Touches You

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Cal Wayne (Bobby Darin) returns home from the Civil War a broken man, haunted and afraid to strap on a gun because he had mistakenly killed his friend. Upon return, he finds that his dead friend's brother, Grant Evers (Leslie Nielsen) has taken over the town with the help of a bullying sheriff, and is engaged to marry the woman Cal loves. With a supporting role by Michael Sarrazin in his big screen debut as a kind-hearted rancher who is flogged by the evil sheriff while returning a stray calf, and eventually dies from the beating (triggering the violent series of confrontations that ends the movie).The plot of this movie, while following a tried and true formula, does introduce some interesting twists and turns. However, Bobby Darin was a poor fit for the role. One inescapably concludes that Universal was trying him out in the western lead role, and he obviously failed as it was his only western.Darin's acting seemed forced, his scrawny frame swaggering around with an exaggerated chest-out, shoulders-back posture. His fight scenes with larger men were so forced and obviously scripted that they come off as feeble. His acting was a series of attempts to over-emphasize every word with uncomfortable pregnant pauses while we study his face in close-up. It's all rather bizarre. Even more bizarrely, he wears black leather gloves throughout the entire movie, and appears uncomfortable doing so, constantly tugging at them. Perhaps they were hiding small hands. Who knows, but they stuck out like a sore thumb (no pun intended). He clearly did not belong in this role. Watching him in this movie felt more like watching a low-grade soap opera.But along comes Leslie Nielsen with another brilliant performance to save the day (barely). Leslie's acting, as always, is smooth and professional and realistic. He plays someone who sits atop an empire with an evil sheriff supporting his power play, emanating barely perceptible evilness. But he also plays a good guy who helps Darin's return to his hometown by giving him back his old job as sheriff, and he doesn't try to force himself on Darin's former girlfriend even though he is engaged to marry her. At one point he even offers to postpone the wedding because he knows he doesn't have her heart. This is one of the interesting plot twists, that Nielsen's character generously offers to give up the girl because he knows she is really in love with Darin's character.But even Nielsen's film-saving performance and Michael Sarrazin's supporting and sympathetic role in his first appearance on the big screen aren't enough to salvage Bobby Darin's attempt at a leading western man. At times he appears to be trying to emulate Dean Martin in appearance and manner, but fails miserably. Barely made a 6-star rating in my book, and only because of Nielsen and Sarrazin.

One of the hardest tests for an actor who is famous in other genres, like musicals is to make a western and come out well. So many tried and did not make it. Bobby Darin' performance in this film is quite an achievement. Darin himself was responsible for the musical soundtrack, which is excellent, specially the song "Amy". We have seen countless times the story of a man who goes to war and when he comes back sees his woman engaged to somebody else. Here we have the same story, but done with special care, due to the script and the fine acting of Emily Banks. The scenes where there is action are well made, you even see Darin kicking with his feet. He also wears his gun with the handle turned the other way around. The story is too predictable, but it has one uncommon element, which is the guilt feelings that dominate Darin making him behave in a strange way in relation to people that know him well. The director, William Hale was very well known for his work on television, and after the undeservedly bad reviews this film got, went back to it.

I am, of late, a serious Bobby Darin fan. I didn't see Gunfight in 1967 when it was released, but was fortunate enough to track down a copy just recently. The film was badly panned by the critics in its day, but I gotta tell, I loved it. It's one of the few films Bobby Darin made in which he's the central character and he's on-screen throughout the movie. For this reason alone, it's a must-see for true Bobby Darin fans. I think that Bobby Darin was a good actor and very much underrated. Gunfight is fast-paced, entertaining, and if the plot is a bit predictable, well probably most westerns back in those days were somewhat predictable. Bobby Darin also wrote the musical score for this film, including a beautiful song called "Amy." And, of course, he sings the title song. I think it was one of his finest efforts and it's one my personal favorites.

Though only 11 years had elapsed since the release of "Showdown at Abilene," Universal re-made this under the title "Gunfight in Abilene" with, surprisingly, Bobby Darin taking over the Jock Mahoney role. It's an unexpected casting which does not pay off since Darin seems out of place in a western and he's simply too small and modest to be the kind of tough lawman who could "clean up" a frontier town. In some scenes, he looks even shorter than leading lady, Emily Banks, and whereas Mahoney appeared on the balcony of the Abilene hotel gloriously bare-chested -- showing off his impressive physique but wearing his pants high enough to hide his navel -- Darin plays this same scene with his shirt on though open a bit at the top. (When Darin wakes up from a nightmare in a brief and dimly-lit scene, however, he's bare-chested whereas Mahoney, in a comparable scene, wears an undershirt.) On the plus side, Darin did contribute a song, "Amy," which is sung under the opening credits and which, though undistinguished, is pleasant enough and which today -- due to a decline in movie-song-writing quality -- might win an Oscar.The triangular relationship among Jock Mahoney, Lyle Bettger, and Martha Hyer which strengthened the original movie is still of interest here but one can't quite believe that Bobby Darin and Leslie Nielsen had once been close friends.Though this re-make follows the original quite closely, there are two notable changes. This version begins with a Civil War battle sequence showing Bobby Darin accidentally shooting a friend. Thus the audience knows from the start why the guilt-stricken Darin is reluctant to carry a gun when he returns to Abilene and why he feels he owes a debt to the dead friend's brother. When Darin later confesses the truth to Nielsen, his remarks lack the impact they had in the original version when the audience did NOT know what had happened back in the Civil War battle.The other change is also questionable. In the new version there's a young blonde woman in Abilene who has a crush on Darin and who pops up in a few scenes. This character does not appear in the original version and she adds nothing to the story.The re-make is superior to the original in two respects, however. Donnelly Rhodes makes a much more convincing "bad guy" than Ted de Corsia, and Michael Sarrazin's whipping is more effectively staged than Grant Williams' whipping in the 1956 version. Sarrazin is stripped of his shirt and subjected to more punishment and taunts than Williams who, for some inexplicable reason, is allowed to keep his shirt on while being flogged, even though he has a pleasing physique -- as was proved in "The Incredible Shrinking Man" -- and even though Universal had begun to groom him for his "hunk" appeal.Finally, all the character names from the 1956 version have been changed for the 1967 one.