They Ran for Their Lives

1967's "They Ran for Their Lives" was the last feature film for actor John Payne (and the only one he directed). Also bowing out was former Disney child actress Luana Patten ("Song of the South"), while the quartet of villains- John Carradine, Scott Brady, Jim Davis, and Anthony Eisley- would continue to see a good deal of each other since they shared the same agent and often worked with the poverty row likes of Al Adamson. This was a low budget affair, hence the small cast, set on location in southern Nevada, where Patten's father suffers a fatal heart attack during a scuffle with Davis and Eisley, who are searching for some oil documents forged by Carradine, who was the old man's partner. The daughter eludes the empty-handed thieves and runs into the desert, where she comes upon the campsite of geologist John Payne, with his faithful German shepherd Bravo. The remainder of the film is an extended chase along the Colorado River as the bad guys, joined by Brady, pursue their quarry while Carradine awaits their return at a local watering hole. Perhaps it was the opportunity to direct that led Payne to do this last movie (his previous film was in 1957), but he does a serviceable job here, especially with the pacing; and the brief romantic overtures from the pretty young Patten to the older (but still virile, as he always was) Payne will warm the hearts of older male viewers. Ever since his starring turn in the Western series THE RESTLESS GUN, the remainder of Payne's acting career focused on the small screen, and his very last performance was in a 1975 COLUMBO, "Forgotten Lady," as an actor in love with longtime leading lady Janet Leigh (understandably, I should think). I taped "They Ran for Their Lives" on Cinemax in 1991; apparently it has never received any kind of home video release. One further note of trivia: the title song that plays over the opening credits and twice more thereafter is performed by the great garage band sound of The Knickerbockers, whose lone top-forty hit was "Lies" in 1966.

Geologist John Payne gets involved with a attempt to get Luana Patten to tell the bad guys where the papers are.

MacGuffin aside, this cheaply made and produced movie looks like it was made to fill up a slot in the release schedule. While everyone does their best, it's mostly an excuse to film some pretty landscape to stock music.

John Payne was a decent, hard-working actor, always on the lookout to do something interesting with his career -- he was the first person to option a James Bond property -- but I've never seen him in a performance which I don't think any of a dozen other actors could have played just as well. Perhaps he should have gone into production. Had this movie been more of a success -- he was credited as director for this, although long-time Western director Oliver Drake did at least some of the work -- he might have headed off in that direction. Who knows?

The most annoying thing about this movie is the sound. Between Raoul Kraushaar's score, indistinguishable from the one he did for "Wanted: Dead or Alive" (or just about any other TV show he ever scored) and the "skidding-gravel" sound effect--the SAME "skidding-gravel" sound effect, endlessly repeated, no mater how much gravel there is to skid or how steep the incline down which it will be skidding--after a while, you just don't care what happens to any of the characters, good or bad. Other than that, it's not a bad suspense film. You hope that Payne and Patten will beat the bad guys, but it's fairly entertaining trying to figure out how.