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It opens and climaxes with a conflagration, in between there's the moral progression of the Confederate lieutenant (Randolph Scott). "I'm a soldier. It's war," no excuse for riding with Quantrill's Raiders, he quits amid the ashes of a Kansas burg and heads to Arizona. (The welcoming committee in Prescott includes stray bullets and runaway stagecoaches: "Kind of wild." "Nah, this is tame. Only one killin' last week.") To start a new life is a thorny matter, as many an André De Toth protagonist knows, he's hired by the crime boss running the town (George Macready) in a scheme to steal Yankee gold. "Once you learn to toss your conscience out of the window, nothing matters." Guilt and reckoning in 3-D, an exploration of Man in the Saddle themes with House of Wax form. Torches are rammed toward the camera, pistols are fired and furniture is hurled straight at the audience, the riverboat chandelier suspended in the foreground is cut down for a shootout in the dark. (Rocks are positioned in front of rear-projection footage in a sliding effect under the hooves of charging horses.) "We both know that civilization ends with the Mason-Dixon Line." One gang boasts Lee Marvin's baleful quietude and Ernest Borgnine's thick bluster, the other has Alfonso Bedoya merrily mangling the English language as a grinning bandit named Degas. Best of all is Claire Trevor's sharp gambling lady in an arrangement akin to Mann's Raw Deal, handily wiping her younger rival (Joan Weldon) off the screen. (Anticipating the showdown while playing solitaire in an empty casino, she notes the stillness of the air: "Like just before a cyclone or a storm. Or death.") De Toth's hard lines of action go into Yojimbo, which means they go into Fistful of Dollars as well. With Pierre Watkin, Joseph Vitale, Clem Bevans, and James Millican.
--- Fernando F. Croce |