The Age of Commercialism

Load of rubbish!!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is a great find, a sleeper of the B western genre where a moral judgment is passed on supposed law abiding folk who play God and pay the price for judging their fellow man. "Dallas's" Jim Davis is separated from his wife and living "in sin" with a native American woman. The horrified townsfolk take it upon themselves to turn moral judgment into legal action, and the unfortunate legal eagle who must do their dirty work is accidentally killed. It's up to local sheriff Forrest Tucker to get Davis into protective custody, but violence begats violence, leading to more brutal homicides and a trial with the town supporting the wrong-doers over the protector of justice.Quite surprised and delighted by this discovery, I compare it to other great films that warn of the dangers of gossip and sticking your nose in your neighbor's private business that harms no one. The one that comes to mind instantly is the Jane Wyman/Rock Hudson soap opera "All That Heaven Allows", and this really gives a parallel by putting the issue of judgmentalism into a violent, western setting. Lee Van Cleef is the film's main heavy, with Mara Corday the judged mistress who seems to have been n set up for other crimes as well. Thwys where the film gets a bit off track. But the conclusion provides a very important moral, with judge Everett Glass gives it good to the perpetrators of the sinister activities, condemning the non-violent to a private jail of their own karma. Now that's what I call justice.

Director William F. Claxton wastes no time in starting "The Quiet Gun," a modern-ish western with lots of story and dramatics and personal conflict, and not so much gun-play.Excellent performers take a taut story and render it believable and exciting.As a long-time fan of Forrest Tucker, I believe he has never given a better performance. He is smooth, controlled, even nuanced, and makes us, the audience, completely on the side of his character, Sheriff Carl Brandon.Jim Davis plays his friend, Ralph Carpenter, who is lured into a ridiculous situation, certainly by Old West standards, but, remember, the city attorney is one of those blue-nosed Easterners, played very well by Lewis Martin (a really interesting name, considering that Jerry and Dean were at about the peak of their team effort).(I do have to question, though, whether a city attorney would actually have any jurisdiction out in the ranch-lands, but that really isn't important. It's more important to accept the flow of the action, and question the script only afterward.)Jim Davis, another of my favorites, is not on screen very much, even though he's third billed. But he is a strong presence when he is there.Hank Worden gets a chance to shine, and he too shows himself to be more than a character: He's a character actor. Great performance by him.The two women are pivotal to the story, especially the one played so beautifully by Mara Corday, but they are also not on screen much.Of course we must mention Lee Van Cleef, who had a most fascinating career. His last years saw him as a major TV series star and a very highly paid movie performer, especially of Italian westerns. And he deserved every penny.There is a relevant lesson in this story: The town council is composed of some rather rascally and self-aggrandizing men, not so foul or corrupt as, for example, the city councils of Los Angeles or Chicago, but enough power-lust is in them to create the conflict that finally results in several deaths.Sheriff Brandon is savvy enough to know that some laws should not and can not be enforced, but the power-lusters and the busybodies over-rule him, resulting in the tragedies.Even beyond some superb performances, especially by Forrest Tucker, this story is enough to grab an audience and leave us tense and torn, right until the end.I highly recommend "The Quiet Gun," available at YouTube in a very good print but, alas, interrupted several times by intrusive -- though brief -- commercials.

Miscegenation/ immorality is the theme of "Stagecoach to Fury" director William F. Claxton's dusty, little, black & white western "The Quiet Gun." This thoroughly conventional oater turns over rocks that most westerns during the 1950s might not have done. Immoral sex sets the plot of this concise oater into motion. Had Claxton and "Cattle Empire" scenarist Eric Norden left out the sex angle, "The Quiet Gun" would have been little more than a standard-issue B-western about land raiders. A well-dressed saloon entrepreneur, John Reilly (Tom Brown) wants the land belonging to a local rancher, Ralph Carpenter (Jim Davis of "Big Jake"), and he conspires with a reptilian gunslinger, Doug Sadler (Lee Van Cleef of "High Noon") to steal Carpenter's land. The city attorney, Steven Hardy (Lewis Martin), is from the east. He is properly outraged by the fact that Carpenter is a married man who is living in sin with a half-breed Indian maiden, Irene (Mara Corday of "The Gauntlet"), while his wife Teresa Carpenter (Kathleen Crowley of "The Phantom Stagecoach") was away. The impetuous Hardy rides out to Carpenter's ranch to arrest him. Things do not go well for the crusading lawyer. Carpenter kills Hardy when the latter appropriates a rifle. The rifle belonged to livery stable hand Samson (Hank Worden of "The Searchers") who had ridden out with the attorney to Carpenter's ranch. Sheriff Carl Brandon (Forrest Tucker of "Chism") knows Carpenter and tries to take him into custody. He sneaks up on him when Carpenter and Irene are bedded down in the middle of nowhere, but Irene distracts the lawman long enough for Carpenter to escape. By the time that Brandon corners him in the rocks, the town has sent a gang of horsemen out to lynch Carpenter. When Brandon tries to disarm them, they overpower him and knock him unconscious. When he recovers from the beating, the sheriff sees poor Ray dangling inertly from a tree branch. Brandon rides back to town and arrests all the men who participated in hanging Ray Carpenter. The city father intercedes on behalf of the prisoners, but Brandon tricks them into becoming his deputies. He does this was keep them from forcing him to release the lynch mob. Meanwhile, Ray's wife Teresa returns on the stagecoach and learns the awful truth. The judge sentences the lynch mob to three years apiece for their lawlessness. Later, after the trial, Brandon learns from Teresa who went out to her late husband's ranch that Irene has been killed. Brandon charges both Reilly and Sadler for her death. A gunfight on the main street occurs, and Brandon is wounded. Reilly and Sadler are not as lucky; Brandon guns both of them down. The only thing missing from this otherwise impressive little western is the closure of an ending. We see Teresa come out and check on Brandon's welfare. It is really too bad that Claxton and Norden didn't show us what happened after the shoot-out. Naturally, it would seem likely that Brandon and Teresa would be drawn to each other. After dealing with the treacherous town fathers, wouldn't it seem obvious that Brandon might have tossed his badge in the dirt like Gary Cooper did and ride out with Teresa to get her late husband's ranch going? Again, if this otherwise compelling oater suffers from anything it is the lack of an effective ending that would have provided answers for some questions.Altogether, "The Quiet Gun" (not sure what this enigmatic title refers to) is a diamond in the rough. The black & white photography is stark and the compositions are interesting. I liked it those little realistic touches, such as when Forrest Tucker dismounted from his horse, he loosened the cinch holding the saddle on his horse. Later, when he came back to ride out, he tightened the cinch. In the courtroom scene, you can see one window opened because you know it would be hot in that room.

The eminent, mad Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote of UFOs that there was something out there, but what it was, was a mystery. As such they permitted us to project our own thoughts and emotions onto them. They provided us with a kind of Rorschach ink blot test. We could interpret them according to our social values.Many routine Westerns provided us with the same opportunities. The Westerns generally stuck with the conventions -- a clip on the jaw and the recipient is unconscious for as long as the plot requires. But within that framework we could explore our problems in model form. It's like playing around with a toy instead of facing the real thing.For instance, it might not be such a hot idea to deal directly with racism. Why bleed the box office returns from the traditional South? But, hey, Indians can serve as stand-ins for African-Americans, as in "The Searchers" (1956). Movies designed for audiences with the Great Depression fresh in mind could use "big business" as the heavy. We could even win the Vietnam war with Rambo. This movie, "The Quiet Gun" (a generic title if there ever was one) explores social issues common to the late 1950s -- divorce, adultery, prudery, racism, lynching, conformity, gossip, and the impartiality of the justice system. No African-Americans, though, just a "half-breed" Indian.It's not a bad little film, though it does seem almost flamboyantly dated now. (Living in sin?) Forrest Tucker is a professional and competent actor and it shows. Lee Van Cleef, of the ophidian eyes, is what he is. Jim Davis plays a somewhat sympathetic victim for a change. Some of the minor parts are just terrible. What were the town fathers in real life -- the producers' uncles or something? It's inexpensively shot on a ranch set. No spectacular vistas here. And it's in black and white, which isn't necessarily bad. If the script lacks sparkle, and if Hank Worden replays his goofy dumb role yet again, the movie still is watchable and has something to offer us, as if it had been recently exhumed from a time capsule.Not at all terrible.