Forty Guns (1957, Samuel Fuller)

Forty Guns occupies that rare position of simultaneously playing like a parody of itself without being any campy fun. It’s a perfect storm of budget, cast, story, era, technology, earnestness, and director Fuller.

Oh, and it’s a singing cowboy Western. Well, singing bathhouse owner. Men’s only, which leads to a couple weird scenes where Fuller is palpably chomping at the bit to start a musical number and have everyone bust out. Sadly, the musical number never arrives, and instead it’s always just Jidge Carroll walking around and singing with some guy nearby playing a guitar.

Carroll has one song about Barbara Stanwyck (High Ridin’ Woman (With a Whip)) and a funeral song (God Has His Arms Around Me, which is an exceptionally problematic hymn about God gaslighting you after abusing you). They’re awful songs. And they’re silly. And Carroll’s not good enough to make them worth it. During the funeral song, it’s clear Fuller doesn’t have a bad idea here; he just doesn’t have the time, money, or onscreen talent to figure it out.

For the first act, Forty Guns feels a little like Fuller saw Seven Samurai and decided to American-it-up, meaning multiply the title by six and then do an entirely different movie.

Guns takes place in Tombstone, Arizona, where a Wyatt Earp-type (Barry Sullivan) comes to town to serve a warrant only to fall for local battle baroness Barbara Stanwyck. Sullivan’s got his sidekick brother, Gene Barry, and his baby brother, Robert Dix, along, though Dix is supposed to be moving out to California to be an “agricultural cowboy.”

The good guys are there on federal business, so when local marshal Hank Worden (a nice but not good cameo) begs Sullivan to help him stand up to Stanwyck, Sullivan gives him the “ain’t my wife, ain’t my life” and goes on his way. Only then Stanwyck’s shitty little brother (John Ericson) assaults Worden, burning out his eyes with coffee and shooting him; Sullivan decides he might have to do something about it.

The film quickly becomes a battle of the “wits” between Sullivan and Stanwyck, who don’t seem to know when they’re supposed to be flirting or not. Like their first substantial encounter: Stanywck’s got a great flirt going, and neither Sullivan nor Fuller acknowledge it. Later on, she’ll be hurrying through, and he’ll be trying to slow it down. Very strange, though it has a few good moments, which is a surprise since Sullivan’s terrible and Stanwyck’s doing everything she can to be terrible. It’s the part, however.

Stanwyck’s part is as follows. She’s a strong, self-made woman who went from cattle rancher’s daughter to most powerful land baroness in the state. She has forty riders with her at all times (her Dragoons). She dresses like the hostess at an extremely racist Mexican restaurant where only white people work. Her costumes will change, however, like when forty-nine-year-old Stanwyck—who does her amazing horse-dragging stunt in this movie—starts wearing around Southern belle outfits to show she’s in love with Sullivan.

Only they never say anything about her character arc. It’s terrible, it’s problematic, but it’s entirely offscreen because Fuller’s not interested.

I’m resisting looking up the trivia to see if he was stuck in some contract, hated the studio, and didn’t like Stanwyck, so Fuller made this movie.

Most of the acting is bad. Sullivan’s a lousy lead. The script’s not there but, wow, does he not have any charisma. Or the ability to walk distinctively, which is apparently crucial in the singing cowboy universe of Forty Guns. Barry’s a little better, though he’s got a romance subplot with Eve Brent, and he’s older than the actor playing her father (Gerald Milton) by a few years, and it’s obvious. He’s still rather bad. But he and Brent do have a couple reasonably effective lusty scenes together.

If it weren’t for the third act, Dean Jagger would break the movie. Jagger’s the corrupt numbskull sheriff who tries to save the day and makes things worse. He’s atrocious. Ditto Ericson.

Wait, is anyone not terrible?

Brent and Milton are okay, I guess.

Fuller’s good direction ranges from okay to excellent, obviously less excellent stuff than okay, but he’s also got some silly moves and some bad ones. He’s indifferent to the performances and Joseph F. Biroc’s competent but flat black-and-white photography. Since it’s so bombastic, it ought to be in color.

Fuller and editor Gene Fowler Jr. cover a lot in the cuts, but it’s still good cutting of bad scenes.

Harry Sukman’s music is familiar, varied, and tedious.

So, yeah, Forty Guns. Definitely could be in the “seen to be believed, but shouldn’t be seen” pile, but it’s so much comfier in the “what the hell was Sam Fuller thinking?” one.

The Great Gatsby (1949, Elliot Nugent)

The Great Gatsby can get away with a lot thanks to lead Alan Ladd, much of it related to the adaptation. Gatsby, the film, does open with “narrator” Macdonald Carey—set in the present, with Carey reminiscing on the grand old Jazz Age. Of course, the Jazz Age looks a little different in Carey’s memories because the movie’s post-Code and it wasn’t allowed to actually recreate the Jazz Age styles. The lack of style accuracy doesn’t matter much; the parties aren’t important. Ladd’s Gatsby is a quiet, contemplative wallflower; see, the screenplay (by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum) gives Ladd a sympathetic backstory. He only became a bootlegger because some rich widow (an oddly uncredited Carole Mathews) screws him out of his inheritance; her much-older husband (Henry Hull in a really fun performance) saw potential in Ladd and wanted to give him a leg up. Then, of course, there was the War. Ladd’s Gatsby is a war hero.

It’s before the War and after the old man mentorship Ladd meets Kansas City socialite Betty Field. Ladd’s just an enlisted man, bound for Europe and the trenches, but it’s Kansas City and he can get into the parties in his uniform. The flashback to their meeting doesn’t come until the film’s introduced both Ladd and Field in the present. Well, 1928 flashback present anyway. It adds something to both of them. Even though Ladd’s had a bunch of personality in the film so far, this tender side of him—he’s not violent in the present, but he’s got to be capable of violence—but this version of him with Field doesn’t have that capacity yet. And Field has zero personality in the present, so any helps.

At its best, The Great Gatsby is a lousy novel adaptation but a good “gangster goes straight” vehicle for Ladd. He does a vague tough guy routine with everyone until Field comes along and then he’s a sap. What’s so impressive about Ladd’s performance is he’s able to moon over Field even though they haven’t got any chemistry together. You think Field’s just incapable of it, but then she plays really well with estranged husband Barry Sullivan; odd because Field and Ladd are running away that point, when she and Sullivan finally click, performance-wise. Because the film’s not really set up to be the story of the characters from the novel, it’s far more interested in Ladd’s bootlegging days, with Ed Begley as his crotchety older partner and Elisha Cook Jr. as his sidekick (a kid who Ladd saved in the War and went with him from medals of valor to killing rival gangs). It’s more interested in the flashbacks to Ladd with Hull and Mathews. The screenplay feels looser in those scenes, like it’s not trying to hit a particular beat.

The two big problems with the film are the main supporting actors—Field, Carey, Sullivan, Ruth Hussey—and the direction. Nugent’s never quite good enough to do anything with the film. He does an adequate job, but he’s always zigging when he should zag. He’s got these one-shot close-ups he uses in the middle of conversations and they always kill the scene. Maybe some of it’s on Ellsworth Hoagland’s, but most of it’s on Nugent. He’s not interested in what the characters have to say and given how talky things get in the final third… it hurts the film.

Now the cast. So Ladd’s great. He showed up to work and he does. He gives Gatsby two hundred percent, which makes up for a lot, but still isn’t enough. Because the supporting cast is a stinker. Sullivan’s the best, but only because he occasionally is able to roll the thin characterization into a hybrid caricature—angry jock blue-blood unfaithful jilted husband—and find some true connection. But he’s not any good, not really. He’s able to overcome. Meanwhile Hussey tries her damndest and never makes it work but points for trying. Carey and Field are miscast and poorly directed. Field’s got no charisma. It might be some of the Code issues, it might be the script, it’s definitely partially on Nugent. But Field’s demure in the wrong way, especially given she’s got such a big part.

Carey’s pseudo-earnest, but he’s not ambitious in his performance. It needs some ambition. Some energy.

Again, Ladd can carry it through—the film’s only ninety minutes—but it’s a shame, even with all the constraints, the movie doesn’t have better direction, better casting; Ladd deserves more than a compromised production.

Oh, speaking of compromise, nice photography from John F. Seitz. He’s got to work with a lot of composites, some awkward framing, but he establishes a rather solid palette for the film. Just wish Nugent where a little better.

Gatsby’s a missed opportunity.

This post is part of the Man Who Would Be Shane: The Alan Ladd Blogathon hosted by Gabriela of Pale Writer.

How to Steal the World (1968, Sutton Roley)

It takes a long seventy-five minutes to get there, but How to Steal the World does have some good moments in its finale. World is a theatrical release of a “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” television two-parter. It leads to an often boring ninety minutes, which improves in the second half just for momentum’s sake, leading up to the finale’s potential pay-offs. Director Roley misses all that potential as he’s an astoundingly disinterested director. Some of the framing and composition issues are just because it’s for at most a twenty-three-inch television set, but a lot of it’s just Roley. He doesn’t care.

The film’s opening credits are over an action sequence. Peter Mark Richman’s bad guy escapes from Robert Vaughan and David McCallum. Richman escapes with Eleanor Parker’s help, something Vaughan and McCallum don’t notice. If Vaughan and McCallum are anything, they aren’t observant. They also don’t get much to do in World, supporting cast intrigue of mad scientist plotting and T.H.R.U.S.H. office sex dominates the first half of World.

Parker is cuckolding runaway U.N.C.L.E. agent Barry Sullivan with T.H.R.U.S.H. up-and-comer Richman. While everyone’s looking for Sullivan and the world’s greatest minds, Parker and Richman are hanging out at his office. They take turns lounging on the sofa after they have to close the blinds because they’re too rowdy. The best part is Parker’s wardrobe changes almost every scene during the sequence, implying it takes place over some time. Meaning she just spends her time hanging out with her global villain boytoy. It’s fun.

Meanwhile, Sullivan is doing his unit the seven thing (there are seven of these great minds). Sullivan’s kind of flimsy. He gets this second half subplot where he bickers a lot with his head of security, Leslie Nielsen. It should be better, given where writer Norman Hudis takes it in the end, but it’s not. Maybe it’s an issue related to the TV-to-movie conversion, since it’s not all Soley’s responsibility. Hudis’s script isn’t paced well in the first half.

Anyway, Albert Paulsen is better as the main mad scientist collaborator. He doesn’t get anything to do, but he finally gets to have a great moment where he and Sullivan slap each other’s hands in the finale. He’s also the way Hudis throws in the young lovers subplot. Inger Stratton is Paulsen’s daughter, Tony Bill is Dan O’Herlihy’s. O’Herlihy is one of the kidnapped scientists; Bill teams up with McCallum to get him back. Maybe the scene of Bill pointing a gun at McCallum and telling the secret agent he’s got a new partner played better on TV.

O’Herlihy is fine. Richman and Parker get to be kind of fun. Parker gets a little more to do because she’s grieving, confused wife–Vaughan and McCallum are investigating Sullivan’s disappearance; they, of course, miss all her suspicious behaviors. Stratton’s not good. Bill’s bad. Nielsen’s lacking. He has a handful of all right moments, but it doesn’t pay off. More because of Roley’s direction. He’s not just humorless, he’s anti-smile.

And he misses this amazing finish for Richman and Parker’s affair. Hudis seems to get it. Maybe not. TV two-parters aren’t features, after all.

The finale almost elevates World. It seems like it should, with opportunity after opportunity. It just never happens. It’s fortunate. A lot of the cast deserves better.

An American Dream (1966, Robert Gist)

I can’t believe I’ve never heard of Stuart Whitman before–I just went through his filmography and nothing jumped out (except Interrupted Melody and it’s a bit part, but going to be amusing in a moment)–anyway, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of him because he’s kind of like a Glenn Ford who can’t act. An American Dream is no winner–after a wonderful opening, one suggesting director Robert Gist was going to do something interesting in terms of filmmaking–but Whitman is real awful. Janet Leigh’s terrible too, but her bad performance is clearly the script. Whitman’s bad performance is all his own.

Eleanor Parker is in it for a bit (she plays Whitman’s wife who he murders) and she’s got some amusing scenes, making the melodramatic trashiness of the film entertaining, but once she goes it becomes intolerable. The nice Johnny Mandel score also changes around that point too, becoming annoying and predictable instead of understated and thoughtful.

Gist turns out to be a sixties director in the worst sense, the kind who can’t–in traditional TV scene situation–think of setups besides the ones on television. Gist directed mostly TV, so there’s a reason for it, but that opening certainly suggested otherwise. For the first five minutes, I thought everything I’d heard about the film was wrong….

But it isn’t.

There are so many heinous performances in the film I can’t list them all, but Joe De Santis is extraordinary. Only Murray Hamilton and Parker–in many ways, more so Hamilton–emerge unscathed.

It’s truly something awful, though, I suppose, an interesting example of a bad period of American filmmaking. Like now, when music videos have come to define cinematic style in bad movies, except it was television defining artless style….

Amazing opening though.

Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (1969, Abraham Polonsky)

Is that the one where Katharine Ross plays an Indian?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Tell Them Willie Boy is Here starts incredibly strong. It gives a real sense of building towards something, but when that something arrives–Robert Blake and Katharine Ross on the run from a posse–it’s handled so poorly, the film falls apart. Maybe it doesn’t fall apart, maybe it just ceases to be good and interesting. The relationship between Blake and Ross, which started as interesting, turns into propaganda. It’s fine, it’s for a good cause, but their scenes lose all sense of importance in terms of character development, motivation… any attempt at honesty. Actually, Willie Boy starts to fall apart earlier. Polonsky cannot handle, as a director, a lot of shots. The essential scene, the crime Blake commits to have to go on the run, is incompetently shot. It’s not until later, with the Dave Grusin score going non-stop, it becomes clear Polonsky had seen The Shooting and was aping its style. It’s not even a bad job of aping, it’s just Polonsky also seemed to think he needed to ape The Shooting‘s copout, indie-friendly ending.

For the first twenty or so, everything’s good in Willie Boy, then the Blake and Ross stuff falls apart, but there’s the excellent, complicated Robert Redford and Susan Clark story going to maintain interest and actually make important observations on the human condition. Except, it’s not propaganda, so Polonsky drops it and that story is the most important–most unique–part of Willie Boy. At the end, when he has a chance to reclaim it, he instead conjures some malarky about Redford the sheriff surrounded by people who think it’s still the old days being the alter ego of Blake, the Indian wrongfully on the run. It’s a bunch of crap and it’s really unfortunate, considering Redford’s excellent work in the film. Blake is okay, but his performance is identical to Charles Bronson’s performances in the early 1960s. Almost no different really.

As a conflicted Native American schoolteacher, Ross is silly sometimes and okay sometimes. When she’s quiet–actually, besides the scenes with Clark and Redford, everything is better when it’s quiet in Willie Boy. Clark’s fantastic and she and Redford deserved a lot of better of a project to work on together.

I don’t think there’s much else to say about the film, other than it being less an incredible disappointment than an unfortunate failure. Polonsky was screenwriter and a more understanding, more capable director would have turned out a far better, far less pretentious product… almost any director, really. Redford would have done wonders.