We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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Ranking Movies Since 2011
We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
As in the case of Virginian Mayo I almost cried when I saw Yvonne DeCarlo once the wife of Chuck Heston’s Moses in a De Mille prestigious epic 2nd billed and 2nd fiddle to fading B movie cowboy George Montgomery in an A C Lyles ‘junkyard’ epic Hostile Guns.
Yvonne had been a feisty screen Sex Goddess in the 1940s and early 1950s winning the on-screen love of Hollywood heartthrobs of the day such as Rock Hudson and appearing in such exotic movies as 1945’s Salome Where She Danced. The latter was not set in some far-off fairy-tale clime as one might think but in Virginia of all places. Say THAT place seems to be mentioned a lot recently in connection with Steve’s videos – what’s the big deal about it anyway?Best 17 STILLS entries in Steve’s 1967 video are in my view:
1/Great montage for A Time for Dying
2/Stranger on the Run
3/Iconic one for Custer
4/Chuka -star Rod Taylor produced as well as starring
5/Welcome to Hard Times
6/2 for The Last Challenge/Pistolero of Red River
7/2 for Waterhole 3 – wow!
8/Rough Night in Manchester
9/Return of the Gunfighter
10/God Forgives
11/2 for The Way West
12/2 for Day of Anger
13/2 for Hour of the Gun
14/Face to Face
15/3 for The War Wagon -rather gimmicky one from The Duke I thought.
16/Red Tomahawk
17/ALL for Hombre-
“What was his name? What was the hombre’s name? I have to know his name!” REPLY “His name was John Russell.”
In 1967’s Fort Utah it was for me very sad to see 1940s/early-1950s Sex Queen Virginian Mayo second billed and playing 2nd fiddle in an A C Lyles “Old Geezer” western to a guy who was never a star even in his heyday [John Ireland]. “Has-been” roles like that were better left to Myrna Loy at that time.
A far cry from Virginian’s Halcyon days when she sparkled in all her beauty as Danny Kaye’s leading lady in 4 of his big hits. For me the best 15 POSTERS entries in Steve’s 1967 video [gladly 98% rated by me after 4 early views by me] are:
1/1st one for Gunfight in Abilene
2/1st one for A Time for Killing
3/BOTH for Custer of the West
4/2 for The Last Challenge aka Pistolero of Red River
5/ALL for Rough Night in Manchester
6/Both for Return of the Gunfighter
7/BOTH for Django Kill
8/ALL for God Forgives
9/ALL for The Way West. Burt Lancaster’s earlier plans to make this with himself, Kirk and Jimmy Stewart fell through.
10/BOTH for Bandidos
11/ALL for Day of Anger
12/Foreign Language one for Hour of the Gun
13/2 foreign language one for The War Wagon
14/Both for WANTED
15/Ride to the Hangman’s Tree – wow!
16/Both for The Hellbenders
17/ALL for Death Rides a Horse.
18/ALL for Hombre-
HAUGHTY AUDRA FAVOR “Do you never take your hat off to a woman?” CICERO GRIMES “Depends on the woman – and then what else I take off depends on how lucky I get!”
Joan Caulfield is the leading lady in Andrew Craddock [called “A.C.”] Lyles Jr’s 1967 Red Tomahawk. When Joan sadly died in 1991 A. C. read the eulogy at her funeral.
Although the tight budgets of A. C’s movies meant small pay checks for their stars Lyles should nevertheless be given great credit for all-the-time trying to find work in his movies for his friends such as Joan who is also in 1968’s Buckskin.
One common link that the women who appeared in A.C. Lyles’ movie had is that almost all of them were conviction Republicans: Jane Russell/Virginian Mayo/Yvonne DeCarlo/and Joan Caulfield herself.
Joan had campaigned for Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election; and Yvonne had campaigned for Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford/and “Tricky Dickie” Nixon during their presidential campaigns.
In 1976 when campaigning for Gerald Ford Yvonne in a TV interview explained why she was always supporting MALES for president; and it would not have endeared her to the feminists of her day! –
“I’m all for men and I think they ought to stay up there and be the bosses, and have women wait on them and put their slippers on and hand them the pipe and serve seven-course meals; as long as they open the door, financially support the woman, and do their duty in the bedroom.”
Hi Bob, apologies for my lateness in replying and thanks for reviewing my 1967 Westerns video, the generous rating, info, trivia and quotes are much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
10 Spaghetti Westerns out of 30, not bad could have been worse. I’m only including the ones that have a strong fan following and are reasonably well known (outside of Italy). Some of them have impressive ratings from a number of sources. Lets face it the American western genre was getting worse instead of better, their greatest decade was the 1950s. At least the Italians added a bit more style, violence, weird music and a tendency to overuse the zoom lens. [Bob grunts]
Paul Newman tops the western charts for the second time this decade, Hud and Hombre, I wonder if he could do it one more time…
No film scored 10 or 9 from my sources, the top 5 scored 8 out of 10.
My Video Top 6 –
Hombre 7.6
A Bullet for the General 7.3
The War Wagon 7.2
Face to Face 7.1
Hour of the Gun 7.0
Death Rides a Horse 7.0
The UMR critics top 6 –
Hombre 8.3
The War Wagon 7.3
Hour of the Gun 6.8
Rough Night in Jericho 6.2
Waterhole 3 6.1
Hellbenders 5.8
“Steve McQueen was offered the role of John Russell but turned it down because he thought it reminded him of Nevada Smith (1966) in which he played a half-Indian. After the release of Hombre (1967) Steve McQueen said it was one of Paul Newman’s best roles. Some critics felt Paul Newman was miscast in a role that would have better suited Charles Bronson. “
HI STEVE: Thanks for the thoughtful feedback and good stuff on McQueen . Congratulations on piling up the high-K figures for your westerns series. To me it looks your most successful series for which I have seen stats at least in relation to early reaction. Truly well-done.
I thought your spaghetti westerns selection in the 1967 video was exceptionally splendid. Not to be going on for too long in my comments on the video and wanting to bring some diversity to my own selections I highlighted just a handful of the spaghettis; but I admired the visuals for many of the others as well.
I see that the Christmas TV movies are coming along fast. Boris must have told the networks to speed-up things this year to get us all in a good mood after last Xmas’ fiasco.
You should take a break from all that morbid horror/sci-fi stuff [such as some deranged character hiding-out in an attic to slaughter a bunch of young sorority sisters as in 1974’s Black Christmas] and watch some of the Xmas TV classics for the feelgood factor and heart-warming mush.
So join me in getting out the hankies and [as the Bard of Stratford upon Avon wrote over 500 years ago for Marlon to mumble centuries later in 1953] “If you have tears prepare to shed them now”!
HI STEVE: Thanks for the interesting feedback. Good trivia about Lancaster/Marvin/Strode. I knew about neither the friendship pf Lee/Woody nor the dislike between Lee/Burt. I did know that (1) Tracy and Lee didn’t get along but then there were a lot of people whom Old Cantankerous didn’t agree with. When drunk he used to take a swing at his own brother!
(2) Burt admitted in an interview that the only actor with whom he was ever nervous about working was Monty Clift in From Here to Eternity: Burt confessed to being jittery because of Clift’s reputation as a great scene-stealer and apparently Lancaster dashed to the projection room immediately at the end of each day’s shooting to see the rushes in the can and comfort himself that Monty wasn’t stealing the picture from under his nose.
Your Jesse James/Stevie the Kid ‘horror westerns’ so intrigued me that I did some more reading-up on them and here’s what I found on IMDB about DRACULA v STEVIE THE KID 38% Rating 74 mins:
PLOT SYNOPSIS: “Dracula travels to the American West, intent on making a beautiful ranch owner his next victim. Her fiancé, outlaw Billy the Kid, finds out about it and rushes to save her.”
USER REVIEW: If you’re looking for a good Horror-Western then you’ve come to the wrong place. However, if you are an aficionado of stiff, stagey, stodgy drive-in material then there is much here to entertain. So try and forget that the whole thing is entirely devoid of creepy atmosphere as it is good fun for cheese fans.”
In fact IMDB centrally does not class it as a western and if the review above is right it’s not even a horror film in terms of its impact! I write that in the knowledge that you -this site’s doyen of horror – may have seen it and thought it was a wonderful movie! If so please accept my apologies though Carradine considered it the worst movie he’d ever acted in.
IMDB does acknowledge Jesse James and Frankie’s Daughter as a “horror western” but gives it just a 33% rating; and of course that kind of stuff wouldn’t do for a devout Rory fan – we like our low budget B westerns to have a bit of class!
Actually I still haven’t gotten over either Jesse James/Frankie’s Daughter or Billy the Kid/Drac. and indeed I think I may have had had bad dreams last night, so I decided to add a Part 4.
I suppose that I can count myself lucky that Big John didn’t receive the Abbott and Costello treatment: The Duke Meets The Killer Vincent Price; the Duke Meets The Invisible Man; The Duke Meets Bela Lugosi etc.
Whilst it is true that Wayne will always be the hero no matter what the theme or format, Hollywood could make even Adolf Hitler look like the good guy if they teamed him with Count Alucard or another monster (s)-Mother Bates meets The Wolf Man!/Mother Bates Meets the Creature “The waters of the Black Lagoon ripple in terror!”
There is no doubt that Tinseltown is the Home of Rip-off. Not only do they pirate and “rework” the works of great authors and playwrights but they even steal each other’s monsters:
-The Bride of Norman Bates – “Making love in the shower was never like this before!”
-Roy Rogers &Trigger meet The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
– I lost my Heart at the Abattoir “More frightening than Psycho. More tender than Magnificent Obsession.”
-Bloodbank: The Musical aka Knees-up Mother Bates-
“I was working in the lab, late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For my monster from his slab, began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise
He did the mash, he did the monster mash
The monster mash, it was a graveyard smash
He did the mash, it caught on in a flash
He did the mash, he did the monster mash.”
“The Monster Mash” 1962 sung by Bobby “Boris” Pickett
As the old cliché goes: you couldn’t make it up. However, YOU deserve a bit of poetic licence because the visuals for both the Billy the Kid/Jesse James ‘horror westerns’ -I will always use quotes when referring to such a contrived genre – are excellent and I like them; for me that’s what it’s all about when I watch your videos and 1966 has had 3 views from me so far: and those pictorials deserved to appear somewhere in your video collections no matter where.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating (ooh), info, trivia, quotes and song lyrics, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
First comedy westerns, then musical westerns, and now horror westerns. Bob throws up his hands in disbelief. What next? Sci-fi westerns? 😉
More and more Linguini Westerns are creeping into the charts [Bob cries out in anguish]. Well they were popular Bob and some of them were highly entertaining, plenty of humour, unlikely gunplay acrobatics with generous dollops of violence thrown in for good measure. I mean what more do you want? [Bob faints]
Two films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – El Dorado and Good Bad and Ugly. One film scored 9 out of 10 – The Professionals.
My Video Top 6 –
The Good the Bad and the Ugly 9.15
El Dorado 8.15
The Professionals 7.8
The Big Gundown 7.5
Django 7.3
Nevada Smith 7.2
The UMR Critics Top 6 –
The Good the Bad and the Ugly 9.4
The Professionals 8.3
El Dorado 8.2
A Big Hand for the Little Lady 7.5
Django 7.3
Texas Across the River 7.2
According to Richard Brooks, Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin did not get along during filming on ‘The Professionals’ due to Marvin’s alcoholism, which was making him unreliable and difficult at the time, infuriating Lancaster. Brooks, who had directed Lancaster in ‘Elmer Gantry’, felt the need to intervene because he feared Lancaster was going to “take Lee Marvin by the ass and throw him off that mountain”.
Lee Marvin was very happy to be reunited with his old friend, Woody Strode. Although they hadn’t worked together since ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ the two men had a genuine friendship between them ever since. Strode said about Marvin, “He got me some kind of half-assed billing for “The Professionals”. Strode also went on to say Marvin was a “nice, decent Marine, pure in heart.”
Ralph Bellamy remarked that Richard Brooks didn’t need a megaphone or loudspeaker to make himself heard, even in outdoor shots.