Stagecoach to Dancers' Rock

This chintzy, cheesy B western looks like it was cranked out in just a few days, something to be expected from a low-rent outfit like PRC or Lippert, or even Monogram, but not from a major studio like Universal, where this came from. Then again, Universal's fortunes in the early 1960s were on their way down, so maybe this boring little oater wasn't as atypical as one might think. Anyway, it's a limp story of passengers ejected from a stagecoach when the crew suspects that one or more of them might have contracted smallpox. There's no tension (or sense or logic) in Kenneth Darling's script, there's no pacing (or imagination or much of anything) in Earl Bellamy's direction, and the actors either overact outrageously or underplay to the point of catatonia. Cheap looking, predictable and not worth a first look, let alone a second. There are better ways to waste your time.

Six travelers are on a stagecoach. When the driver discovers one of them has smallpox, he abandons all of them in the middle of the desert.

Well, I didn't see that coming, nor, since I am at home during Coronavirus lockdown as I write this, is this a movie I can write about with my usual arch snarkiness. It's Earl Bellamy directing one of his 18 theatrical movies amidst an estimated 1600 hours of TV time. As you might expect, it's efficiently directed, but the wide vistas of the California desert are reduced to an unsatisfying black-and-white flatness, more suited to a television screen.

Also, despite some real talent among the actors, including Warren Stevens and Martin Landau, are there any characters for them to sink their teeth into. It's just half a dozen strangers in the middle of a desert, trying to walk their way out, while worrying about Apaches. Not very interesting.

This is a truly terrible film. One of Universal's cheap westerns, it suffers from a candidate for Worst Script Ever Written and some fairly atrocious acting. The basic storyline is this - five travellers are marooned in the Arizona desert when their stagecoach crew suspects them of carrying smallpox. Will they make it to Dancers' Rock, and safety?

An excruciatingly dire ballad accompanies the action. (Surely this woeful ditty was the inspiration for the theme tune of "Gilligan's Island"?) There is an even worse song at the end, the wince-inducing "Confucius Say".

"The game was just too big for him," says one character of another, but he might equally have been talking about script-writer Keneth Darling. For sheer clumsiness, this dialogue is in a class of its own. When Halloran expresses a dislike of native Americans, Anne retorts, "Surely this is not the sentiment of a dedicated indian agent? The Apache nation deserves much more from you, sir." Halloran actually speaks the word "Bah!" - something only ever seen in children's comics before this. The entire script is couched in ugly 'formal' English, as if Darling were striving after polished elegance, with Halloran in particular having to mouth sentences that no-one would dream of uttering in a real conversation. Baddies actually say corny things like "Make your move at Apache Pass". After Loi Yan has been ill for some time, instead of saying "she's still sick," Anne comes out with, "She can't seem to throw off this lethargy." The term 'full-blooded' crops up with annoying regularity. We have a full-blooded gal, Loi Yan is full-blooded Chinese and there are full-blooded Apaches, too.

If Darling is awful at writing dialogue, he is far, far worse at plotting. Check out the sandstorm which comes and goes without ruffling the desert or darkening the sky, and the constantly-permutating love interest which is neither prepared nor resolved. Loi Yan seems to be heading for an affair with Major Southern but ends up with Jess, and Anne is everybody's at some point in the story. The arrival of the second stagecoach, and the plot consequences which flow from it, are so diabolically badly done that they are actually funny.

The screenplay calls for the young Martin Landau (playing Dade Colman the gambler) to overact appallingly, and Landau obliges. He hams up the walk through the sandstorm to the point where it becomes embarrassing, but worse is to come. He goes completely over the top during Colman's brief taste of power. Landau is a respected actor today, but he is lucky that his career survived this performance.

It would be tedious to list all the examples of lousy judgment contained in the film, so two examples are selected to convey the flavour. First, the stagecoach crewmen banter as they work the reins, but the background shows clearly that the stagecoach isn't actually moving. Second, Jess and Loi Yan ride off doubled-up on one horse, leading several other horses by their reins. Why don't they ride a horse each?

Far and away, the single most memorable aspect about STAGECOACH TO DANCERS' ROCK is its B&W cinematography by Ed Fitzgerald, framing very fittingly a stagecoach trip in Arizona desert conditions.

Inside the stagecoah, we get to learn about the characters: Dollard, Dr Thompson, Major Southern, Judy Dan (the Chinese girl with smallpox that is sending shivers down the spines of just about everyone) and, of course, poetry-reciting, philosophical and complete nutter Dade Coleman, consumately portrayed by Martin Landau.

There are some sequences difficult to believe, notably Coleman finding a water canteen and no one else seeing him drink it. The smallpox sores on Dan's face are believable but overdone, and Dan looks genuinely uneasy about having to display such skin distortions.

Coleman's rape and subsequent murder of Dr Thompson come as a shock, and add nothing to the movie in terms of character, so ultimately the screenplay by Kenneth Darling struck me as needlessly brutal, unfeeling, and devoid of moral values. On the other hand, it impressed me that this so amoral flick should have been done in 1962, when the multifarious production code still hung over the US movie industry.

Rather disappointing despite the superb cinematography, good acting. I doubt I will rewatch it. 6/10.

In contrast to what was said in the four other reviews, I found this film quite entertaining. Sure, the cast, apart from Martin Landau, was low key, but the acting was reasonable.

I was surprised at some of the violence, but then STDR was made in the early 60s, when more grittiness was being introduced into Westerns.

But I agree with others about the terrible ballads.