Der eiserne Kragen

"Neither one of you can make it alone.... maybe together you might make one good man... pull you apart ...it's like an oyster..... You're a couple of shells sharing one set of guts"

Things turn bad for a couple of drifting cowboys when they go into town to cash their pay.....real,real bad.

Excellent hard boiled Noir tale of the drifting cowboy hard luck trail with a very sinister edge. Some great massive landscapes position the claustrophobic anxiety and ultimate insignificance and futility of this nasty human story.

Audie gives one of his strongest performances and delivers some excellent patois dialogue full of cowboy logic and figuring. Chas Drake is great as the weak willed problem gambling pard.

Harold J stone is frightening and relentless as gang boss LaSalle and Skip Homier, is very disturbing as one of the stupid sadist henchman.

Strother Martin gives an excellent performance as pathetic town drunk Charlie Reeder and the scenes with his hard talking children are disturbingly frank.

Kathleen Crowley proves to be an excellent casting choice as pathetic ruined Estelle.

This is my favorite Audie Murphy western and I think one of his best films.

Partners Audie Murphy and Charles Drake wind up in a jailbreak with Harold Stone and his gang. When they find out that Drake has $12,000 hidden with his girl, Kathleen Crowley, they send Murphy to fetch it. But she wants the money, too.

I have some issues with how the situation is set up, but once it starts moving, it's pretty good: people doing what they're doing, and story being the conflict that occurs when their paths intersect and no one will walk away. It's why director R. G. Springsteen was still directing this western, the last one released under the Universal-International banner: a good eye, story sense, and ability to get good performances out of actors, even when the lines are overblown. Producer Gordon Kay may have ordered this shot in black & white to save some money, but cameraman Ellis Carter shoots the Alabama Hills as dry and dusty.

Showdown is directed by R.G. Springsteen and written by Bronson Howitzer. It stars Audie Murphy, Kathleen Crowley, Charles Drake, Harold J. Stone, Skip Homeier, L. Q. Jones and Strother Martin. Music is by Hans J. Salter and cinematography by Ellis W. Carter.

Plot has Murphy as Chris Foster who has to get 12,000 dollars in stolen bonds from the ex-girlfriend of his partner, Bert Pickett (Drake), or the gang holding him hostage will kill him.

Filmed in black and white, something which didn't sit well with Murphy, this turns out to be a well photographed (the sumptuous back drop of the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine) low budget Oater of interesting ideas. The outdoor prison used here - criminals chained by neck collars to a pole in the center of town - is refreshingly original and a superb plot device that thrusts good guys (Chris and Bert) and bad guys together as a unit, for a while at least that is...

Trouble is, is that this is only a small section of the story which occurs at the pic's beginning. We get some exciting action and character laying foundations for the inevitable break out, and then it moves away from the jail scenario. The premise is so good one kind of hankers for much longer of this story angle, maybe even for the story to have been different and made this the bulk of the movie as a character piece - with the break out and subsequent held to ransom aspect in the last third. But I digress whilst forgetting this is a 1960s low budget job.

Narrative contains themes of addiction, tortured love and blind loyalty, which is credit to the writing of the wonderfully named Bronson Howitzer (really Ric Hardman!). However, the romantic thread bogs things down since it comes off as nonsense, with Crowley - as lovely as she looks - utterly unbelievable in the Western setting. Worse still is the head villain played by Stone, who not only makes preposterous decisions, he's also just not very villainous into the bargain. Still, Murphy is on good enough form and he's backed up by some notable genre performers.

A mixture of the usual good and bad for a Murphy 1960s Oater, but enough here to make it a comfortable recommendation to fans of star and genre. 6.5/10

Murph Balked at the Non-Color Decision and Loudly Voiced it and Threatened to Walk but was Talked Out of it by His Agent.

This is one of the More Glum of Audie Murphy Westerns.

He was Aging and it Shows His 1963 Face and Frame Starting to Sprawl, just a Little.

But the War-Hero, Now a Veteran Screen Presence, still Manages to Impose and Intimidate Bad-Guys, and Lure Beautiful Women.

With His Unwavering Moral Compass and Sweet Looks.

Here, He Outwits a Snarling Psycho, Harold J. Stone, and His Pack of Dogs.

Punches His way out of Outnumbered Fisticuffs, and Takes to the Iron to Finish Off the Outlaws.

He is Totally Loyal to Charles Drake, a real Snake, as He Sides with His "Good Friend" until the End.

Kathleen Crowley's Beautiful Face is Caked with Make-Up and Mascara, False Eye-Lashes, and an Early Sixties Hair-Do. What were They Thinking?

The Movie has a Rich Supporting Cast.

The Film Features some Off-Beat Inclusions, like the "Iron May-Pole", and some Amped Violence that was Creeping its Way into Movies in the New Decade.

Overall, it is Underrated and Another Audie Murphy Western that is Put-Down and Ignored by Critics. But it's a Good One.

Ask those that Count, the Legions of Murph's Fans that are still Around Today.

Showdown finds Audie Murphy and Charles Drake who did a few films with Murphy as a pair of cowboy drifters coming to the town of Adonde to sell of the horse herd they've captured and for a little R&R. Drake gets in a poker game, gets drunk and stupid, and both wind up chained to a town may pole like post in the middle of the town main street. Also chained there is the town drunk Strother Martin and Harold J. Stone and his outlaw gang. The town has no jail and the pole is like the stocks in the village square in the colonial times.

Adonde wishes that they did invest in a jail after Stone breaks out taking Murphy and Drake with him and some money that the light fingered Drake lifted from the Express office. $12,000.00 in negotiable bonds. But he hides them and then it becomes a chess game between Murphy and Drake and Stone.

I won't go on with the plot, but it soon becomes apparent that the man Murphy's been riding with has a lot less character than he gave him credit for. In fact Drake's character is not unlike the one he played in the classic James Stewart western Winchester 73. Furthermore the girl he's been seeing Kathleen Crowley is not unlike Shelley Winters from that same film.

In fact this could have been a classic had Universal invested a little more money in script and direction. But at that time Audie Murphy's films were normally at the bottom of double bills in that last decade of them and Murphy was just serving out his contract.

Still the film has some grit to it with Murphy playing the only one in the film with any real character.