The Last Sunset

Directed by Robert Aldrich (1961) Starring: Kirk Douglas, Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten

This is officially the most ridiculous movie I’ve seen all year.  At first, I had thought: “Oh hey, a western with Kirk Douglas playing a man in black and Joseph Cotten as a drunk rancher? Sign me up!”  The first half is pretty much what I was expecting– O’Malley (Douglas) rides into the ranch of John Breckenridge (Cotten), offering himself as a cowboy for their cattle drive.  He has two conditions: One-fifth of the cattle and Breckenridge’s wife (Malone).  O’Malley and Belle had a thing before he became an outlaw, but now she’s married with a daughter, Melissa.

O’Malley has been followed into Mexico by Dana Stribling (Hudson), a Texan sheriff who wants to bring O’Malley to justice for killing his brother-in-law.  He gets roped into helping the cattle drive, on the condition that he’ll arrest O’Malley at the border.  Stribling falls for Belle on the trip and wants to marry her in Texas.

I just realized that this could have been a really interesting love-rectangle plot, but noooo Breckenridge has to get killed by some fellow Virginians in some damn bar fight.  And there goes half the reason I’m watching this movie…

(Joseph Cotten makes the best drunk character-actor.)

Post-Breckenridge’s passing, the second act is pretty much run of the mill Western fare.  Rock Hudson is so macho-honorable, it almost gave me a tooth ache.  Kirk Douglas does his usual anti-hero charm, which is cool, if he wasn’t working it on the mother and the daughter.  Meanwhile, the women have next to nothing to do (it’s a Western).

I was hoping for something consistently ridiculous and action-related, but the third act takes a dip in the creepy-psychosis area of the swimming pool.  It had been building up to it the entire movie, but I was also hoping for it to not take the shame-road.   Oh, movie, you didn’t have to slum in that way!  You could have come out of this with a little bit of dignity.

That said, several amazing drinking games could be played while watching.

Some Cast it Hot: That’ll Be the Day

Episode 6 of Some Cast it Hot has us reviewing John Ford’s The Searchers and giving our recommendations for Western Movies.

Some Cast it Hot features Alex from Film Forager, Caitlin from 1416 and Counting, Sasha from Final Girl Project, and myself.

Dead Man

Directed by Jim Jarmusch: 1995

Johnny Depp is Bill Blake, an accountant traveling from Cleveland to Machine for a job offer.  Unfortunately, he gets there a month too late.  The position has already been filled.  So he is out of luck and out of cash, in a really, really ugly suit.

Blake must have the worst luck, since he ends up sleeping with the fiancee of the son of Dickinson, who runs the town (in one of his last performances, played by Robert Mitchum).  The son shoots Blake, although it manages to miss his heart.  Blake kills him and runs out of town, found later by Nobody (Gary Farmer), who helps him, thinking he’s William Blake, the poet.

What follows is an ode to classic westerns as much as a unique, independent feature.  The movie splits into following Blake and Nobody and the trio of assassins sent by Dickinson to kill Blake.  The black and white photography against the stark west backgrounds as well as the general plot line makes the movie have the general feel of the westerns of old, although the development of Blake’s character through his journey with Nobody creates a more intellectual, anti-hero story.

At one point Nobody hands back the gun Blake used to kill Dickinson’s son, saying “That weapon will replace your tongue.  You will learn to speak through it.  And your poetry will now be written in blood.”  That is the sort of tone this movie has: it is lyrical and violent, an odd mix on the background.  The weird twangy sounds of an electric guitar break up the smoothness of the movie, but add to the strange quality that the movie has.  We watch as Blake turns from a hapless accountant into an outlaw, writing poetry with his gun, and it is a beautifully weird story to watch.