Daily Archives: October 15, 2016

Last Train from Gun Hill
Directed by John Sturges
Written by James Poe; story by James Poe
1959/USA
Bryna Productions/Hal Wallis Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Marshal Matt Morgan: You’ve already got me dead. How’d I die? The only way I could die today is for you to kill me and that’s a problem… Your problem.[/box]

This superior Western boasts an outstanding cast.

As the film begins, a couple of young hoodlum types harass a Cherokee woman and her young son.  Then one of them rapes and kills the woman, but not before she has scarred him.  The boy nabs the rapist’s horse to run for help.  Rapist Rick Belden (Earl Holliman) now has three problems.  First, the woman was the wife of the Marshall Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas).  Second, the saddle of the horse bears the initials of his father Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn).  Third, his scar is a sure giveaway.  Matt naturally swears vengence. Conveniently, the father is his old friend.

Matt takes off immediately for Gun Hill, where Belden lives, via train.  On board, he meets Linda (Carolyn Jones), Belden’s mistress, who is returning from a stay in the hospital.  Belden is clearly disappointed in his son but refuses to let Matt bring him in.  The rest of the movie is devoted to Matt’s efforts to get him aboard the last train from Gun Hill.

This one moves very nicely and boasts some very good acting.  I particularly liked Quinn. It has been a while since I have seen him in a non-ethnic role.  Carolyn Jones is also unusually good as the worldly-wise ex-shady lady.  Douglas is obviously a dynamo.  The story contains no surprises but when done as well as this is it doesn’t really matter.

A Bucket of Blood
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Charles B. Griffith
1959/USA
Alta Vista Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Maxwell H. Brock: Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.[/box]

Roger Corman’s send-up of the beat generation has laughs and little blood.

Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is the squarest bus boy Leonard de Santis could have hired for his coffee house.  The place is otherwise filled with artists, poets and folk singers, all of a fairly pretentious hyper-cool stripe.  Other frequent visitors are undercover agents looking for drug deals.  Walter is in love with an artist named Molly but is too shy to declare himself.  His life seems to be one humiliation after another.

One day, Walter accidentally kills his landlady’s cat which had somehow wedged himself behind the dry wall.  Walter was experimenting with (bad) sculpture at the time and uses the clay to cover his mistake.  The resulting object is taken for a sculpture, which he dubs “Dead Cat” and all praise it or its detail and realism.  Walter enjoys the only celebrity he has ever known and is desperate to keep it …

This is the first of Corman’s black comedies and as usual the schlockmeister’s films were superior when he directed himself.  I didn’t laugh out loud exactly but it was amusing all the way through.  He got the poetry, folk singing and pretension exactly right.

Speaking of folk singing, I can’t let another day go by without congratulating Bob Dylan on his Nobel Prize!