"Warlock" is a great classic western with an amazing cast. I am sad to see Dolores Michaels not get billing on the DVD, as she did on the original moive posters. While she retired early from acting, she not only was beautiful, but a very solid actress.
Do you not read what people send you!!!
This would have been a great movie if I could viewit. As my prior email, delete me from your mailing list as you sent to me in Australia ( a Region 4 country) two CDs I cannot see!!So you have my money and I have useless CDs.
Please leave me alone.
Peter King
Warlock ain't for me
One of the great, forgotten westerns, Edward Dmytryk's WARLOCK is the story of the little southwestern town of Warlock and its ongoing battle with a gang of law breaking desperados. The gang is led by Abe McQuown (Tom Drake,) a bad hombre who we can safely assume has ruled Warlock for a long, long time. The first scene in the film shows McQuown and gang `calling out' the town's deputy sheriff. If the opening scene is a little reminiscent of the closing scenes of `High Noon', the deputy sheriff's inglorious exit is not. He's humiliated out of town, and McQuown's control of the cowed town is once again secure and unquestioned.
One emergency town council meeting later the town agrees to spend the exorbitant amount of $400 a month to buy the services of gunslinger Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda) and his tag-along friend, gambling operator and dime magazine hero Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn), the `Black Rattlesnake of St. James.' Since Warlock is not an incorporated town, Blaisedell becomes town marshal `by acceptance.' In other words, he's not legally a law officer because the law doesn't recognize his authority. The town accepts him to keep the peace, which more or less means bringing the McQuown gang to heel. Blaisedell comes with a notorious reputation of his own, and the town is increasingly uncomfortable using anarchy and murder to destroy anarchy and murder. Of course, nobody wants to take over as deputy sheriff, either - all that job offers is $40 a month and a spot in the short line for a pine box. Fortunately, a former McQuown gang member, Johnny Gannon (Richard Widmark), agrees to take the job and help Warlock `grow up.'
The premise - terrorized community enlists outside aid to restore peace - is a popular one, brilliantly realized earlier by Kurosawa in `The Seven Samurai', which was later remade by Hollywood as `The Magnificent Seven' and `The Magnificent Seven Ride Again,' along with a slew of others. What sets WARLOCK apart is its focus on characters and shifting relationships. The relationship between Clay Blaisedell and Tom Morgan has attracted a lot of attention and ink over the years as one that's perhaps more passionate and deeper than it appears on the surface. Things happen and, as in real life, changing circumstances change people's relations to each other. Widmark's Johnny Gannon starts out as a member of McQuown's gang and changes to a defender of the community his former gang threatens. When Gannon becomes deputy sheriff Blaisedell's position as hired defender slowly changes, as does his relationship with his dear friend Tom Morgan. And so on. Loyalties change, friendships swell and some burst apart while new ones are slowly forged.
Although I'm a huge fan of his MURDER, MY SWEET, I think WARLOCK has to be considered Edward Dmytryk's masterpiece. Everything works in this complex and layered story of frontier justice. It works on the surface as a straight-ahead actioner, and it holds up to the scrutiny of those who like to look under the hood of things. Highest recommendation for this terrific film.
During his Twentieth Century Fox contract years, Gregory Peck looked to veteran director Henry King as something of a father figure and gave two of his best performances--in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) and The Gunfighter (1950)--for him. The Bravados (1958) isn't in that league, but it's a surprisingly tough film from the flabby CinemaScope years when the studio, director, and star all seemed to be floundering.
Peck plays Jim Douglass, a dark, haunted man who rides into a Southwest border town on the eve of a hanging. The bad men set for the drop (Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Lee Van Cleef, Henry Silva) are the same ones he's been pursuing for the rape and murder of his wife. Douglass isn't happy about leaving it to the law to carry out his vengeance--and so there's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gregory Peck - Joan Collins Director(s): Henry King DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Nineteen thirty-nine is often proposed as the movies' halcyon year, and three reasons why were directed by John Ford: Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk. In that exalted company Drums... would have to be accounted "merely superb"--even if it's the best film ever made about the American Revolution and, oh, only about eighth-best picture of its year.
Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert play newlyweds in New York's Mohawk Valley at the time of the Revolutionary War. That war is more a distant rumor than a direct concern of people with cabins to raise, crops to harvest, and firstborn on the way. When it comes to their valley, in the form of hitherto-peaceable Indians whipped up by a gaunt Tory with an eyepatch (John Carradine), life changes... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Henry Fonda - Edna May Oliver Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I don't know the real history of the gunfight at the OK Corral. I saw the recent movie TOMBSTONE with Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer and found it thoroughly enjoyable but I never considered it to be "historical". It was just hysterical.
HOUR OF THE GUN is another, older version of the story. It too is excellent and more believable as a historical drama but I have no conception that it is historical other than the recognition that Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Ike Clanton were real people; Tombstone, Arizona, Colorado, Mexico and the OK Corral are real places; and a gunfight really did take place at the corral. That doesn't matter to me because this too is a fine film and thoroughly entertaining. It has none of the comic element that TOMBSTONE had but it is a high quality western... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Garner - Jason Robards Director(s): John Sturges DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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