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Much of its discourse on the state of the Western rests in the casting: Clint Eastwood on horseback handily brings Leone to America, vintage Monogram cowboy Bob Steele is part of the lynching party, from Ford rides Ben Johnson to cut down the dangling protagonist. (As a bonus, two minutes of Dennis Hopper chained and messianic give a foretaste of the genre's acid turn.) "Some people call this Hell, but you're still in Oklahoma territory." Death and resurrection in the overture like a bitter distillate of The Ox-Bow Incident, rope burns and tin star for Eastwood's wronged buckaroo. (Ed Begley, Bruce Dern, L.Q. Jones and Alan Hale Jr. are among the vividly etched members of the guilty posse.) The law weighs heavily on the judge (Pat Hingle), on the other hand hangings are festive affairs for the community—the gallows is introduced in a mobile POV from the prisoner wagon, around it is a day of hymns and tourists that balloons a detail from King's The Bravados into an astonishing set piece. From the margins watches the grave widow (Inger Stevens) with vengeful wounds of her own. "You hunt your way, I hunt mine." Ted Post sculpts this analysis of the Old West at a crossroads with the best of the decade's TV technique, sturdy set-ups from Rawhide and Gunsmoke and The Rifleman salted with distorting lenses and grungy zooms. The ride through the pale desert, the saloon girl's (Arlene Golonka) annoyance at being yanked away from the bloodthirsty audience, James Westerfield's sardonic tobacco chaw before the noose... The Wild Bunch just around the corner is the logical progression. With Charles McGraw, Ruth White, Joseph Sirola, Michael O'Sullivan, James MacArthur, Bert Freed, Russell Thorson, Ned Romero, and Jonathan Goldsmith.
--- Fernando F. Croce |