Western parable
A curious picture in some ways, Stranger at My Door is, I suppose, a Western. It starts with a James gang-style bank robbery and later there’ll be a horse chase and gunplay. Yet in other ways it’s more a slice of Americana, and a (rather heavy-handed) message film.
The screenplay was by Barry Shipman, from his own story. Mr Shipman (1912 – 1994) was the son of Canadian motion picture pioneers and worked in Hollywood on over a hundred features and TV shows, many of them Western, though he is probably most remembered for Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. He wrote many of those Charles Starrett Durango Kid pictures at Columbia as well as several Republic serials, especially Lone Ranger ones. It was there that he got in with directors John English and William Witney, and it was Witney who directed Stranger at My Door.
Witney was a very proficient helmsman of low-budget oaters and especially good at action. He applied some of those skills to this picture, though much of the plot required a more static and more talky approach. He successfully used some noir techniques too, which suited the story, and the maybe not-so-Western title. Apparently the film was particularly dear to him, and I get that.
The plot is quite simple. Outlaw boss Clay Anderson (Skip Homeier) leads a violent bank raid but when the gang splits up afterwards his horse goes lame and he holes up at a ranch owned by a preacher, Hollis Jarret (Macdonald Carey), who has a glam second wife, Peg (Patricia Medina) and a young son, Dodie (Stephen Wootton). This family appears improbably saintly and happy, concentrating on the cute kid and his cute dog, all very family-friendly, though it is actually darker than that and under the strain of harboring the criminal, cracks will appear in the apparently perfect surface. Most of the picture is essentially a psychodrama set at the ranch.
Homeier had started as a child actor and his first Western was in 1950 as Hunt Bromley, the punk would-be gunslinger who shot Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter, and he thereafter got rather typecast in punk-kid bad-guy roles. But he was a bit older now (26) and in fact was aiming at stardom. The same year as Stranger Republic had him lead in a Joe Kane Western, Thunder Over Arizona, and the following year he would top the bill in a crime drama, No Road Back. But it didn’t really take and he was better, and more memorable, as the heavy. He’s darn good in this one, maybe the best I’ve ever seen him, in fact. His character’s name is a classic Western one, referencing Clay Allison and Bloody Bill Anderson in a portmanteau of perfidy.
Top-billed Carey, who does a good job in Stranger as the decent, even smug, but as it turns out gutsy reverend, is best known for his role as Dr Tom Horton on NBC’s soap Days of Our Lives but in features in the 1940s and 50s, he became known as ‘the King of the Bs’. He didn’t specialize in Westerns but he did a few, and you may remember him as Lorn Reming in Streets of Laredo, or as Jim Bowie in Comanche Territory. He was Jesse James in The Great Missouri Raid in 1951, though producer Nat Holt later admitted he had confused Corey ‘n’ Carey, and had meant to cast Corey as brother Frank and Wendell Carey as Jesse.
For me, Patricia Medina as the essentially bored wife Peg who is tempted to succumb to the amorous blandishments of the outlaw, was the weakest link. She overacts and seems to be constantly screaming. She was probably good in other genres. She was often a voluptuous dusky maiden in pirate movies.
There were some good performances in smaller roles, notably Louis Jean Heydt as the decent sheriff who accidentally shoots the boy while trying to catch the bandit, and is racked by guilt, Howard Wright as the doc who tries to save the child but realizes it’s going to take a miracle and he doesn’t believe in miracles, and (still quite) Slim Pickens as the local rancher who sells the preacher a feisty stallion, Lucifer, against his better judgment.
Quentin Tarantino is apparently a great admirer of this film because of the symbolic stallion-taming (read outlaw-redeeming) sequences, and I must admit they were spectacular. Full marks to stuntman Joe Yrigoyen, and I was going to say stunt-dog too but (luckily) they used a fake canine for that bit, phew.
The music, by Dale Butts, was noticeably somber at the right moments, occasionally bucolic when required and even verged on the ecclesiastical when the church-building came into play. Anyway it was good at creating atmosphere.
Republic regular Bud Thackery was at the camera and did a good job in black & white, managing some noirish tints here and there. The print on YouTube was very good quality (and without ads) so that was a plus.
Overall, there’s no doubt that the moral of the tale is overdone. Reviewer Dennis Schwartz called it “A Christian-based evangelical B Western with a heavy-handed religious message about redemption” and said, “Its target Christian evangelical audience should be pleased, as the film is competently directed and acted, well-presented and gets in all the talking points about believing in God and miracles. However, others not so inclined to such a strident fundamentalist religious view may have trouble relating to its questionable inspirational message.” Schwartz added, “For me, the rigid piety of the religious drama was hard to stomach.” I must say, I didn’t find it that bad at all. Yes, it’s clearly a ‘Christian’ film, and atheists and followers of other religions may be put off by that, I guess, but it is thought-provoking, whatever your beliefs, and leaving aside the too-obvious ‘message’, it does create a sense of menace and indeed sexual tension pretty well.
If nothing else, this Western (I think it’s a Western) is interesting.
16 Responses
Continuing my survey of freebies on channel 5 catch up read Jeff’s review first. It’s laid on a bit thick – not the review the movie – but it’s sincere. There are worse.
Having watched recently The Last Command of which William Witney was the 2nd unit director (excellent final battle scenes) and knowing from him mostly Santa Fe Passage and Apache Rifles (he made many episodes of Roy Rogers but I have never been a great fan of him, sorry…), I was curious to discover Stranger at My Door.
I have been very much and happily surprised.
It is a more a psychological western than a pure actioneer, it is quite tense thanks to the relationship between each characters (including the animals…) and the suspense as we never know what could happen the next minute.
It is very much Noir influenced, with hints from The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Desperate Hours or Violent Saturday.
I have always thought of Skip Homeier as the little brother of Lee Marvin and Dan Duryea…
It is probably his best role as he shows he really could play and not just being the first gunslinger shot by the hero (after Jack Elam).
I do not agree with Jeff on British born (from a Spanish father) and long time married to Joseph Cotten Patricia Medina. She is quite good in my opinion (as most of the others) balancing between love and lust.
The young boy is excellent. Stevens should have picked him for Shane…
The horse and the dog are playing very well too…
There are other westerns whose redemption angle is more heavy-handed like Ford’s 3 Godfathers for instance. Here the religious tone is not that much overwhelming since the pastor fails in his attempt to save the lost sheep and we will never see the church completed…
Maybe the avid readers of this blog could be interested in this conversation between Quentin Tarantino and Bertrand Tavernier, both passionate cinephiles and film directors in which they are talking, among many other films, directors etc, of William Witney and his films. Enjoy!
https://cpanel.filmtrap.com/my-masters-i-discovered-them-myself-bertrand-tavernier-in-conversation-with-quentin-tarantino/
This is one of the more intense Westerns I have seen. Skip Homeier, who does an excellent job of playing the menacing outlaw Clay Anderson, happens upon an isolated family that seems like helpless prey for the predator. The man of the house is a preacher who appears to be hopelessly naive and idealistic in his belief that he can save Anderson’s soul. The preacher’s wife is young, voluptuous and amorous. Then there’s a little boy, who actually seems less of a greenhorn than his parents, although he very quickly falls for the outlaw’s masculine charisma. The whole mise-en-scene seemingly portends doom for the preacher and his family. And Anderson constantly seems on the very edge of inflicting misery on the people who have extended their hospitality to him. In consequence, SaTD has an atmosphere that is borderline oppressive.
Alas, the worst does not come to pass. The preacher–well played by Macdonald Carey, whom I had never even heard of before viewing this film, and looking for all the world like Christopher Lee–proves to be made of far sterner stuff than the viewer might expect. Moreover, his salvific persuasion ultimately has an effect on the seemingly nihiilistic Anderson. And the fact that the clergyman prevails probably saves him, his wife and his son.
Carey is really quite superb here. There are moments where a gleam of madness shows in his eyes and the viewer may conclude that he’s a fanatic. But rationality supervenes and the preacher then goes about his practical pursuits.
In some ways SaMD is a variation of Shane. A mysterious and lethal stranger shows up at the home of an idyllic family, wins over the boy and his dog with his checkered charisma, arouses the sexuality of the wife, and forms an ambivalent relationship with the paterfamilias. But, whereas Shane is a good soul through and through, Clay Anderson is a badman who possesses a tenuous fiber of goodness that could possibly be embroidered into the tapestry of a new man. And in both films, the mysterious interloper suffers a serious wound, fatal in Anderson’s case, perhaps not in Shane’s.
An interesting subplot of this film is a killer horse. Yes, a killer horse. Think of an equine Jaws marauding through a small community in the Old West rather than a shark off the shore of a resort town in New Jersey. You might not think a horse could be frightening, but this rampagaging, hyper-aggressive steed certainly puts fear into all who come into contact with him. The parallel between the horse and the outlaw is so transparent that it is not even metaphorical.
Along with The Bravados (1958), SaMD is the most overtly Christian Western I have seen, with The Bravados evincing Catholic overtones, and SaMD hewing to Protestantism. The possibility of redemption is at the heart of both. But whereas in The Bravados redemption is sought by a fundamentally good man who has made a terrible mistake, in SaMD redemption comes to a genuine villain who finally sees the light in his dying moments. Both are excellent films that give thoughtul treatment to Christianity, a subject that is strangely neglected in the Western genre.
“All I want is to enter my house justified” (Joel McCrea to Randolph Scott in Ride the High Country)
Religion, being so omnipresent in the US (as well as the gun culture…), religious/biblical themes, if not only Christianity, are all over the westerns, from sin to redemption, from revenge to forgiveness, sacrifice, guilt and expiation, apocalypse, savior and angel, the struggle betweengood and evil, paradise or hell etc.
Law, order, and morality were closely tied on the Frontier where the Bible was the number one book.
Lew Wallace. then governor of New Mexico Territory during the Lincoln County War, wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, one of the greatest Christian novels…
Bass Reeves was known preaching to his prisoners.
There are many other historical examples of the Old West figures who were very very much influenced by religion, if not its zealots.
Quite often the western hero is a kind of Christic figure (sometimes an anti-one too…), even when he is an outlaw.
Think of Jesse James or Billy the Kid treatment in movies for instance, or Shane, Hombre, Eastwood’s first american westerns etc.
Churches and missions (think of Alamo, Silver Lode, My Darling, Clementine, Apache Drums,…), funerals and cemeteries (an other Jeff’s great post!), tombstones, crosses, weddings and clergy (padre, priest, preacher, reverend, corrupt clergymen, sometimes a nun) are totally part of the western and illustrating religion’s weight in the genre.
Getting the money to build a steeple is a genre’s running theme.
Traditionally keepers of the faith, at the mercy of the men, even corrupt clergymen, the women, when not object of temptation synonym of fall, are also forces for peace and order, often seen going to church, reading Bibles, and singing hymns.
Shall We gather at the River is probably the number one western hit…(see John Ford or Sam Peckinpah…), maybe Rock of Ages not far behind ?
Jeff has written a full and excellent article on the priest, reverend, preacher etc in the Western here
https://jeffarnoldswest.com/2020/05/preachers/
(Look at my note about converted Henry King to back up Eckwood’s remark about The Bravados).
A few films I am thinking of where religious tones are the more obvious:
Three Godfathers
(most of John Ford’s films have their religious moments…)
The Pillars of the Sky
The Bravados
From Hell to Texas
Brigham Young
Friendly Persuasion
Stars in my Crown
Stranger at My Door
Nevada Smith
Joe Dakota
(Richard Bartlett who called himself a disciple of the Christ, said he hated violence and sex on the silver screen…)
Many spaghetti indeed, where characters are named Trinita, Alleluia, Acquasanta Joe, Providenza etc.
Other suggestions welcome !
But, there is not a Christian western branch I have heard of, like there is a Christian country music…
JM, I own 46 Westerns on DVD–not including Treasure of the Sierra Madre and No Country for Old Men, which I consider neo-Westerns–and by my reckoning, only six have anything approaching pronounced Christian overtones or themes. And I’m being generous by including Ride the High Country (“I just want to enter my house justified.”) and The Shootist (Bond Rogers constantly trying to pester JB into attending church/speaking with her minister). In addition to this 46, I’ve seen Stagecoach, Fistful of Dollars, A Bullet for the General, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers, Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Shane, One-Eyed Jacks, High Noon, and Once upon a Time in the West, none of which, in my opinion, remotely qualify as Christian-themed. This equates to 11 percent of the Westerns I’ve seen being potentially classifiable as Christian in some meaningful sense. Given the prevailing mores in the US during the Western’s heyday, and the unquestionably Christian nature of Old West society, this strikes me as a very low percentage. The question is why the relative paucity of Christian-themed Westerns?
Maybe because the Western is basically a heroic genre, and Christian doctrine has problems with heroism, particularly when there is no missionary impulse behind the heroism. What would a Western be like if the hero were meek and mild and turned the other cheek?
Certainly Christianity (generally Protestant Christianity) was pervasive in nineteenth-century American culture, and you would expect all sorts of casual Christian references in a story taking place in the nineteenth-century American West. But that’s not the same as Christianity being front and center as a dramatic element.
(For instance, how many Westerns pay attention to the temperance movement? It was very prominent in mid- and late nineteenth-century America, and was Christian-dominated.)
The point about heroism is a good one. That said, there was the church militant of the high middle ages, from which sprang the Crusades and a decidedly robust Christian hero, so Christianity and traditional masculine heroism aren’t entirely incompatible. Having said that, I’m certainly not arguing that Shane should have been Baldwin of Boulogne and Jack Wilson Saladin. I’m simply noting–as you mention in your second post–that allusions to Christianity and its trappings in Westerns are more exiguous than one would expect, given the subject matter and the nature of the US during the Western’s heyday.
Your point about the High Middle Ages is a good one–Jeff used to liken the Western to various European literatures about colonialism, but I would argue that the real European equivalent to the American Western is the chivalric romance. It’s just that, whereas the knights of old were aristocrats brought up to be warriors with a lot of specialized training, the American Western hero is generally a common man with no more specialized training that what any nineteenth-century farm boy would have picked up just from living.
But, while Christian talk was pervasive in all sectors of society, nineteenth-century American Christianity didn’t take its inspiration from the High Middle Ages. Rather, it was a predominantly feminine enterprise inseparable in practice from genteel culture. That would put it at odds with the masculine ethos associated with the American West. This association of Christianity with femininity persists even today, and I think helps explain how such a masculine-associated genre as the Western would have so little time for religion.
Art and Christianism have shared a long past together, but the first half of the 20th century has seen the final divorce between profane art and religious art. But a few exceptions such as Maurice Denis, Dali, Matisse and Chagall. More rarely Picasso, Kandinsky in some occasions even if they can be considered as renegades. Andy Warhol himself has drawn inspiration from his own deeply-felt Catholicism with his Sixty Last Suppers…
Films about Christianism and religious themes (including peplums) are not exactly the same as Christian movies…
Since Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (its sequel is coming soon…), Godlywood films are produced by Christians to usually convince that they hold the truth and preach the good word to put America back on the right path (just to simplify…).
Some say they are just a marketing opportunity and usually not very good films.
Maybe western, as a genre, does not fit too well with all that…
The “unquestionably Christian nature of Old West society” is surely questionable, that’s maybe the best angle to think of it and possibly produce interesting films like those I have listed.
It is the same for all the colonial enterprises in the history, thanks to “the infallibility of the sword and of the holy water sprinkler.”
JM, with the possible exception of outlaws and certainly most Indians, I would argue that upwards of 90 percent of the pioneers, adventurers and settlers during the Old West period–1820 to 1912 by my reckoning–would have called themselves Christians. Now clearly their actual piety would have varied a great deal, but even controlling for the fact that some Christians were Christians more in name than in act, Old Western society would have been redolent of Christianity. I imagine Richard Dawkins would have been driven to shoot up a barn dance by the godliness of it all.
Comparing the western hero to a knight-errant and ready to sacrifice himself to save some poor souls and endangered people is not new and has been already discussed on this blog. Shane is one of the most obvious example. The Rocky Mountain Confederate detail led by Errol Flynn or The Alamo defenders can be considered as crusaders.
There are tons of other examples.
Paladin is Richard Boone’s name in Have Gun Will Travel, a knight without armor says the ballad, and his chivalrous conduct matches his name, a pseudo as a matter of fact.
I agree with you.
I was just observing that Christianity has 2 faces (like you do).
There is the ready to help and sacrifice oneself as said in my previous answer symbolized by the crusaders and knights and there is the dark one.
During the crusade in Southern France against the heretic Albigeois (or Cathars) in 1209 at the Béziers massacre, the Papacy legate Arnaud Amaury would have replied when asked by his soldiers how to differenciate the Catholic inhabitants remained in the city and the heretics:
“Kill them all, God will know His own! ”
Is there anyone more Christian than the pope’s legate !?
To kill in the name of God is an old excuse and justification, more often to get richer, increase your power etc.
In Taylor Sheridan’s TV serie 1923, the priests and the nuns of the boarding school are clearly the descendants of this dark side of Christianity.
I am not too familiar with Richard Dawkins philosophy (not so sure it is the right word).
Well, if we’re going to do comparisons of body counts and atrocities, I’m afraid secularism isn’t going to fare very well. Strictly secular governments haven’t been around anywhere near as long as ones imbued with Christianity, so they haven’t had as much time to do harm, but they’ve certainly made a sanguinary start.
Keeping on the subject of Christian, religious and faith based or related westerns, by searching through Jeff’s blog, I stumbled upon Brimstone (2016).
Jeff:
“The Reverend [ played by Guy Pearce ] is a religious maniac, or at least a deeply evil man who uses religion to justify his wickedness. And he is seriously and creepily evil, a cold-blooded killer, brute, incestuous rapist, debaucher, pedophile and, perhaps, the devil. Because of this, Brimstone is not an easy film to watch. Don’t put it on if you are looking for light entertainment.”
An interesting comment by David Lambert:
…”I hated it. Writer/director Koolhoven seems to know as little about the West as he does about religion. The Reverend is so over the top and the biblical quotes he uses so stripped of their context that he becomes silly. He’s certainly not the pointed critique of religion/patriarchy Koolhoven thinks he is. I’m also tired of these modern revisionist Westerns with their preacher villains. This, The Duel, Sweetwater [ I have not seen this one but it has an interesting cast], etc. it’s the same trope over and over again, and hasn’t been improved upon since Donald Pleasance in Will Penny. “…
In his post about The Duel, in which Woody Harrelson is “a (very) charismatic preacher dressed in White… bald and psychopathic, a religious racist with slightly less charm than a trod-on rattlesnake…”, Jeff says:
… “It has something useful to say about cults and their leaders, something not very complimentary but true; in fact it is slightly down on organized religion as a whole, as far as an American movie dares to be.”…
Speaking of reverends, Tom Noonan was playing a major protagonist of the good TV serie Hell on Wheels.
And how I have forgotten to mention in my examples list, High Noon !?
In it, religion is such an important subtext, especially since Grace Kelly is a strict pacifist quaker and Coop, facing a crisis of conscience, has to take the burden of the town on his shoulders !?