So far we're 4 for 4 in the Western Noirs, because this one was also excellent. It stars Robert Ryan, last seen as the villain in
The Naked Spur, but here much more like his
On Dangerous Ground character of stoic hard man. This one is the noir-est yet, and the most modern of them all. The down-at-heel town and snowy setting (so unlike the usual studio sets) reminded me of
McCabe and Mrs. Miller. When it begins, Ryan's Blaise Starrett comes off as a heavy, as he's coming into town fixing to pick a (possibly deadly) fight with the farmer Hal Crane, who has bought a huge supply of barbed wire to fence in his farm, thereby preventing Starrett's cattle from roaming free. (This homesteaders-vs.-ranchers theme seems to be a very common one.) His sidekick comments that maybe Crane's hot young wife is the ulterior motive for wanting to kill Crane, but it's only after Starrett and said Mrs. Crane (Tina Louise, unrecognizable as Ginger from
Gilligan's Island - and as proof, Jami, who was raised on
GI, didn't recognize her) are brought together for coffee at the general store that we find out that they had been lovers but Mrs. Crane has decided that she can't live with the duplicity and will stay faithful to her dull husband. Then, later, Starrett confronts Crane and a gaggle of his fellow homesteaders as Starrett stocks up on kerosene to burn Crane's cart load of wire and Crane insists he leave it. Things come to such a head the next morning that Crane and two others are about to get into a gunfight with Starrett (he's stipulated that they draw when a bottle rolled along the bar smashes, and it's just reaching the end of the bar) when... the
real film begins. The bottle is stopped by Burl Ives (probably most famous for being a voice behind the
Frosty the Snowman animated specials, but should be famous for his amazing eyebrows) as Bruhn, a renegade ex-Union officer who is now leading his ragtag band of outlaws on the lam with $40,000 of stolen money.
They're being chased by the cavalry, but this town is the end of the trail. Bruhn's men start by confiscating all the guns and then start salivating over the women of the town. (Actually, there are only three - Mrs. Crane, the wife of the saloon owner, and the daughter of the General Store owner, a feisty late-teen-early-twenties girl called Ernine (who causes all sorts of problems).) Two of Bruhn's men are particularly unsavory: a giggling psychopath called Pace, and a deep-voiced brute called Tex. Just what they would do to the women if allowed is strongly hinted at, and it's genuinely disturbing. Bruhn reins them in, and even worse, forbids them any alcohol, because he only wants to rest overnight and get a bullet dug out of his chest, before moving on, and he knows that if that lot ever get hold of a drink they'll go berserk. Immediately, the Starrett-Crane feud is forgotten, and it turns into a
Petrified Forest/Key Largo kind of deal. The first challenge is to dig the bullet out of Bruhn. This task is foisted on the town vet (it takes place in a room with a calf sitting in the corner) who is terrified. In fact, he asks Starrett if he should make sure Bruhn doesn't make it, to which Starrett responds in no uncertain terms that Bruhn is the only thing stopping his men wiping the town off the map. Bruhn does survive the surgery (after revealing a "Mormon massacre" in his past that might explain the end of his military career) but the vet doesn't like his chances. Meanwhile, the last of Bruhn's recruits, a fresh-faced young fellow called Gene (played by
the son of Ozzie and Harriet - lots of sitcom connections in this one!) falls for Ernine, and protects her little brother when Bruhn takes him hostage to keep the townsfolk in line. There's an attempt to get the women out of town that is foiled,
and results in Starrett getting a beating (but not before he beats up Tex) and then a nightmarish "party" where the women are manhandled
as they get whirled about to a frantic piano until finally Starrett convinces Bruhn that, although it's blizzarding up where they are, there's no snow on the plains and the cavalry are fast-approaching, and that he has to get going up into the mountains. "There's a way through" he tells him, and to prove it, he will lead them. There isn't, of course, and he intends to lead all of them to their doom, himself included, until Ernine lets that slip to Gene,
who blabs to Bruhn. At this point Starrett reveals to Bruhn that he's not going to recover from that bullet, and Bruhn decides to help save the town from his own men, and they head off into the snow. This last section of the movie is genuinely gripping, and appears to be filmed in real blizzard conditions, with the horses up to their stomachs in the snow.
Bruhn lasts long enough to get Gene off the party so he can trudge back to town (and Ernine) before keeling over, whereupon the savages cut loose. Will Starrett make it? Will there be a final shootout? Let me just say that the two people you want most to get theirs do indeed get theirs, but in surprising fashion. Think Jack London. All in all, a gripping, surprisingly brutal little number - maybe my favorite Western Noir yet, although I've thought that after each one...
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