with the handful of women in the camp would make the men less irritable, Ryan makes a move to get the whole slimy bunch out of town. And slimy they are, except for the clean-cut David Nelson (son of Ozzie and Harriet), who has somehow got mixed up with this bunch. Tender shoots of young love even begin to spring up between him and the storekeeper’s daughter.

Ryan reminds Ives that the cavalry will be there as soon as the weather improves. To avoid a “Mormon massacre,” he says he can lead the whole gang over a mountain pass that will take them to Cheyenne. And off they go, the horses knee deep and then belly deep in snow.

When one horse is injured and has to be shot, Nelson is ordered to give up his mount to the rider who is now afoot and to walk back to town. Then Ives dies, as predicted. And thus begins a slow process of attrition in which the remaining gang members begin to fight over the gold and do each other in.

Themes. This grim western set in the snow and wintry weather recalls the crime film On Dangerous Ground (1952), shot in the snowy mountains of Colorado and also starring Robert Ryan. The film’s leering villains are not just outlaws but certified sociopaths. As they manhandle the women in the dance scenes, you can feel your skin crawl.

Meanwhile, the film backs away from what a modern western would happily relish, the opportunity for blood and gore. The scene in which the vet removes the slug from Ives’ chest even cries out for it. Ives and the doctor both break into a sweat, but that’s about the extent of the trauma. It’s a surprise to see Ives walking around afterward hardly worse for wear.

David Nelson (left) with the rest of the family, 1960

A fistfight between Ryan and three of the gang members cuts back and forth between close shots and shots from the distance, where we see the fighters and a scattered collection of observers. The effect is oddly abstract. Instead of the usual scene in which an excited crowd gathers around to cheer, the onlookers watch without moving and without a word. It’s a strange effect.

The weather deserves a mention. Often the clouds descend and the snow flies, which suits the desperate mood of the film. A brief moment of farce intrudes as a man falls asleep with his boots against a stove, and they begin to smolder. Instead of garnering a laugh, however, the point seems to be that no one else in the room either notices or cares.

As matters worsen, Ryan has some sort of change of heart and gambles with his life as he lures Ives and the gang out of town with the false promise that he knows a way through the mountains. It is an act of mercy, which he’s said there’s little of in Wyoming. The apparently selfless act seems meant in a way to redeem him, but Ryan’s not that easily redeemable.

And it does not lead to a conventional ending, where he is reconciled with his former sweetheart Tina Louise. Instead, what we get in the final scene is Nelson asking him for a job. And after a moment’s thought Ryan says, “OK, you won’t need this,” and takes away the young man’s gun. There’s a similar resolution at the end of Shane (1952), when Chris (Ben Johnson) a former adversary, asks Starrett (Van Heflin) for a job as a hand.

Mount Bachelor, Oregon

Production notes. The film was actually shot in the mountains of central of Oregon, near what was then known as Bachelor Butte. At the time, the area was in the beginning stages of what was to become a major ski resort and renamed Mount Bachelor.

The film was directed by Hungarian-born director Andre de Toth, who’s also remembered for the Gary Cooper western, Springfield Rifle (1952). The film was adapted from a novel by Lee E. Wells by screenwriter Philip Yordan, whose credits include The Man From Laramie (1955) and The Bravados (1958).

Noir fans need to give this one a viewing. It’s up there among the best. Day of the Outlaw is currently available at netflix and amazon. Tuesday’s Overlooked Films is the much-appreciated effort of Todd Mason over at Sweet Freedom.

Picture credits: Wikimedia Commons

Coming up: Old West glossary, no. 27

Hour of the Gun (1967)

Historians may object to the liberties taken in this story about the aftermath of the gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881. But in its broad outlines, it doesn’t depart too widely from the record. The feud between Ike Clanton and the Earp Brothers did not end on that October day in Tombstone. More lives were to be taken, including that of Wyatt’s brother Morgan.

The surprise of the film is the performance of James Garner, who plays Wyatt Earp straight, without the actor’s usual wry irony. Opposite him as Doc Holliday is Jason Robards, who gets all the irony and gives a memorable portrayal of the consumptive gambler and killer who befriended Wyatt.

Smooth and surly Robert Ryan plays Ike Clanton, a little old for the part at 58. Ike was in his mid-30s then and didn’t live past 40. Robards at 45 was fifteen years older than Doc Holliday, who was only 30 that day in 1881. A film with three actors in their 30s would be closer to history—and also a different kind of western.

Doc Holliday

Story vs history. The film tries to represent the complicated political situation in Tombstone, with a sheriff more or less on the payroll of the Clantons. No model family, their income came from smuggling and reselling cattle out of Mexico. Virgil Earp was city marshal and his brothers his deputies. Residents of the growing town of Tombstone supported the Earps, while the Clantons with their gang of “cowboys” fought the interference of the law.

There are trials, elections, and competing agencies of the law, with a large cast of characters. Anyone without some previous knowledge could be excused for getting confused by the details of the plot. But there’s a strong central thread holding the film together, as one by one Wyatt hunts down the men responsible for the death of Morgan and the crippling of Virgil. That thread wraps up with the biggest departure from historical fact in the movie—Wyatt’s shooting of Ike Clanton.

Ike died a violent death, all right, while actively rustling cattle out of Mexico, but it wasn’t Wyatt who killed him. I don’t know, but I also doubt that Wyatt visited the dying Doc in his Denver sanatorium before parting company for the last time, as the film would have us believe. What is true in his last scene is that Wyatt was done with being a lawman.

Earp biographer Casey Tefertiller says Hour of the Gun was a debunking of the heroic figure handed down to us in legend. I’m not sure that’s a fair assessment. It suggests that Earp deserves better, though given what we know of his life, the film actually goes out of its way to justify his actions.

Ike Clanton, 1881

Wrapping up. Director John Sturges had also directed the earlier Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, plus Rhonda Fleming and Jo Van Fleet for romantic interest. This film has no women characters. The 25 roles listed at imdb.com are all male, which makes it almost a one-of-a-kind western.

The film begins with a re-enactment of the 1881 gunfight, this time rather closer to fact than the protracted firefight we get at the end of the earlier movie. One error is that the three men mortally wounded—the McLaurys and Billy Clanton—are standing inside the corral rather than in the open lot near it, where the actual exchange of gunfire took place. The film was shot entirely in Mexico, where the raw landscape suggests more than most westerns the isolation and inhospitable terrain of the desert Southwest.

Writer Edward Anhalt has a long list of screenwriting credits, including the script for Jeremiah Johnson (1972). James Garner portrayed Wyatt Earp again in Blake Edwards’ comedy Sunset (1988) opposite Bruce Willis as Tom Mix. Soon to be known for his role in Midnight Cowboy (1969), Jon Voight appears in this film as Curly Bill Brocius.

Hour of the Gun is currently available at netflix and amazon, where it is also streamable. Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies is the much-appreciated enterprise of Todd Mason over at Sweet Freedom.

Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons 

Coming up: Gwendolen Overton, The Heritage of Unrest (1901)

The Professionals (1966)

This popular film from the mid-1960s put together three big stars along with Woody Strode as a kind of A-Team sent into Mexico to retrieve a kidnapped wife. Lee Marvin, an artillery expert, leads the group. Burt Lancaster is a dynamiter. At one time, both fought with the revolutionary forces (there were several, Villa, Zapata, and others). Both have become disillusioned and a bit cynical.

Robert Ryan is the horse wrangler, and Woody Strode is skilled at archery. All these actors have lengthy western credits. Writer-director Richard Brooks was better known for dramas like Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. The following year, he’d hit a homerun with In Cold Blood. But he seems right at home with this western adventure.

The structure of this film is almost exactly like Garden of Evil (1954), reviewed here. There’s a perilous journey by a small group of men who perform a mission and then return to safety with a band of adversaries in hot pursuit. A woman joins them, but this time only on the return trip.

Like that movie, most of the action takes place outdoors – about 95%. This time, it’s the arid terrain of northern Mexico, where it’s hot in the day and cold at night. There are desert, rocks, sand, and slot canyons. A movie like this makes the frontier town settings of a film like The Proud Ones, reviewed here last time, hardly qualify as westerns.

The film was, in fact, not shot in Mexico but in Death Valley and Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.

The Proud Ones (1956)

Robert Ryan was a helluva actor. He was especially good at portrayals of tormented men able to fly into a murderous rage. Howard Hughes put him opposite cool, unflappable Robert Mitchum in noir classics like Crossfire (1947) and The Racket (1951). He’s also good as a rogue cop in On Dangerous Ground (1952).

Here he plays a marshal in a western town, tormented again, this time by an incident he didn’t handle well in the past. He “ran away” after shooting down a man everyone believed was unarmed. Now, as chance would have it, the man’s son (Jeffrey Hunter) has shown up in town, and it’s not clear what the young man’s intentions are.

The town seems to be somewhere in Kansas in the early days of the cattle drives. The first bunches of trail cowboys are arriving, and business is already booming. Prices on consumer goods are doubling, and a big new saloon opens up with tables for gambling. The owner, Barrett (Robert Middleton) is a smiling but tough businessman and keeps a few goons on the payroll to intimidate anyone who gives him trouble.

Virginia Mayo is the feminine presence, the keeper of a hostelry. You get the idea from the staff and some asides that not so recently they were all working as prostitutes. Serving up steak and potatoes is apparently more lucrative.

Mayo is Ryan’s sweetheart, and early in the film he somewhat indirectly pops the question. Looks like she’s been waiting a long time for it. But the ring he’s bought her has to go back to the jeweler because it’s too small, which could be a bad sign. Soon after, in an exchange of gunfire in Barrett’s saloon, the marshal sustains a head wound that causes his vision to go haywire at inopportune moments. Luckily he finds a nearby frontier ophthalmologist who seems to have an uncommon knowledge of optic medicine. But the symptoms persist.

Fast forward. So that’s the set-up. And when we get to the last reel, Jeffrey Hunter has signed on as deputy, having overcome his distrust of Ryan. One of Barrett’s goons has been shot dead trying to kill Ryan. And when an altercation over some cheating at Barrett’s saloon ends in the demise of a customer, the marshal tosses three of the employees into jail.

Alas, a deputy (Walter Brennan) is killed during a daring jailbreak, and there’s a final shootout in a hay barn. The voice of reason (as women usually are in westerns), Mayo wants Ryan to come to his senses and get out of harm’s way. But he tells her, “I’m not a coward. A man can’t live a lifetime being ashamed.”