The western, cherished film form of my long gone childhood is supposed to have faded away. Don’t believe it. Some cycles live on. All I had to do was turn on the TV this week and there it was again.
On the commercials, we had A Father's Choice a near twenty year old TV Movie made by Christopher Cain who was one of the comers of that day for pieces like The Young Guns and The Principal.
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| A Father'sChoice - Zima, Strauss, Trachtenberg |
A Father’s Choice follows the form of a standard TV movie weepy but it gets a bit of extra edge from it’s contemporary cowboy movie setting.
After the deceptive video store opening with little girls Michelle Trachtenberg and Yvonne Zima having their VHS choices censored ("Sound of Music! Mum, don’t you like us any more?”), they see their mother and adoptive father shot down in their suburban drive way and have to face the fact that their nearest relative is estranged dad Peter Strauss who they haven’t seen in years. “He’s a cowboy” cut to him in a rowdy bar chatting the blonde in a Stetson.
Dropped at his ranch (no wasteful exposition) the daughters find there’s no ‘phone, not all that much sympathy (“Laundry does not go on my Ormond Brothers records”) and wardrobe comes from The Grand Saddlery and Western Wear. Life involves doing the ranch chores and the help of so nice case worker Mary McDonnell, who claims to be keeping professional in her dealings with Gary Cooper-like Strauss. Of course he wins them round. Birthing his horse’s foal is a sure ploy.
The dead mother’s rich urban sister moves to get custody (“I can give them everything Charley. What can you give them?”) but the daddy thing wins out when, after a personal best time roping calves, Strauss offers to forsake his place on the Professional Rodeo Circuit, to go on French Braiding their hair. Who can resist the damp eyed tiny in court wearing his Indian Turquoise necklace gift to the late wife.
The leads appeal. Strauss, treated to lots of anguished close ups, looks the part. He’s doubled plausibly in the bull-dogging - straightening up in a lookalike outfit after his stunt man has finished roping. The suspense from hovering cops trying to track the killer pushes the piece back in the direction of Cain’s best work but he does invoke the western environment with vista shots and working cowboy detail. A Father's Choice has lasted better than most of the work around it.
Surprisingly however the pick of the batch was Rachel Talalay’s 2012 Hannah's Law. The idea of a woman director (the last of the Freddy Krueger movies was hers) doing a western about a female gunslinger doesn’t generate immediate confidence in an era of ideology warped production. In line with current attitudes, not only is the lead a self sufficient woman but she has black sidekick stage coach driver Kimberly Elise (John Q) and a black mentor in a silver stubbled Danny Glover, as they spend the duller part of the film providing her back story.
Despite the uneasy start, lacking cowboy movie panoramas and fielding youthful bounty hunter Sara Canning doing an implausible bit of marksmanship, plugging the bandit fugitive in the hand when she has the drop on him, Hannah’s Law manages to pastiche some of our favorite western plots.
TV actress Canning, with minimal make up, brings ‘em back alive (think Tin Star) to young Dodge City Assistant Marshall Wyatt Earp / Greyston Holt who, like card sharp Ryan Kennedy’s Doc Holliday, comes on for her despite her mannish get up. Reluctant, she ponders “When this is over, who’ll I be?”
Like Lee Van Cleef with Giuliano Gemma in the 1967 I giorni dell'ira / Day of Anger, Glover fills Canning in on how to deal with the squad of Long Riders coming to town. ”When it gets close and dirty use your hog leg” tapping his side iron. All this exposition pays off with all Canning’s supporters having reason to desert her for the confrontation, in the best High Noon tradition. Kennedy’s “As a man who has lived a life of regret, I know that look” is the most resonant.
The camera pulls round the street corner to reveal the silhouette line of bad hat horsemen. Their leader cautions that Canning will be hidden away to fire from cover, only to find her standing in the middle of the main street braced for a shoot-out that director Talalay stages in a way that many of her predecessors would have admired.
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| Hannah's Law - Ryan Kennedy |
Throw in some nice sunset outlines and a bit of My Darling Clementine and you have a presentable later day western. The budget may keep it out of the class of The Avenging Angel or The Bone Tomahawk but it’s still surprisingly good. They lay the pipe for a sequel. I’m up for that.
William Witney’s 1965 Arizona Raiders also bubbled up from the vault because Quentin Tarantino is plugging his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by hosting a series of movies that the Leonardo de Caprio cowboy actor lead might have appeared in - passable idea - with a selection of SONY Westerns on the new movie Channel 32. Makes a change from Rumanian musicals.
Arizona Raiders itself just about gets by. The pleasures are from recognition. We spot the recycled plaster mud brick walls, the old Columbia orchestrations, their library gunshots, “Shoulda killed him when I had the chance”, “That Yuma’s a hell hole”, along with footage from The Quick Gun a year before. Even the title comes from one of Buster Crabbe’s old B movies. Audie Murphy is again a disillusioned follower of Civil War Guerilla leader Buck Quantrill, like Murphy's character in Kansas Raiders or Randolph Scott (Fighting Man of the Plains & Stranger Wore a Gun), Alan Ladd (Red Mountain) and all the rest. “When we heard Quantrill was killing Carpet Baggers, we didn’t care what else he did.”
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| Tarantino. |
Tarantino points out that the film is a remake of Texas Rangers - not the King Vidor thirties epic that was served up again as Streets of Laredo in 1949 and rather better The Outriders in 1950 but a l951 Phil Karlson Columbia movie.
For some reason (at ninety seven minutes it doesn’t need this padding) Arizona Raiders opens with actor Booth Colman in costume giving us an extended history lesson from fake pages of The Ohio Gazette and then we get into the plot of former Army Captain Buster Crabbe called in to stamp out resurgent guerilla activity in Post Civil War Arizona which doesn’t have an outfit like the esteemed Texas Rangers to deal with the problem. His solution is to have ex Arizona Raiders Murphy and Ben Cooper busted out of the 1864 Jail Wagon where they are being transported with breaks to walk a circle with their hands manacled. Crabbe (“I respect a good soldier no matter what side he’s on”) isn’t sure whether the boys will just high tail it for the Mexican border but he has recruited Audie’s younger brother to the rangers to get some leverage.
The bad hats are a mean lot. We are introduced to one driving his sheath knife through the hand of the holder of winning cards in his saloon poker game. The outlaws are suspicious but they have a big bullion robbery coming up - an unimpressive string of pack horses with "U.S. Mint" cases on their backs.
Well nostalgia’s not what it used to be and even in 1965 the old hands were trying to edge themselves into the world of Sam Peckinpah. A heavy dies at the foot of the cross. High on peyote, Michael Dante rips the blouse off implausible squaw Gloria Talbot. Without their guns, vengeful Yaqui Indians fling poison cacti down on the suffering bad hats trapped in a cañon below.
None of this has much conviction. Veteran director Witney (he of the splendid Zorro’s Fighting Legion) is most at ease staging the gun fights with stunt men in the foreground flinging their hands in the air as they get shot. He manages to place action in the out of doors with the odd property department cactus prominent but somehow Witney never catches the grandeur the masters trade in.
Maybe Audie Murphy couldn’t manage to do his lines with feeling but by then he sounds like Audie Murphy and that’s good enough. His later films (Showdown and The Posse From Hell) could be quite accomplished but this one is just watchable. Tim Holt was a more imposing Arizona Ranger in the nice 1948 Lew Landers movie.
Maybe Audie Murphy couldn’t manage to do his lines with feeling but by then he sounds like Audie Murphy and that’s good enough. His later films (Showdown and The Posse From Hell) could be quite accomplished but this one is just watchable. Tim Holt was a more imposing Arizona Ranger in the nice 1948 Lew Landers movie.
For a finale, Talbot elects to go off and be the first Yaqui nun and Audie rides into the distance with Buster. I mean strewth - fair crack of the whip! Audie Murphy!
Still, not at all bad for one week free to air.
Still, not at all bad for one week free to air.
