Joseph Cotten – The Magnificent 60s

The Hellbenders (1967) ****

An absolute hoot – and I suspect deliberately so. Forget the spaghetti western tag, this is a black comedy – and wild at that. And while its most obvious antecedent is Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) it really belongs in a different sub-genre of the heist-gone-wrong.

After the end of the Civil War, Godfearing Confederate Col Jonas (Joseph Cotten), who had led a regiment called The Hellbenders, plans to re-start the conflict with a million bucks in money stolen from the victorious Union Army.

Along with three sons and two varmints he successfully ambushes the money convoy, slaughtering the escort. The varmints are shot, too. But to get through enemy territory, they need an excuse, so Jonas has co-opted alcoholic girlfriend Kitty (Maria Martin) to play the role of a widow transporting her husband’s coffin, wherein is secreted the stolen loot, to his homelands.

The ploy seems to work fine and dandy when stopped by a Union patrol. Kitty produces the necessary permit and they move on. But Kitty’s got ideas above her station and when Jonas reminds her that she’s not much more than trash, she takes revenge by taking charge of the hearse and racing ahead of the others. Naturally, the wagon hits a rock and crashes. Intemperate son Jeff (Gino Pernice) knives Kitty to death.

That’s the start of a bunch of quandaries. So Ben (Julian Mateos) is despatched to find a replacement. He returns with professional gambler Claire (Norma Bengell) whom he rescued from a dispute he started. Although being paid $2,000 Claire is not enamored of the job but she quickly earns her keep when they are stopped by a posse of lawmen who are not taken in by the permit and begin to open the coffin until she faints on top of it.

Her reward is to be raped by Jeff. She makes the mistake of going to wash half-naked in a pool and Jeff takes this as an open invitation. She’s saved from the actual act by Ben, who has taken a shine to her. To save on the travelling time and the risk of encountering other trouble, Jonas decides they’ll take a short cut. That takes them through a town where, lo and behold, the preacher is acquainted with the good Capt Allen, though luckily not his wife, and out of the goodness of his heart decides to hold a funeral service. Their fear is someone might turn up who can identify the widow. Someone does. But he’s now blind.

The short cut takes them into the path of marauding Mexicans. But before the outlaws can be overrun by a superior force, they are saved by another unit of Union cavalry which originates from the post Capt Allen used to command. And when a Union officer suggests it would be more in keeping for the captain to be buried there, to Jonas’s fury the widow agrees.

That means that later, on a rainy night, the sons have to dig up the coffin. Jonas’s new route takes them through Native American territory, but they appear harmless except that Jeff catches the eye of a young squaw.

They reach a river and encounter an impoverished panhandler. He’s trickier than anyone could expect. Having slaughtered their horses, he holds them up. Jeff manages to kill him but in the shoot-out Jonas is wounded – for a second time.

Before anyone can catch their breath, Native Americans appear, accusing Jeff – who has been sent to buy replacement horses from them – of rape and murder. The other brother, Nat (Angel Aranda), who is keener on enjoying the money than wasting it on a lost cause, turns on Jeff and in the crossfire those two brothers are killed and Ben wounded. But the Indians appear satisfied with the rudimentary justice.

Jonas crawls off lugging the coffin but only gets as far as a ridge before the coffin tumbles downwards and breaks open. Inside ain’t a million bucks but the corpse of the Mexican bandit leader. They stole the wrong coffin, the last of the absurdities to pile up.

Jonas now crawls in the opposite direction, to the river, at whose edges he dies while the flag of The Hellbenders gently floats away.

While not sticking to the formula of the heist-gone-wrong which would involve the thieves falling out, it’s a pretty good variation on it. Women are their downfall, the first widow furious at being spurned, the second widow angry at being used, at having, as part of the masquerade, to dress up in a dead woman’s clothes, and at being considered easy meat for a passing rapist. Though it’s the rapist who ultimately triggers the bullet-ridden climax, it’s Claire, we realize, who’s done the damage, ensuring the money is buried in that most ironic of locations, an enemy cemetery.

While Nat and Jeff are only a sliver away from cliché, driven by lust and greed, respectively, Jonas is a different kettle of fish, not just a man of principle, and praying for the bodies of people he’s about to kill, but exhibiting an odd tenderness for his sons – he’s first to tend the wounds he causes them. Ben is an outlier in the family, for reasons never explained feels a stranger, while Claire, a card cheat and saloon girl, realizes the lunacy of the situation she has found herself in and finesses a way out of it.

What trips the gang up is generally so mundane it wouldn’t find a place in a traditional crime picture, but here, as devilish unforeseen obstacles mount, it becomes clear that I wasn’t laughing at an inept picture but one that set out to tell a different kind of story.

Joseph Cotten (The Last Sunset, 1961) takes advantage of a rare leading role and throws out different shades of character. Julian Mateos (Return of the Seven, 1966) and Brazilian Norma Bengell (Planet of the Vampires, 1965) are otherwise the pick.

Sergio Carbucci (Django, 1966) directs from a screenplay by Ugo Liberatore (The 300 Spartans, 1962) and Jose Gutierrez Maesso (Rebus/Appointment in Beirut, 1968). On the downside, the color is inconsistent. On the upside, there’s an Ennio Morricone score.

Time for re-evaluation.

The Last Sunset (1961) ***

Too many hidden secrets turn this into a Peyton Place of a western. When the final unexpected zinger strikes home the movie has nowhere to go and undercuts the climax. Director Robert Aldrich also lets Kirk Duglas off the leash so there’s too much of him festering to put the outcome in any doubt. Strangling a vicious dog with your bare hands is usually a sign of heroism but here it just undermines Douglas’s character.

Wanted murderer O’Malley (Kirk Douglas) has skipped to Mexico away from the long arm of the American law. Nonetheless, lawman Stribling (Rock Hudson) is in pursuit, presumably hoping to kidnap him and drag him back over the Rio Grande into U.S. jurisdiction. The story, in a major narrative flaw, finds another way to head O’Malley north.

Anyways, O’Malley is in Mexico not just to escape, but for a more sentimental reason, he wants to hook up again with first love Belle (Dorothy Malone). The fact that she’s married to limping ex-Confederate soldier Breckenridge (Joseph Cotten) appears to make no difference. And when O’Malley strikes up a deal to help Breckenridge drive his herd of cattle to Crazy Horse, a town over the Rio Grande, he tells the husband of his romantic intent.

This would usually spell trouble except the narrative conveniently disposes of the husband. However, by this point the lawman has also thrown his hat into the romantic ring, having signed up to become trail boss. You can see the logic in Stribling’s decision. If O’Malley’s heading in the right direction then it makes it easier for Stribling to get him over the border.

What doesn’t make any real sense is Breckenridge’s hiring of O’Malley in the first place, or the deal the outlaw negotiates. O’Malley would go along in any case for a meal of beans a day just to keep track of Belle who’s the appointed cook for the ride. Instead, and with no cattle herding skills in evidence, he manages to get Breckenridge to agree to give him one-fifth of the herd as a bonus in addition to the normal pay of a dollar a day. Although the audience has already guessed O’Malley’s romantic purpose, he spells it out to the rancher, “I want your wife” the rider to the deal.

O’Malley takes little notice of Belle’s diffidence. The man who was once an enticing prospect to an inexperienced young girl is now presented in a different light. “You carry your own storm wherever you go,” she tells him. She no longer has a hankering to end up just “a survivor,” not convinced by his plan to settle down with the money from the sale of his share of the herd.

As usual, the trail ride has sufficient incident – lightning storm, stampede, a brush with Native Americans, saloon gunfight, a trio of no-goods hitching a ride, a sighting of St Elmo’s Fire and that old trope quicksand – to keep the story moving without the love triangle and what actually turns out to be a revenge tale.

The story takes some unexpected turns. Stribling is a pretty efficient cowboy, seeped in western lore, knows how to keep a herd in shape. He heads off a marauding tribe by trading some of the herd, in compensation for the innocent man O’Malley instinctively shot dead. Belle needs to kill a man to defend herself. And O’Malley, romantic ambitions thwarted by Stribling, starts wooing Belle’s daughter Missy (Carol Lynley) who, no surprises there, reminds him of Belle at a younger age.

As the secrets come spilling out, it becomes apparent that O’Malley has seduced Stribling’s sister whom the outlaw disses as an easy lay – “your sister was a free drink on the house” – and more importantly that his sister has hung herself after O’Malley killed her lover. Double revenge, I guess, to steal Belle and take O’Malley back to face justice.

You might have wondered how Belle ended up with Breckenridge in the first place and it’s not the soldier-wounded-in-battle routine. It’s because he made an honest woman out of her after – or maybe before – Missy was born out of wedlock. And when Belle sees how serious Missy is about O’Malley she reveals that he’s the father. Leaving O’Malley to do the right thing and not load his pistol when he heads for his shoot-out with Stribling once they have crossed the Rio Grande.

The ending smacks of star redemption. Kirk Douglas can play a mean guy better than most and he’s got no problem being tagged an outlaw but to lose a shoot-out would render him the loser whereas noble sacrifice turns him into some kind of winner. That notion doesn’t take into account that Stribling was guaranteed to win the shoot-out anyway since O’Malley’s weapon of choice is the Derringer, ideal for shooting someone standing right next to you, not a lot of good in a shoot-out where your opponent is twenty feet away.

The narrative twists and turns enough to keep you interested but with every secret revealed the flaws are only too apparent. Rock Hudson (Seconds, 1966) wins the duel of the big stars, a wider range of emotions on show but as tough as his rival and with western skills to boot. We’ve seen this brooding Kirk Douglas (The Arrangement, 1969) too many times before. Dorothy Malone (who had partnered Hudson in Douglas Sirk number The Tarnished Angels, 1957) is good as the woman who knows her own mind. Joseph Cotten (The Oscar, 1966) probably signed up not for the chance to show off his limp but for the scene in the saloon where his myth of Civil War heroism is cruelly exposed. Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) convincingly transforms from dutiful daughter with a Disney-esque affinity with animals to woman.

Robert Aldrich (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965) looks hamstrung by the Dalton Trumbo (The Fixer, 1968) script based on the novel Sundown at Crazy Horse by Howard Rigsby.

Too convoluted to fly.

The Angel Wore Red (1960) ***

Given that this is filmed in black-and-white, it seems a curious title. So I’m assuming the color is a reference to a scarlet woman which, indeed, Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968) is, working in a “cabaret” in an unnamed town at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Strangely enough, the decision to shoot in black-and-white works in the actress’s favor. She was one of the last relics of the Hollywood Golden Age when brilliant cinematographers used innovative lighting to capture on screen not so much great beauty but tantalizing emotion.

The close-up was almost exclusively the preserve of actresses who could convey deep feeling with minute changes of expression or simply through their eyes. Here, a couple of joint close-ups prove the point: Gardner’s face illuminated, even in repose struggling to contain passion; that of lover Dirk Bogarde (Victim, 1961) merely the same as always.

This Italian-American production is a curiosity, part homily, part reverential, part brutal. Arturo (Dirk Bogarde) is a priest on the run from the invading Communist forces. He takes refuge in a cabaret (code for brothel) where he is sheltered by Soedad (Ava Gardner). He has just denounced his faith so when captured is not executed as an enemy of the state, thus allowing him to begin a relationship with her.

They share an unusual type of innocence, Soledad because, as what was known in those days as a woman of easy virtue, she has never known true love, Arturo, for obvious reasons, denied such an emotion. Their trembling acceptance of this wondrous state of affairs is the beauty of the film.

The love story which would surely in any case have a tragic outcome unfortunately too often plays second fiddle to a subsidiary tale of safeguarding a sacred relic – about whose importance, strangely enough, both sides are agreed – and of arguments between various other political elements over the conflict. Hawthorne ( Joseph Cotton), a cynical journalist – are there any other kind? – bears testimony to the opposing perspectives while no-nonsense General Clave (Vittorio de Sica) deplores the “dirty” war. Neither side comes out well in the conflict the Communists, like a mob storming Dracula’s castle, destroy the cathedral, the Republicans committed to killing all prisoners so as not to hold up their advance. Only the clergy retain their principles even when tortured.

No one can portray a fallen woman like Gardner, but even as a mature woman her steps towards true love are hesitant, almost believing it is tucked away beyond the rainbow way out of reach, while inner conflict had become central to the Bogarde screen persona.

Writer-director Nunnally Johnson (The Three Faces of Eve, 1957), in his final movie in the hyphenate capacity, had good reason for choosing to film in black-and white – it permitted use of newsreel footage of diving Stuka bombers and more importantly since much of the story takes place at night it creates a haunted background of dark alleys. Color would have destroyed such a vision. You could argue there is artistic purpose here, filming a country which has fallen into a state of spiritual darkness. But that would not be true of the star – black-and-white allows rare opportunity to show what the camera adores in Ava Gardner, her face, even in repose, absorbing the light, as if she were, indeed, redemption.

A film that doesn’t take sides with characters caught in the middle can’t quite make up its mind where it wants to go.

Garner rather than Bogarde is the reason to see it.

The Oscar (1966) ****

Don’t you just love a really good bad movie? Where redemptive character is outlawed. When over-acting is the key. In which everyone gets the chance to spout off about someone else, generally to their face, and then is permitted, in the cause of balance, a quiet moment of bitter self-reflection. And even the most minor character gets a zinger of a line. Welcome to Hollywood.

Tale of an actor’s rise and not exactly fall because we leave Frank Fane (Stephen Boyd) at a pinnacle of his career, though, don’t you know, he’s empty inside and deserted by all his faithful companions. Lucky Frank has some kind of charisma or that he just fastens onto losers who see in him what they need because from the outset he is one mean hombre, living off stripper girlfriend Laurel (Jill St John), so dumb she switched to him from his so dependable best pal Hymie (Tony Bennett – yes, that Tony Bennett, the singer).

He hooks up with Kay (Elke Sommer), a designer who happens as a sideline to make costumes for off-Broadway productions. When King of Lowlife Punks Frank shows a pusillanimous stage actor what you do in a knife fight he strikes a chord with theater producer Sophie (Eleanor Parker), who happens to have a sideline as a talent scout for the movies.

She fixes him up with an agent Kappy (Milton Berle – yes that Milton Berle, the loudmouth comedian) and together they sell him to studio boss Regan (Joseph Cotten). The only good deed Frank does in the entire movie is to stand witness – not for marriage, but for divorce – for an ordinary couple, private detective Barney (Ernest Borgnine) and Trina (Edie Adams), he meets at a bullfight, huge fans, and thank goodness that action comes back to bite him.

The picture goes haywire in the third act. Fane’s career is crumbling in the face of audience indifference, exhibitor displeasure and, don’t you know it, a chance for revenge for Regan, who was stiffed in a previous contract. But instead of taking the traditional tumble into the forgotten category, his career is revived by an Oscar nomination.

*From top to bottom – a fully-clothed Stephen Boyd, then in various states of undress, Elke Sommer, Jill St John and Eleanor Parker. That’s how to sell a picture apparently*.

But that’s not enough for the ruthless Fane. Earlier in his life a corrupt sheriff had stuck him with charges of pimping. Using Barney, who seems to have the ear of the media, he plants a story about himself, hoping that Hollywood being the cesspool it is, everyone will assume one of his rivals did the dirty. “I can’t rig the votes,” rationalizes our poor hero,” but I can rig the emotions of the voters.”

What a scam. I was chortling all the way through this section and almost laughing out loud when it transpires Frank had misjudged how deep the cesspool is, because Barney then blackmails him. This gives everyone he has treated heinously over the years the chance to stick it to him. Nobody will lend him the dough to get this grinning monkey off his back. Salvation comes in the oldest of Hollywood maneuvers. Trina, who has always wanted to get into pictures, and is the kind of person who embodies A Grievance Too Far, supplies the information that will sink her ex-husband, in exchange for Frank using his influence to get her a small role.

There’s a brilliant climax. I should have said spoilers abound but I can’t resist telling you the ending it’s such a cracker. So there is Frank at the Oscars with Bob Hope (yes, that Bob Hope) as master of ceremonies and the audience studded with real stars like Frank Sinatra (yes, that…). Like an evil chorus – you can almost hear them hissing under their breath and they all fix him with baleful looks – are all those he treated badly.

The winner is announced. “Frank…” Assuming victory, Fane gets to his feet. “Sinatra.” The only way he can rescue his embarrassment is to make it look as he is giving the winner a standing ovation. But when the rest of the audience follows suit, he slumps to his chair, and in the only true cinematic moment in all the sturm and drang the camera pulls back from him sitting bitter, twisted and defeated in his seat.

Stephen Boyd (Shalako, 1969) is terrific because even when he was top-billed he tended to over-act and when he became a co-star or supporting player he was an inveterate scene-stealer, of the sharp intake of breath / vicious tongued variety. Here he shows both his charming and venomous side. If he was playing a gangster he couldn’t be more menacing – or charismatic. It’s a peach of a role – he can dish it out, dump women at will, and still embrace victimhood as “170lb of meat.”

Luckily, most of the rest of the cast take the subtle route. Although all disporting in various negligible outfits at one time or another, Jill St John (The Liquidator, 1965), Elke Sommer (The Prize, 1963) and Eleanor Parker (Eye of the Cat, 1969) and giving Frank his comeuppance wherever possible – St John slings him out – the performances are generally nuanced, Parker in particular evoking sympathy.

Tony Bennett is miscast, especially as he has to do double duty as an unwelcome voice-over, filling in bits of the narrative that, thankfully, has been skipped. But Milton Berle is pretty good as a quiet-spoken agent.

In the over-the-top stakes, Boyd has his work cut out to hold his own in scenes with Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch, 1969) who revels in his scam, and Edie Adams (The Honey Pot, 1967) who is anything but a dumb blonde and delivers the most stinging of zingers.

Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know about Hollywood except in one delicious scene where, early in his career, Frank has to squire around a female star who relishes putting him in his place.

It’s not badly made just pell-mell and over-the-top. Russell Rouse (The Caper of the Golden Bulls, 1967) directs from a screenplay by himself and Harlan Ellison (yes that Harlan Ellison, the sci fi author) from the bestseller by Robert Sale.

An absolute hoot.