Black Spurs (Paramount, 1965)
The old flame flickers again In the early 1960s the mainstream theater Western seemed doomed. The wonderful The Magnificent Seven (1960) seemed now to be the last hurrah of the previous decade rather than the harbinger of the next. Audiences were falling away, staying at home to watch Gunsmoke on TV. Yes, the […]
The Law and Jake Wade (MGM, 1958)
Classic Sturges . . I’ve been meaning to write about The Law and Jake Wade for some time, partly because I like Robert Taylor in Westerns, partly because it was one of John Sturges’s better efforts and partly because Richard Widmark was good in it. Furthermore, it has stunning photography by the great Robert […]
Massacre at Sand Creek (Screen Gems/CBS, 1956)
The odious Colonel Chivington The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 was one of the most shameful episodes of nineteenth-century American history. It hasn’t really been dealt with much by screen Westerns. I suppose in the earlier days of our beloved genre the US military were so much the goodies, arriving at the last […]
Five Bold Women (Citation Films, 1960)
The women are taken to the state pen Jeff Morrow was Major Bart McClelland in Union Pacific on TV and he was Cochise in an episode of Bonanza but he only did five Western features. He had a smallish part in Siege at Red River in 1954, a bigger one in the Dean Martin/Jerry […]
Copper Sky (Fox, 1957)
Rooster Cogburn without the zip . . Critic Brian Garfield called Copper Sky a “black and white Z-movie”. It’s not quite as bad as that, though its two lead actors were unstellar and, honestly, on the weak side. Coming so soon after the classy Tension at Table Rock, it was a big disappointment. Jeff […]
Tension at Table Rock (RKO, 1956)
A tense town Western Tension at Table Rock was a classy Western from RKO in the mid-1950s, that high-water mark of our noble genre. The team putting it together was strong. The picture was directed by Charles Marquis Warren, written by Winston Miller from a Frank Gruber novel, shot in Technicolor by the […]
Charles Marquis Warren
Writer, director and producer of over a thousand Westerns Charles Marquis Warren (pictured left in 1955), born 1912, died 1990, was an important contributor to our noble genre, the Western. I myself don’t actually like all the Westerns he wrote, directed or produced. Some were weak and some were even rather unpleasant. But […]
Apache Ambush (Columbia, 1955)
A low-budget black & white that is still a lot of fun Producer Wallace MacDonald, director Fred F Sears and writer David Lang produced a whole series of Westerns in the mid-1950s. Philip Carey led in four of them but they also used David Brian, John Hodiak and Bill Williams. All the pictures […]
Fury at Showdown (UA, 1957)
Better than it should have been I’ve never been the greatest fan of John Derek in Westerns. He wasn’t the finest actor ever to grace our noble genre. But I guess he wasn’t that bad either. He made five feature oaters and a TV movie, as well as appearing with Chill Wills in […]
Oklahoma Territory (UA, 1960)
Huge fun I’ve been reviewing a number of mediocre-to-bad Westerns lately but here at last is an oater you can really enjoy, an almost classic black & whiter of an earlier time. Oklahoma Territory is a straight-down-the-trail horse opera of the old style, and all the better for that. It was a Robert […]