I Died a Thousand Times

Okay: So it wasn't as good as High Sierra and Palance and Winters are not Bogart and Lupino. But the idiot henchmen in this remake were Earl Holliman and Lee Marvin. Big Mac was played by Lon Chaney Jr. and Palance did a great job and was scarier than Bogie was. I grew up with Holliman and Marvin and the movie was also in color. I guess the best way to put it is this. If you demand the greatest actors and a different script for a remake this is not a movie for you. I (a huge Bogart fan) thought Palance played this role better than Bogie. Better because he was made for it.Put it like this. Who would you rather run into in a dark allay? Palance or Bogie? And since when is Shelly Winters a slouch? I really enjoyed this movie even though it didn't have a great director. I recommend it for Jack Palance fans and hope you enjoy it. Remember. Holliman and Marvin were extremely unintentionally funny in this movie. Gibbs

`Mad Dog' Earle is back, along with his sad-sack moll Marie, and that fickle clubfoot Velma. So are Babe and Red, Doc and Big Mac, and even the scenery-chewing mutt Pard. The only thing missing is a good reason for remaking Raoul Walsh's High Sierra 14 years later without rethinking a line or a frame, and doing so with talent noticeably a rung or two down the ladder from that in the original. (Instead of Walsh we get Stuart Heisler, for Humphrey Bogart we get Jack Palance, for Ida Lupino Shelley Winters, and so on down through the credits.) The only change is that, this time, instead of black-and-white, it's in Warnercolor; sadly, there are those who would count this an improvement.

I Died A Thousand Times may be unnecessary – and inferior – but at least it's not a travesty; the story still works on its own stagy terms. Earle (Palance), fresh out of the pen near Chicago, drives west to spearhead a big job masterminded by ailing kingpin Lon Chaney, Jr. – knocking over a post mountain resort. En route, he almost collides with a family of Oakies, when he's smitten with their granddaughter; the smiting holds even when he discovers she's lame. Arriving at the cabins where the rest of gang holes up, he finds amateurish hotheads at one another's throats as well as Winters, who throws herself at him (as does the pooch). Biding time until they get a call from their inside man at the hotel, Palance (to Winter's chagrin) offers to pay for an operation to cure the girl's deformity, a gesture that backfires. Then, the surgical strike against the resort turns into a bloodbath. On the lam, Palance moves higher into the cold Sierras....

It's an absorbing enough story, competently executed, that lacks the distinctiveness Walsh and his cast brought to it in 1941, the year Bogie, with this role and that of Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon, became a star. And one last, heretical note: Those mountains do look gorgeous in color.

Nobody could match Jack Palance as a fearsome heavy and here, playing a freshly sprung ex-con lead bank robber, his authority over a couple of "punks" - junior gang members - including later-to-be star heavy in his own right, Lee Marvin, is powerful and utterly convincing. Nice details early on such as when presumptuous Marvin attempts to grab at the plan for the caper and 6'4" Palance without a word or look just brushes him aside with a sweep of the arm promises much - but little ultimately is delivered. Enter "Pard" the mongrel mutt to the accompaniment then and later of cutesy music. The furry friendly creature, loyal to the last, refuses to budge from the screen to the very end - unfortunately.

This seemed symptomatic of the movie's uncertain tone - veering from tough as nails crime caper to family fare. Who was to blame? Was it Palance who possessed a face and physique that uniquely qualified him to be the ultimate brute always wanting to demonstrate a reassuring sensitive thoughtful side?

Pure mystery, you never know what's next in this film. In fact I'm going to keep silent about everything I know, because if you know anything about this film before you see it, it's just not as good.

Once you start the climax filled beginning of this film you just can't move away. It was co-written by the man who co-wrote Tod Browning's Freaks. I swear if you take the 70 + minutes to watch this film, your life will never be the same.

On a scale of one to ten, this film gets an EIGHT! A classic, a MUST see!

This is a remake of High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lapino. Not quite as good as the original, although it has obviously talented, and great actors. It makes you wonder why they would remake a classic like High Sierra with minimal changes just 14 years later. One interesting difference between the original and this movie... In High Sierra Willie Best plays a stereotypical comical black man (Algernon) in a servile role at the camp. The remake had a comical Hispanic (Chico) played by Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez. Both are incredibly insulting by current standards. It makes you wonder about the changes in the culture from 1941 to 1955.