The Old West

 

 (imdb)

RAIDERS OF OLD CALIFORNIA-1957-Low budget Republic western about unscrupulous ranchers pushing Mexicans off their own land. Capt. McCain (Jim Davis) is their leader and his gang includes Ric Vallin, Lee Van Cleef and Marty Robbins! When a circuit judge (Louis Jean Heydt) and a marshal (singer Faron Young) investigate, McCain uses intimidation and violence to get his way. He also kills his ex-partner Lt. Johnson (Harry Lauter). 

McCain searches for Sebastian (Lawrence Dobkin), a Mexican who supposedly granted McCain his land and has to fight savage Indians. In a shootout of the country-western singers Young beats Robbins. Douglas Fowley is a semi-comical old sheriff. A flashback filled trial and a stampede cap the finale in which McCain is killed by his own cattle. Gerald Mohr is the narrator. 

Director Albert C. Gannaway also made DANIEL BOONE, TRAILBLAZER which also featured Faron Young.

TV Special

 

THE PHIL SILVERS SPECIAL: THE SLOWEST GUN IN THE WEST-1960-A gas station attendant (George Chandler) relates to some tourists how the town they are in, Primrose, Arizona was the toughest town in the west. Billy the Kid Blake (Robert Wilke) Wild Bill Monk (John Diekes), Ike & Jake Dalton (Jack Elam & Karl Lukas), Doc Henley (Mauritz Hugo), Jud McCory (George Keymas), Dick Nolan (Bruce Cabot) and Black Bart (Ted DeCorsia) all hang out in town. Two concerned citizens (Parley Baer & Jack Albertson) try to find a sheriff tough enough to stand up against Nolan. Coming into town, bespectacled and dressed in black, is The Silver Dollar Kid (Phil Silvers). He picks a fight with Black Bart but when it comes to a showdown he faints. It turns out the Kid is "the yellow-est man in the west", a coward who would ruin any famous gunslinger's reputation if they killed him. Kathy (Jean Willes),a saloon worker helps him. Later they make him sheriff because no one wants to kill him. Nolan hires Sam Bass (Lee Van Cleef) to do the killing but the Kid convinces Bass to turn on Nolan and he kills the Clantons (he's killed too). Later they search for Chicken Finsterwall (Jack Benny), a worse coward than the Kid (he shot an 84 year old woman in the back). The kid makes Finsterwall his deputy but they have an argument and decide to have a shootout. Neither of them want to draw first. This is the big gag of the whole show. They stand for years waiting for the other one to draw! Byron Foulger is a hotel clerk. Marion Ross is the kid's almost wife and Kathy (Kathie) Brown is a show girl. This was written by Nat Hiken who also created the TV series “Bilko” in the mid-1950's that Phil Silvers starred in. The prolific Herschel Daugherty directed.

                             

Harryhausen Beast

 

THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS-1953-In the Arctic, Prof. Tom Nesbitt (Paul Hubschmid aka Paul Christian) & Colonel John Evans (Kenneth Tobey) await the arrival of a plane as part of "Operation Experiment", an atomic explosion. While checking for radiation Nesbitt and his pal Prof. Ritchie (Ross Elliot) run into a giant dinosaur which causes an avalanche. Nesbitt is rescued. 

Of course Evans and his doctor (Frank Ferguson) and a psychiatrist (King Donovan) don't believe him. After the monster sinks a ship and Nesbitt reads about it he hightails it to NYC to convince Prof. Elson (Cecil Kellaway) to organize an expedition. His assistant Lee (Paula Raymond) tries to be helpful but to no avail. Eventually Nesbitt convinces Elson the monster exists and asks Evans to help. He in turn asks his Coast Guard friend (Donald Woods) for assistance and finds out the monster wrecked a lighthouse in Maine. When Edson goes down in a diving bell he encounters the monster confirming its existence. Unfortunately he's killed and the monster attacks Manhattan. 

People flee in terror, buildings are wrecked, cars are crushed and in the movie's most famous scene a cop is lifted by his head and eaten. It's also discovered that the beast is carrying deadly germs. Nesbitt says shooting it with a radioactive isotope is the only way to kill it. He and an army sharpshooter (Lee Van Cleef) wind up on a roller coaster in a Coney Island like setting to destroy the beast. 

BEAST was one of the biggest money making films for 1953. Eugene Lourie does a fine job directing and there's lots of familiar characters throughout but of course what really makes this film is the excellent stop motion animated giant monster created by the one and only Ray Harryhausen. His painstaking effects are incredible! Based in part on a short story by Ray Bradbury.

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Van Cleef vs. Palance

GOD'S GUN-1976-Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) and his gang stop over at the town Juno after a bank robbery. One of Clayton's men kills a man and they take off. The sheriff (Richard Boone) wants to let them go but the local priest (Lee Van Cleef) goes after them. He brings the killer back to the jail but the gang breaks him out and shoots up the town and the priest is killed. A young boy named Johnny (Leif Garrett) who helped the priest around the church goes to Mexico to find the priest's brother Lewis (also Van Cleef). It seems the trauma of the killing leaves him mute but he finds Lewis and they go back to Juno. Along the way we get a flashback to the last time the two brothers met. Meanwhile Clayton's men molest the womenfolk until Johnny's saloon owner mother (Sybil Danning) reveals that Sam is her son's father. A flashback shows that as a Union soldier he raped her. Sam's pretty happy about this but before anything can happen Lewis returns in his brother's robes and some of the dumb outlaws think he's come back from the dead. Lewis gets his vengeance in a gun fight and Johnny gets his voice back. 

Great cast, terrible drawn out movie. Boone left before filming was completed so he only shows up sporadically with a dubbed voice that sounds like it's on helium. Palance usually makes anything he's in worth watching and his elation at finding out he has a son is the movie's highlight. 

This Italian-Israeli production (filmed in Israel) was directed by Gianfranco Parolini/Frank Kramer had early made THE RETURN OF SABATA with Van Cleef.

Also known as DIAMANTE LOBO.

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Sabata!

SABATA-1969-Sabata, a very cool gunfighter (played by the very cool Lee Van Cleef) interjects himself into the happening of a small town run by weird guy Stengal (Franco Ressel) who wants to buy up all the land because a railroad is going to be built. A redneck jerk named Banjo (William Berger) shoots people with with his banjo which is actually a rifle. Later Sabata is joined by fat drunk Carrincha (Pedro Sanchez) and his Indian friend Alley Cat (Aldo Canti) and along with Banjo lay siege to Stengal's ranch. 

This “spaghetti-western” was the first of a trilogy directed by Frank Kramer (real name: Gianfranco Parolini) and all starring Van Cleef.

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'50's Corman

IT CONQUERED THE WORLD-1956-AIP low budget S.F. classic from Roger Corman! When a government satellite disappears and then crash lands in the town of Beachwood California, a disgraced scientist Tom Anderson (Lee Van Cleef) claims that a visitor from Venus has landed and is preparing to take over the world. He tries to convince his friend Dr. Paul Nelson (Peter Graves) that this is a good thing ("That superior intelligence happens to be a personal friend of mine"). One way it hopes to accomplish a takeover is by sending out weird pulsating flying creatures that turn humans into emotionless zombies who herd the local populace into the desert for "protective custody" (we never see this however). Beverley Garland plays Claire, Anderson's hard nose wife who tries desperately to convince him of his folly despite being in love with him. Sally Fraser is Paul's cheery wife Joan who Paul is forced to shoot after she's taken over.

The script by AIP vet Lou Rusoff (DAY THE WORLD ENDED) provides a lot of great dialogue (Graves' speech at the climax is particularly memorable). The rubbery "inverted ice cream cone" monster/invader (created and operated by Paul Blaisdell) is usually a target of much ridicule and his demise (involving a blowtorch) is wacky but it hardly takes away from the enjoyment of the story which is really put over by the acting ans script. Also added is a small army patrol led by Dick Miller and his comical phony Hispanic sidekick (Jonathan Haze), Russ Bender as a general and usual screenwriter Charles B. Griffith as a scientist.

This is the only sci-fi/horror film Roger Corman made in 1956 but the next year he made the ultra cool NOT OF THIS EARTH! (which also features Garland)

One last note: Frank Zappa talks about IT CONQUERED THE WORLD at the beginning of the song "Cheepnis" on the album/CD "Roxy and Elsewhere".

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Armed Response

ARMED RESPONSE-1986-In this crazed sometimes funny Fred Olen Ray action drama, David Carradine plays Jim Roth, a veteran tortured by memories of Viet-Nam who now runs a bar. His war vet father Burt is played by Lee Van Cleef! A Yakusa gang leader named Tanaka (Mako) is after a stolen statue. He dispatches two underlings, Thorton (Ross Hagen acting weird as usual) and one of Jim's brothers (David Goss) to deliver a million dollars to buy the statue from the comic duo of Laurene Landon and Dick Miller. Thorton betrays his partner and a bloody shoot out ensues. He beats it out with the money and the statue. Later Tanaka has another brother (Brent Huff) tortured with some kind of acupuncture. After he dies Jim and Burt go for revenge. Fights, shootings and explosions abound. Some of the dialogue is terrible but Tanaka's main henchmen are played by Michael Berryman and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.

Also with Lois Hamilton, Burr DeBenning, Conan Lee and Bobbie Bresee (in one quick scene). This was one of Lee Van Cleef's last roles. He died in 1989 of a heart attack at age 63.

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Hard Riding

TAKE A HARD RIDE-1975-This is like a spagetti western mixed together with a blaxplotation movie and it kind of works.

Just before cattle boss Morgan (Dana Andrews) dies he entrusts a large sum of money to his hired hand Pike (Jim Brown) who promises to deliver it back home across the Mexican border. Bounty hunter Kiefer (Lee Van Cleef) gets wind of the journey and decides to go after the money. Along the way, Pike picks up a cigar smoking gambler (fellow ex-football player Fred Williamson), a widow (Catherine Spaak) and her mute Indian servant (Jim Kelly!). Later they also take in a little boy.

Kiefer teams up for a while with a preacher/gunfighter (Ronald Howard in his last movie role). Barry Sullivan is a local sheriff and Harry Carey Jr., Robert Donner and Charles MacGregor are also featured. There's a lot of gunfights but the short fight between Brown and Williamson is pretty bad.

Van Cleef (a really great screen villian) was a very busy actor in Europe in the mid '70's. Brown, Williamson and Kelly (and MacGregor) had all been in Gordon Park's THREE THE HARD WAY the year before. Williamson directed the first two of his many low budget movies in 1975, the seldom seen DEATH JOURNEY and the comedy western ADIOS AMIGO (co-starring Richard Pryor).

Director Antonio Margheriti (credited as Anthony Dawson) keeps things going at a good clip and even throws in some humor. Margheriti (who died in 1990) worked in every movie genre' including the cannibal gore of INVASION OF THE FLESHHUNTERS.

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