Review: Chisum


John Wayne plays the title reformed cattle baron who now stands up for the little guy and takes on a bastardly (which I didn’t even know was a word, I was only using it kiddingly, but MS Word seems to think it is a word, so it must be true!) rival Murphy, played by Forrest Tucker, who has just moved to Lincoln and set on taking over by any means necessary. Heck, Mr. Moneybags Tucker has even bought off local Sheriff Brady (Bruce Cabot). Chisum’s allies include a rather effete (and pacifist) Englishman, Tunstall (Patric Knowles), who is harbouring a young ruffian nicknamed Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel), attempting to educate the young outlaw (AKA William H. Bonney) and set him on a righteous path. Andrew Prine plays virtuous lawyer Alex McSween, who also aligns himself with Chisum. Ben Johnson is excellent as Chisum’s right-hand man and foreman, Pepper, and there’s also an (underdeveloped) appearance by Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett), here seen as a bit of a drifter who competes with Billy for the affections of Chisum’s pretty niece Pamela McMyler. A young Jaeckel and always-unseemly Robert Donner play a couple of Murphy’s men, the former an ex-Bonney gang member.


Enjoyable, muscular 1970 Andrew V. McLaglen (“The Rare Breed”, “Bandolero!”, “The Last Hard Men”) western is one of The Duke’s best latter day films, despite his real-life character being more of a supporting character to the goings on, though screenwriter Andrew J. Fenady (“Ride Beyond Vengeance”) tries his best to beef the role up (as well as downplaying the fact that Chisum was as much of a capitalist land-owner as any other). Deuel is far too lightweight in the important role of William Bonney/Billy the Kid, the role as written is a bit bipolar, but Deuel isn’t quite up to the task of playing it. Thankfully, there’s great support from Knowles, Prine, and especially mean ‘ol Tucker in the roles later played by Terence Stamp, Terry O’Quinn, and Jack Palance, in a better treatment of the Billy the Kid saga, “Young Guns” (John Chisum didn’t turn up until the sequel, wherein he was marvellously played by James Coburn as a not-so nice guy at all). Christopher George is also well-cast as a bad-ass gunslinger, and there’s lots of other familiar faces throughout.


It’s pretty rousing stuff, and though Deuel isn’t all that impressive, it’s certainly impressive to see such a schizo interpretation of the Billy the Kid character. Best thing in the film is the amusingly uber-macho title song by Merle Haggard.


Rating: B-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hellraiser (2022)

Recovering junkie Odessa A’zion accompanies scuzzy boyfriend Drew Starkey on a break-in where all they find is a weird puzzle box. A’zion later opens the box and after some weird shit happens, A’zion and Starkey figure it might be a good idea to learn more about this messed up trinket. Goran Visnjic plays a millionaire who possessed the box before our protagonist nicked it.   Is there any point in remaking/rebooting “Hellraiser” when the 1987 adaptation of Clive Barker’s original text was written and directed by Barker himself? And is considered a horror classic? On evidence here, absolutely not. Directed by David Bruckner ( “The Signal” ) and scripted by Ben Collins ( “The Night House” ) and Luke Piotrowski (ditto) this is an entirely tedious affair. I took a long time to get on board with the 1987 “Hellraiser” , I have to admit. It was wildly imaginative and original, like a nightmare transplanted on to film. However, the characters were stone cold and left me similarly chil...
Read more

Review: Cinderella (1950)

The story of poor young Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Woods), treated as a servant by her nasty stepmother (voiced by Eleanor Audley), and dismissed by her thoroughly rotten, ugly stepsisters. Her only friends are a group of mice, who are forever being menaced by a cat named Lucifer (or as I call him, Grumpy Cheshire Cat). The King (hoping to find a wife for his charming son) is throwing a ball and every available young woman is invited to attend, and Cinderella is most excited to go. However, her stepmother and stepsisters do all they can to prevent this from happening. But with help from the mice and one fairy godmother (voiced by Verna Felton) later, and Cinderella looks set to attend the ball. You know the rest, folks.   Lovely 1950 Disney animated movie from directors Clyde Geronimi ( “Peter Pan” , “Lady and the Tramp” ), Wilfred Jackson ( “Fantasia” , “Alice in Wonderland” , “Peter Pan” ) & Hamilton Luske ( “Pinocchio” , “Fantasia” , “Peter Pan” ), that is a bit t...
Read more

Review: Jinnah

The story of Mohammed Ali Jinnah (Sir Christopher Lee) the politically moderate founder of Pakistan. A Muslim lawyer, Jinnah fought to form a separate nation from India for the Muslim minority, whilst Mahatma Gandhi (Sam Dastor) wished for India to stay united and proposed Jinnah as the new PM as a compromise. James Fox plays British viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Indira Varma plays Jinnah’s wife, and veteran bit player Vernon Dobtcheff plays a British dignitary.   Although Christopher Lee’s title performance received some critical notice and the actor himself was very proud of the work, this modestly budgeted 1998 biopic from director Jamil Dehlavi ( “Immaculate Conception” with Melissa Leo) and co-writer Farrukh Dhondy ( “Red Mercury” with Stockard Channing and Ron Silver) was largely ignored at the time and still very little-known today. Part of that is probably due to the poor marketing of the film, and difficulty in finding a distributor. It’s hard to get people to talk abo...
Read more