DVD/Blu-Ray News #337: Seven Ways From Sundown (1960).

Directed by Harry Keller
Starring Audie Murphy, Barry Sullivan, Venetia Stevenson, John McIntire, Kenneth Tobey

One of the last run of pictures Audie Murphy did for Universal International, produced by Gordon Kay and directed by Harry Keller (with a day or two by an uncredited George Sherman), Seven Ways From Sundown (1960) is a good one. Murphy’s as cool as ever, and there’s a great part for Barry Sullivan. Plus, John McIntire and Kenneth Tobey are along for the ride.

Explosive Media has announced a May 22 release for the picture on DVD and Blu-ray. It’ll be in its original 1.85 and region free.

It’s a solid picture (and it gets a chapter in my book). Highly, highly recommended.

Thanks to John Knight for the news.

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RIP, Joan Weldon.

Joan Weldon
(August 5, 1930 – February 11, 2021)

Joan Weldon, a lovely actress who appeared in some terrific pictures in the 50s, has passed away at 90.

She appeared with Randolph Scott in two Westerns, The Stranger Wore A Gun (1953) and Riding Shotgun (1954), both directed by Andre de Toth, along with The Command (1954) with Guy Madison, Gunsight Ridge (1957) with Joel McCrea and Day Of The Badman (1958) with Fred MacMurray. But the big one, the one she’s known for, is Gordon Douglas’s great giant ant picture Them! (1954).

She was quote a singer and did a lot of musical theater, including appearing with Forrest Tucker in The Music Man.

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Blu-Ray News #319: Horizons West (1952) And Quantez (1957).

Quantez (1957)
Directed by Harry Keller
Starring Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Malone, James Barton, Sydney Chaplin, John Gavin, John Larch, Michael Ansara

Just finished recording a commentary for Harry Keller’s Quantez (1957), a film I appreciate more every time I see it. It feels awkward to plug these things when I work on ’em, but this one is something special. The movie is ripe for rediscovery — and I think it’s the best commentary I’ve done.

It’s also a picture with superb art direction and cinematography, so high-definition will be a big plus.

Horizons West (1952)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Starring Robert Ryan, Julia Adams, Rock Hudson, John McIntire, Raymond Burr, James Arness, Dennis Weaver

Horizons West (1952) has the great cast of contract players — Adams, Hudson, McIntire, Dennis Weaver — and gorgeous Technicolor we expect from Universal International Westerns of the early 50s. It’s a post-Civi War story of Ryan’s ambitions getting the best of him. Budd Boetticher keeps it short on running time and long on action. 

The color will make this one really pop on Blu-Ray. I’ll be recording a commentary for it next week. Both pictures are expected in May from Kino Lorber. 

There haven’t been many 50s Westerns riding up on DVD or Blu-Ray lately. These will help make up for it.

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Thundering Caravans (1952).

Directed by Harry Keller
Produced by Rudy Ralston
Written by M. Coates Webster
Music by Stanley Wilson
Cinematography: John MacBurnie
Film Editor: Harold Minter

Cast: Allan “Rocky” Lane (Marshal Rocky Lane), Eddy Waller (Sheriff Nugget Clark), Mona Knox (Alice Scott), Roy Barcroft (Ed Brill), Isabel Randolph (Deborah Cranston), Richard Crane (Deputy Dan Reed), William Henry (Bert Cranston), Edward Clark (Printer Tom), Pierre Watkin (Head Marshal), Stanley Andrews (Henry Scott), Boyd ‘Red’ Morgan, Fred Aldrich, Art Dillard, Roy Engel, Marshall Reed, Tex Terry, Dale Van Sickel, Black Jack

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I’m embarrassed to admit that this is the first Allan “Rocky” Lane picture to be featured on this blog. I’ve got to get around to Monte Hale, too!

Thundering Caravans (1952) was one of Lane’s later pictures for Republic. His last, El Paso Stampede (1953), was released a little over a year later. Republic would be done with the series Western entirely after 1954’s Phantom Stallion with Rex Allen.

Allan Lane grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and dropped out of Notre Dame to give acting a go. He was spotted and signed by Fox, but moved over to Warner Bros. That didn’t work out so well, and Lane gave up the movies for a while. He was back in supporting parts at Fox in the mid-30s, and after a few thing like RKO’s The Law West Of Tombstone (1938), he made his way over to Republic.

After serials like King Of The Royal Mounted (1940) and The Tiger Woman (1944) with Linda Stirling, Lane was launched as a Republic cowboy star. Next, in 1946, he took over the Red Ryder role after Wild Bill Elliott left the series. When that ran its course, he was back to playing Allan “Rocky” Lane through 1953. From there, he did mostly TV guest roles until providing the voice of Mr. Ed (1961-1966). 

Thundering Caravans has Lane a marshal coming to the aid of the sheriff of Edgewater, who’s trying to get to the bottom of a series of robberies. Wagons of ore are disappearing, and the local newspaper is badmouthing the sheriff as election days comes near. 

Eddy Waller is a hoot as Nugget, the sheriff. Waller was a constant in these Lane pictures, but he wasn’t a sidekick in the regular sense. While he’s always named Nugget Clark, he’s a different character from film to film. In Thundering Caravans, he and Lane don’t know each other at all.

Roy Barcroft doesn’t have a lot of screen time as Ed Brill, an escaped convict, but he gets to be plenty despicable before he’s through. Barcroft was a given in Republic pictures at this time, since he had an exclusive 10-year contract with the studio. They put him in everything they could.

The girl this time around is Mona Knox, an actress and pinup girl who appeared in a handful of films and some TV in the 50s and 60s. She appeared in Flying Leathernecks (1951), The Las Vegas Story (1952) and a couple of Bowery Boys pictures. She doesn’t have a whole lot to do in Thundering Caravans.

Harry Keller was an editor turned director, and he did a number of these later Lane Westerns, including the last one, El Paso Stampede. (He did the Rex Allen’s last, too.) Keller made the move to TV, with some Universal-International Westerns here and there — Quantez (1957), Day Of The Badman (1958) and Seven Ways From Sundown (1960). As with a lot of editors who climb into the director’s chair, you can count on Keller’s pictures to be well-paced, with some solid actions scenes.

Solid action was the order of the day at Republic as their series Westerns wound down. They’re short (usually under an hour), with plenty of riding and shooting (some of it stock footage), and the casts and sets are kept to a minimum. Thundering Caravans looks like it was shot at Iverson Ranch — some rear-projection footage is definitely Iverson.

It’s a shame Republics like Thundering Caravans aren’t around on DVD or Blu-Ray. They’re a lot of fun. 

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RIP, John Gavin.

John Gavin
(April 8, 1931 – February 9, 2018)

John Gavin, who played Jack Loomis in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Julius Caesar in Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) has passed away at 86. He also appeared in the sublimely wonderful Quantez (1957, above),  a sadly under-appreciated 50s Western from Universal-International, starring Fred McMurray and Dorothy Malone (who just passed away herself) and directed by Harry Keller.

Gavin was almost cast as James Bond for Diamonds Are Forever (1971). He served as ambassador to Mexico during the Reagan administration. He was married to Constance Towers.

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RIP, Dorothy Malone.

Between takes on Quantez (1957).

Dorothy Malone (Dorothy Eloise Maloney)
January 30, 1924 – January 19, 2018

One of my favorites actresses (especially in Westerns), the great Dorothy Malone, has passed away.

I first remember seeing her in The Big Sleep (1946), as the sexy girl in the Acme bookstore. And she made a huge impression on me in Harry Keller’s Quantez (1957), a sadly under-appreciated Fred MacMurray Western from Universal. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Douglas Sirk’s Written On The Wind (1956). But for me, it’s Quantez.

Her other Westerns include South Of St. Louis (1949), The Nevadan (1950), Saddle Legion (1951), Tall Man Riding (1955), Pillars Of The Sky (1956) and Warlock (1959). Oh, and The Last Voyage (1960) is terrific.

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Gallery: Directors At Work.

Harry Keller directing Audie Murphy and Joan O’Brien in Six Black Horses (1962).

Ray Enright and Dorothy Malone on the set of South Of St. Louis (1949).

Jesse Hibbs directing Gia Scala (left) and Joanna Moore (right) in the Audie Murphy picture Ride A Crooked Trail (1958).

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Phantom Stallion (1954).

With Phantom Stallion (1954), Republic Pictures got out of the series Western business, an industry they’d come to dominate with a stable of cowboy stars second to none. Lucky for us, they go out on a positive note.

This time around, Rex Allen and Slim Pickens uncover a group of horse thieves who use a wild stallion and his herd to cover their crimes. Before the Republic eagle pops up at the end, there’s a pretty good fistfight, a young Mexican boy with a philly, a murder and a lot of riding. (Rex and Slim on horseback are a great thing to see.) This picture seems a bit heavier than your typical series Western, with the violence turned up a notch, no love interest (it’s established right up front that Carla Balenda is one of the bad guys) and no songs.

Writer Gerald Geraghty’s long Hollywood career took him from writing titles for silent pictures to scripts for Rex Allen’s Frontier Doctor TV show. He received a story credit for the delirious Gene Autry serial The Phantom Empire (1936) and wrote Trail Of Robin Hood (1950). Phantom Stallion was directed by Harry Keller, who started out as an editor with dozens of Republic cowboy pictures on his resumé. By 1950, he was directing for Republic, and continued at the studio till this picture closed out their Western series in 1954. Keller was soon under contract at Universal-International, which put him in place to direct one of their best 50s Westerns, Quantez (1957).

The signs of cost-cutting, a common complaint with later series Westerns, aren’t too obvious in Phantom Stallion — though some of the wild horse scenes look like they’re lifted from other pictures, and there are a lot of riding scenes in this 54 minutes. The fight scenes don’t quite have the snap of the Republics William Witney directed, such as Colorado Sundown (1952), another Rex Allen picture (and a very good one). And it seems like it’s missing an extra fight in there somewhere — the ending feels a bit too abrupt.

You can’t help but think that if Rex Allen had signed on at Republic a few years earlier, the Arizona Cowboy would’ve been an even bigger star. By the time he and Koko rode onscreen, the sun was setting on the series Western. But his Republics are certainly worthwhile, a respectable way for Republic to bring an era to its end.

Below: Rex and crew on location for Phantom Stallion.

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DVD Review: Quantez (1957).

Directed by Harry Keller
Produced by Gordon Kay
Screenplay by R. Wright Campbell
Story by Anne Edwards and R. Wright Campbell
Director of Photography: Carl E. Guthrie, ASC
Music: Herman Stein
Music Supervision by Joseph Gershenson
“The Lonely One” words and music by Frederick Herbert and Arnold Hughes
Film Editor: Fred MacDowell

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Whatever your misgivings (namely price) may be about the DVD-R programs in place at a number of studios, you have to admit they’ve put some pretty significant titles in the hands of the geeks who’ve been waiting for ’em. I’m a card-carrying member of that group of geeks, and I’m stoked to have Quantez (1957) in my hot little hands. Judging by comments I’ve received, I’m not alone.

It’d been years since I’d seen it on TV, and I remembered it as a good Universal-International 50s Western, which is plenty good indeed. (That’s about like saying a “good Hammer horror film.”) Seeing it again, in a top-notch widescreen transfer, it’s a much better picture than I remember — and, to me, one of the better Universal Westerns of the 50s.

Fred MacMurray is Gentry, a tired gunman in a gang of bank robbers with a posse in hot pursuit. Riding into the desert, they take refuge in Quantez, a small town they find deserted. Their horses tired and near death, they’re forced to stay the night — with the plan to cross the border into Mexico the next day. The picture is the story of that night.

I won’t spoil things by giving you much more than that. Just know there’s the usual tension and violence that erupt when you place a group of desperate men in such close quarters. And since there’s a bundle of money, a band of Indians and a woman with a past (Dorothy Malone) on hand, things don’t take long to heat up.

MacMurray is excellent. John Larch comes close to being a bit over the top as Heller, the leader of the gang — but he always pulls back just in time. He’s a very bad man. Dorothy Malone is terrific as Chaney, a used-up saloon girl who feels she’s lost her chance to have a decent life. Westerns have never been known for their women’s roles, but this is a really good one, and she makes the most of it. John Gavin, as the kid of the gang (every gang has one), and James Barton as a minstrel who passes through the ghost town in the middle of the night, provide strong support. This is a well-acted film.

Well written, too. The plot isn’t much more than formula (not a criticism), but R. Wright Campbell’s dialogue is crisp and he avoids the expected often enough to keep things fresh. You never think of this as one of those pictures where the small cast is bottled in someplace more for reasons of budget than plot. The story just works. Campbell later wrote plenty of pictures for AIP, including the marvelous The Masque Of The Red Death (1964). He also did Gun For A Coward (1957), another good MacMurray Universal Western (available as part of the Vault Series).

Thanks to Universal’s careful transfer, one of the real stars of the picture is Carl E. Guthrie, whose CinemaScope camerawork does the film a tremendous favor. (Go look at Guthrie’s list of credits sometime. Wow!) Given the mood and the many nights scenes, you might think this’d play better in black and white. But some ingenious lighting — rich blues at night and reds as the sun comes up — gives the picture a very effective look. This is one of the richest-looking Eastman Color films I can remember.

Of course, we have to give director Harry Keller plenty of credit. Starting out as an editor at Republic, by the time he reached Quantez, he certainly knew his way around a cowboy picture. There’s lots of dialogue here, but Keller keeps things moving at a brisk pace. A year later, he’d be one of the contract directors U-I would draft to “fix” Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil (1958).

Universal should be commended for giving Quantez such a beautiful transfer. And while in a perfect world, this would’ve hit video on Blu-ray, the DVD-R (the Universal Vault Series is an Amazon exclusive) looked terrific and played fine. There are no extras, not even a trailer. But who’s to complain when it looks like this?

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