A Second Time Around for Defending a Town

 

My second favorite John Wayne film is Rio Bravo (1959), directed by Howard Hawks. So for years, I was reluctant to watch El Dorado (made in 1966, released in 1967), the loose remake also directed by Hawks and starring Wayne. I figured it couldn't help but be an inferior rehash of the original, despite a strong cast and the same great director. 

But I finally gave in a few years ago and now curse myself for waiting so long. It's not as good as Rio Bravo, but you really don't need to compare them. The later film does hit many of the same plot beats, but it has a personality of its own.

Leigh Brackett, who wrote the screenplays for both films, started by loosely adapting the 1960 novel The Stars in Their Courses, by Harry Brown. At first, she was really happy with it, calling it "the best script I had ever done in my life." But as things moved along, the story morphed into the Rio Bravo remake, which Brackett disliked "because I hate doing things over again." Hawks, though, ran with it and the end result (with all respect to the brilliant Brackett) is pretty darn nifty. He told Robert Mitchum that the film had "No story, just characters." That isn't entirely true. There is a fun, solid storyline running through the movie. But it is the characters that sell it. 

John Wayne is Cole Thornton, a professional gunfighter, who teams with an old friend named J.P. Harrah. Harrah is the sheriff of El Dorado, but he's also fallen into severe alcoholism after an unhappy affair with a woman.

Mitchum's character parallels Dean Martin's character in Rio Bravo. The difference is that Martin's character arc was subordinate to the main plot of defending the town against an evil, powerful rancher. In El Dorado, the plot is almost incidental to the character moments. So Hawks' comment was true to a large extent.

And the supporting cast is wonderful. James Caan played Mississippi, a protege' of Thornton who carries a sawed-off shotgun because he's a lousy shot. Arthur Hunnicutt is the old-time Bull Harris, another ally to the good guys who announces his arrival in town by blaring away on a bugle. Charlene Holt is Maudie, a lady who has eyes for Thornton. Michele Carey is Josephine "Joey" MacDonald, a fiery young lady who is good with a rifle and, during the movie's extended prologue to the main story, shot Thornton. This causes long-term problems, because Thornton still carries around that bullet inside him and it occasionally causes him bouts of crippling pain that paralyzes his gun arm.

Joey, by the way, thought she had good reason to shoot Thornton, but later ends up as another ally.

The villains are Ed Asner as evil rancher Bart Jason. Christopher George, sporting an ugly facial scar and a fast gun, is Jason's main enforcer Nelse McLeod. Together the two actors generate several mega-watts of quiet menace.

There's a lot of humor in the character interactions among the good guys, but Mitchum's arc of pulling himself out of an alcoholic haze and becoming useful again is handled believably. And the action scenes are great. The good guys in this film can be ruthlessly pragmatic--not worried at all about giving their opponents an even chance. There's a scene in which two men attempt to lure Thornton and Mississippi out the back door of a saloon into an ambush. Realizing their intentions, Thornton forces one of the two men out the door to be shot by his own guys. 

There's a shootout in an old church, with the bells being rung by bullet hits, that's fantastic. And the final scene, with Jason holding a hostage inside a saloon while McLeod and Thornton (with a paralyzed gun arm) get ready to face off just outside that saloon, is a wonderful finale. 

Sidenote: Is Wayne's character having a paralyzed arm a metaphor for the fact that both the star and the genre were aging and more fragile than they used to be? Something to think about. 

In the 1960s and the early 1970s, Wayne was experienced enough in making Westerns to turn out one solidly entertaining movie after another. 1969 brought us his third best movie with True Grit, but we also got El Dorado, Big Jake, Cahill U.S. Marshall, The War Wagon, The Train Robbers, Chisum, and The Sons of Katie Elder. These movies aren't among the classics, but the world would be a poorer place without them.

Poisoned Waterholes and Desert Heat

 

cover art by Luis Dominguez

A man escapes from prison after poisoning a guard, then poisons waterholes as he escapes across the desert, at one point leaving two people, including a child, to die after taking their canteen. 

So what we have is the typical sort of ruthless killer that Jonah Hex normally tracks down. But two things make Teddy "The Gentleman Killer" Chandler a particularly interesting villain. First, he has a companion who shows compassion and regret towards the victims, but still remains inexplicably loyal to Chandler.

Second, late in the story, we learn Chandler's interesting backstory. He wasn't always an animal. In fact, he was in prison because he killed a man when his companion, a black man named Orion, was about to be lynched. Chandler saved Orion's life. That's why Orion, a God-fearing man, remains loyal to him.

It all gives Chandler a dimensionality that the bad guys in Hex's stories often lack. That, combined with John Albano's tightly-written script and Tony DeZuniga's atmospheric art, make this a particularly notable issue.

The story (from Weird Western Tales #19--September/October 1973) begins with the prison breakout. Orion is waiting nearby with horses, but is shocked to learn that the poison he smuggled to Chandler was used to kill a human being rather than rats. Chandler begins poisoning waterholes while they make a getaway to discourage pursuit. 

 

Jonah finds them by chance, but recognizes the prison uniform that Chandler is wearing. He wounds Chandler, taking him and Orion prisoner. But when they find a wagon that had been attacked by Comanches. The two adults are dead, but a young boy is still alive. Unfortunately for Jonah and the boy, Chandler gets hold of a gun. He gets the drop on Jonah, leaving him (and the boy) with no weapons, horses or water. Orion, though, drops a canteen as he and Chandler ride off.

It's here that we get a reminder of a usually hidden aspect of Jonah Hex's personality. He manages to bring the boy to a ranch, but does so by saving all the water in the canteen for that boy, leaving him nearly dead before the journey is over. Later, when he rides off after Chandler, the lady of the ranch remarks how kind and gentle he is. And she's right, though Jonah would have been angered if he heard her say it. He does have moments where his better nature takes hold. The ruthless bounty hunter does indeed have his kind and gentle moments.

In the meantime, Chandler shoots Orion in order to save on water consumption. When Jonah finds Orion, the black man explains Chandler's backstory and forgives his killer before he dies. 

The story ends with Jonah relentlessly pursuing Chandler, only for the escaped killer to die when he runs out of water and desperately drinks from a waterhole he had earlier poisoned. He dies laughing at the irony of it.

It's a stand-out story from an excellent series. It's not a criticism to say that most of the outlaws that Jonah runs down are ruthless killers. So is Chandler, but his background--possibly a good man stripped of his humanity while in prison--and the counterpoint of Orion's gentle nature, make this tale particularly notable.

Next week, we'll visit with the Cartwright family to see how well Bonanza translates into comic book form. 

Cover Cavalcade

   JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

Would Gunner have survived the war without Pooch? This 1963 cover is by Jerry Grandenetti. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Nick Carter: "The Haunted Rocking Chair" 5/20/45

Nick is asked to investigate a rocking chair that seems to rock by itself. This, of course, soon evolves into a murder case.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

SKIP WEEK

 Preparing an original story for a D&D campaign and planning a variety of encounters for the players to deal with is time-consuming. I'm afraid there'll be no Wednesday and Thursday posts this week.

With my Books Worth Reading blog and Booktube channel running, I might have Skip Weeks a little more often than I used to, but I'll try to keep that to a minimum.

Cover Cavalcade

 JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

A 1963 cover by Jerry Grandenetti. 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 X Minus One: "At the Post" 3/27/57

The fate of humanity might be in the hands of a man who handicaps horses for a living.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Short Story Genre Survey, Part 9

 

cover art by J. Allen St. John

We finish up our Short Story Genre Survey with a horror story:

Sports

Adventure

Mystery

Crime

Horror

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Western

War

Sometimes, to enjoy a story to its fullest, you have to fully put yourself in the mind-set of the protagonist. "Vampire Village" (Weird Tales, November 1932), by Edmund Hamilton, is such a story.

Hamilton, by the way, wrote this one under the pseudonym Hugh Davidson. It's a name he used sometimes for his gothic horror tales, to separate those tales from the cosmic-level science fiction he was known for under his own name.

Anyway, "Vampire Village" is narrated by one of two Americans backpacking across Europe. They are warned about vampires in one village and the narrator is given a cross. The Americans, naturally, discount the possibility of vampires. So, when the next village they find is indeed inhabited by the undead, only that cross - still in the narrator's pocket - gives them a chance of living through the night.

It's a fun and atmospheric story, hitting the right level of gothic horror to make it work. But a reader might be a little bothered by just how darn DENSE the two Americans seem to be. It is mind-numbingly obvious that the villagers are vampires. How do these two idiots not see it sooner?

Well, the answer is simple. We live in a world where vampires are fictional. We are reading about a world where vampires might very well be real. We know this, so we wonder why the Americans don't catch on sooner.

The thing to remember is that the Americans don't themselves know they are living in a world where vampires might exist. As far as they know, vampires are always fictional. If we ran clues that a village was inhabited by vampires, we would simply discount those clues. We would KNOW that it can't be true.

So that the Americans don't realize they are in danger at first isn't unreasonable. They simply aren't going to shift their thinking into "Hey, vampires DO exist" until it's nearly far too late.

You can find the story online HERE. It's worth reading, but don't be too hard on the protagonists. They think they are living in our world, after all. They KNOW vampires don't exist.

Basil the Royal... Hobo?

 

cover art by Tony DeAngelo

The third and final Basil story found in the first issue of Basil the Royal Cat (January 1953) continues to show the same mix of charm and slapstick humor that made the first two stories so entertaining. Tom DeAngelo continues to provide the solid artwork and I would presume the same unidentified writer provided the script. 

Basil is still stuck in the United States with no money, no food and no one who believes he's a king. He hooks up with a couple of hoboes and ALMOST manages to bum a meal off them before they pull him aboard a passing train. They are racing fans and this train is on its way to Indianapolis ("Indian-Apples?" asks Basil. "Where is that?")

They get kicked from the train and Basil knocks on the door of a home in hopes of trading some work for a meal. That house happens to be the home of a car designer named Jet-Cat, who has build a car so fast that no driver wants to risk driving it. But without the prize money from the race, Jet-Cat and his pretty daughter will lose their home!

So when Basil knocks on the door, he's assumed to be a race car driver. Before he knows it, he's racing in the Indy 500. 

The car, predictable, goes out of control, crashing out of the race track, through a barn and literally across half the country. Basil, who has been desperately trying to find the brakes, accidentally extends a pair of wings that turn the car into an airplane.

You would think that Basil would have been briefed on all this by Jet-Cat before the race, but there you have it.

By chance, he ends up back over the race track just as he's running out of gas. He lands on the track, crosses the finish line and is declared the winner.

I'm not a race car expert, but I'm not sure leaving the track and FLYING back into the race would be considered legal. On the other hand, he did travel at least 500 miles around the country--probably more--before getting to the finish line. And no one seems to have a problem with him being the winner. So there you have it.

I guess I sound like I'm making fun of the story, but these absurdities are a part of its humor and its charm. They are strengths, not plot holes.

Basil is about to take part in a victory dinner, but the two hoboes from earlier spot a cop and pull Basil along as they run for it. The poor king still doesn't get a meal.

I've said "charm and humor" twice already, but it really is the best way of describing the Basil stories. They are sweet and funny examples of the sweet and funny animal stories that were common in the 1940s and 1950s, but have sadly faded from the cultural landscape.

You can read this story HERE.

Basil the Royal Cat ran for a total of four issues. We are leaving Basil here, but the other issues are also worth reading. The first story in the second issue still has Basil in the U.S., but he's somehow acquired a bag of money and a bag of food in between stories. (Finally contacted his embassy, perhaps?) After that, he's back in his own kingdom, dealing with warmongers, counterfeiters and other villains. 

For us, we will be moving on to the Wild West and seeing what Jonah Hex is up to.

Cover Cavalcade

  JULY IS GUNNER & SARGE & POOCH MONTH!!!

From 1962, with art by Jerry Grandenetti.