Los violentos

After a whirlwind romance and marriage with lovely Anne Baxter, ex-Confederate Charleton Heston returns home to his Texas ranch, where he has to contend with nasty carpetbaggers Forrest Tucker and Bruce Bennett, his embittered one-armed brother Tom Tryon, and his new wife's checkered past, which everyone is more than willing to use against him.

Three Violent People takes it's time, but it's never boring, using great acting and excellent photography, direction to tell an atmospheric tale that's pretty hard-hitting, even though it's not a traditional action-adventure film.

Heston, Baxter, and Gilbert Roland all play characters of great strength and courage, with the magnetic Roland in particular always incredible to watch and Tryon a brooding anti-hero. Why wasn't he a bigger star?

A few years later, songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, who plays one of Roland's sons, bought bought a variable-speed recorder, changed his stage-name to David Seville, and invented the pop-culture icons known as The Chipmunks!

After the American Civil War, Captain Colt Saunders (Charlton Heston) returns to Texas to his homeland Bar S Ranch, which has belonged to his family for generations. While in town, he has an incident and meets the former gal from St. Louis Lorna Hunter (Anne Baxter) and without knowing her past, he immediately proposes and gets married with her. When they arrive in Bar S, he meets his brother Beauregard 'Cinch' Saunders (Tom Tryon), the black-sheep of the family that lost one arm in his childhood and blames Colt for the accident. Colt has problems with the commissioner Harrison (Bruce Bennett) of the corrupt provisional government of Texas, and the situation gets worse when one of his men identify Lorna as "a flower of the Old South with whom he used to skip around with back in St. Louis". Colt has to deal with problems with the corrupt representative of the government that is collapsing, with his rancorous brother, with his pregnant wife and with his closest friend Innocencio Ortega (Gilbert Roland).

"Three Violent People" is a reasonable western that shows an after-war period and its consequences. The story has some good moments, mostly when Anne Baxter participates in the role of a witty lady with a past that experiences love for the first time in her life. Charlton Heston fits perfectly to the role of Captain Colt Saunders. However, the conclusion is too much corny and moralist. Although not being a great movie, "Three Violent People" is a good entertainment. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil) "Trindade Violenta" ("Violent Trinity")

This was the film Charlton Heston made immediately after The Ten Commandments and the last one on his original contract with Paramount Studios. For a co-star for Three Violent People, Heston got Anne Baxter who was Nefretiri in the DeMille epic.

Heston plays Colt Saunders, Confederate veteran who is trying to get back and re-start his ranch and keep it from the hands of carpetbaggers in from the north. He's got a one armed brother played by Tom Tryon who has issues to say the least. Tryon did not lose the arm in the Civil War, it was lost in an accident during childhood and Heston was the one who amputated it.

And if that's not enough Heston meets and marries Baxter without knowing anything about her. She's got a very shady past that comes out at a most inopportune time and drives a wedge between them.

There's a lot of the righteousness of Moses in Heston's Colt Saunders. Unlike in The Ten Commandments it's not a welcome virtue for Anne Baxter or for the audience.

Bruce Bennett and Forrest Tucker play a real pair of bottom feeding carpetbagger officials. And the always enjoyable Gilbert Roland plays the grand vaquero, foreman, of the Saunders spread.

Not a bad western, western and Heston fans will like it.

Florid and melodramatic but in a good way. Anne Baxter and Charlton Heston interact with each other much better here than in The Ten Commandments probably because Anne is much more suited to playing a well educated woman of ill repute in the old west than a princess of the Nile. She and Tom Tryon also have an excellent vibe to their scenes. The beginning is on the humorous side with Elaine Stritch showing up and looking very young but still in possession of that basso voice. Then when we get to the ranch there is a fest for old TV viewers with Baretta, Klinger & Sgt O'Rourke from F Troop all showing up. The film is nothing original but is well shot and enjoyably action packed, a good example of the genre and Anne is very good.

Highly watchable Western based on a story by Barney Slater with screenplay by expert James Edward Grant ; dealing with confrontation between family members . The picture gets action Western , shootouts , wonderful outdoors and turns out to be quite entertaining with amazing visual style . This interesting movie is set in post-Civil War ; it features a previous dance hall girl and ex-prostitute called Lorna (Anne Baxter) , masquerading as a lady , meets and impulsively marries Confederate ex-officer Colt Saunders (Charlton Heston) , returning to run the family ranch in Texas . Everyone there is enchanted with Lorna ; however , the carpetbag state commissioner (Bruce Bennett) and his hoodlum (Forrest Tucker) are set to grab all the big ranches , unless some ranchers led by Colt decide to battle . And one of the carpetbaggers knows Lorna's secret . Meanwhile , Colt's brother (Tom Tryon) wants to sell the ranch in order to get his share of inheritance . Later on , things go wrong when Colt finds out his wife was once a whore .

Enjoyable Western packs drama about family squabbles , thrills , shootouts , go riding and some moving action sequences . It's a medium budget film with good actors , technicians, production values and pleasing results . In this case family feuds don't make for a really thrilling film and contains some flaws and gaps . Produced immediately after Charlton Heston completed Ten Commandments (1956) and reunited him with co-star Anne Baxter. This was Heston's last film under his original Paramount contract ; he felt that Tom Tryon, who was cast as his brother, was not right for the part . However, because "The Ten Commandments" had not yet been released, Heston hadn't yet achieved the star clout necessary to demand cast changes . ¨Three violent people¨ belongs a trilogy directed by Rudolph Mate regarding to the ranch scenarios , adding ranchers confrontations , joining Western with melodrama , including the followings : ¨Branded¨ (1951) with Alan Ladd and ¨The violent men¨ with Glenn Ford and Edward G. Robinson . Good performances from Charlton Heston as obstinate war veteran and rich owner returning to his Texas ranch , Anne Baxter as his wife with a dark past and Tom Tryon as a crippled brother that lost one arm in his childhood blaming to Heston . Large plethora of secondaries , such as Gilbert Roland , Bruce Bennett , Peter Hansen , Barton MacLane , Elaine Stritch and some of them uncredited as Robert Blake and Jamie Farr . Colorful and glimmer cinematography by Loyal Griggs in Vistavision , Hi-Fi . Evocative as well as atmospheric musical score by Walter Scharf .

The motion picture was directed in sure visual eye by Rudolph Mate . Polish-born (Cracovia) and passed away Beverly Hills (1964) Mate was an assistant cameraman for Alexander Korda and later worked throughout Europe with noted cameraman Karl Freund , director Carl Theodor Dreyer and Erich Pommer . Dreyer was so impressed with his work that they hired him as cinematographer on The Passion of Joan of Arc . Mate is considered to be one of the best cameramen of cinema story . Mate was soon working on some of Europe's most prestigious films, cementing his reputation as one of the continent's premier cinematographers. Hollywood came calling in 1935, and Mate shot films there for the next 12 years before turning to directing in 1947 . Unfortunately, while many of his directorial efforts were visually impressive ,especially his sci-fi ¨When the worlds collide¨ (1951) , his labour as cameraman was excellent . He realized a variety films of all kind of genres as Adventures : ¨The Black Shield of Falworth¨ , ¨Seven Seas to Calais¨ , Western about themes of card players on riverboat as ¨The Mississipi gambler¨(1963) and ¨The rawhide years¨(1956) and about conflicts between Indians and cavalry as ¨In the siege at Red River¨(1954) and Noir films : ¨Union Station¨ , ¨Second chance¨ . He also directed Epic films as ¨The Barbarians¨ and ¨The 300 Spartans¨ . The films themselves were for the most part undistinguished, with his best work probably being the film-noir classic ¨DOA¨ (1950). ¨Three Violent people¨ rating : Passable and acceptable , 6 . Well worth watching .