Le Jardin du diable

If you have never seen Susan Hayward, Gary Cooper and Richard Widmark together, this will be a treat! First of all, the story works....

Next, the lines work and the performances are perfect: Susan Hayward's voice is the feminine equal of the stoic, knowing and forceful sound of Gary Cooper's voice: those voices are the trademarks of both of their film careers, and in this movie the interplay of their vocal tracks are very significant, definitive performances in both their careers....just listen to their lines and you will appreciate the fact that this movie is one of the high points of the dramatic art of two great performers...

You will also enjoy the visuals in this movie....Hayward is sexy, and backed by beautiful vistas. Cooper is strong and incorruptable, as are the stark and clear views that back his appearances....

Richard Widmark creates an excellent "gambling" persona...with a bit of backbone.

If you haven't seen it...DO!

If you like it, check out "The Big Sky" starring Kirk Douglas...it is black and white if I remember rightly...but well worth checking out!

This is a hugely underrated western as eccentric and individual as anything by Peckinpah or Boetticher. One of the early Cinemascope adventures from Fox, GARDEN OF EVIL has a superb cast at the top of their respective games, fantastic special effects, wonderful widescreen photography, and one of house composer Bernard Herrmann's very best scores (which is saying a mouthful). Best of all, it showcases an utterly unique screenplay full of strange, world-weary philosophy that sounds like Hemingway on acid. (Ironically, the chief writer, Fred Frieberger, is best known for producing the third and weakest season of the original STAR TREK -- notorious for its bad writing). At any rate, check this one out the first chance you get. Years of bad pan & scan showings on TV have destroyed its reputation -- but if you ask me, GARDEN OF EVIL is a gem waiting to be discovered, if not a cult waiting to be born!

While Cooper's career spanned ninety-two feature films, in which he appeared as everything from a masked Cossack to an Italian Renaissance explorer, a foreign legionnaire, a baseball great and countless sophisticated romantic adventurers, he is best remembered as a Western star...

'Garden of Evil' tells the story of three American adventurers (Cooper, Widmark, and Mitchell) who are stranded in a Mexican fishing village after the ship that was taking them to California is put out of commission...

All three were headed for the Californian gold rush... Instead, they are now in Puerto Miguel, approached by a woman in trouble, a Spanish-speaking American woman, Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward), who offers to pay them handsomely if they escort her through hazardous Indian territory to rescue her husband who is hurt and trapped in a gold mine up there in the hills...

The mention of gold makes them agree and, together with a Mexican macho man named Vicente (Victor Manuel Mendoza), begin their long, arduous journey...

Emotions become tense when Leah discovers Vicente marking trails and, later, finds herself fighting off the crude advances of one of the three soldiers of fortune...

When the group arrives at what the Indians call the Garden of Evil, a sacred grounds atop a high mountain where the mine is located, they found Fuller (Hugh Marlowe) still alive, but embittered and with a broken leg...

The group's troubles grow when they discover they are in danger, practically harassed by savage Indians...

"Garden of Evil" was Cooper first motion picture in CinemaScope... Along the way, he proves himself a powerful leader with a commanding performance...

Susan Hayward kept her thoughts and her affections pretty much of a secret, remaining skeptical about her motives... This was her second movie with Gary Cooper since her appearance in William A. Wellman's superb, high adventure 'Beau Geste,' and her third with director Hathaway...

Richard Widmark proceeds his ways of gambling with a neat line in cynical cracks; Cameron Mitchell fails in his unwelcome sexual advances; Hugh Marlowe uses a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with his angry feelings; Victor Manuel Mendoza gets intensely angry after being hit; and Rita Moreno delights the environment with her sweet voice...

Hathaway was one of the great Hollywood veterans still in harness, a versatile director whose Westerns have been as variable in quality as his other films... Filmed on location in Mexico, his 'Garden of Evil' is a beautiful spectacle to behold... The vistas are strikingly clear and vivid... The film is a well-done character piece, concentrating on the relationships of the characters as on the evil influence of gold...

I'm having a problem understanding all the reviewers who call this film 'under-rated'. In fact, for me at least, the reviews it received are, if anything, a little too high. I love Cooper and Widmark generally as actors but Cooper's performance is wooden and he seems to be just reading his lines in places while Widmark is a caricature of the gambler/adventurer and comes across as unreal. Hayward is HORRIBLY miscast as a tough, resourceful woman and we never do see the love and devotion that is supposed to be driving her to rescue her 'husband'...she sure doesn't otherwise act like a devoted wife. The writing, despite the normally skilled writers is quite lackluster and bland and there are far too many long shots which do nothing for the story development and are just window dressing and filler using the lovely landscape shots. The scene involving Cooper putting a whooping on our young bounty hunter is laughably pathetic as he falls and STAYS down in the fire over and over......cringingly terrible and I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I think this movie was justifiably overlooked by time....it's a second rate effort by otherwise skilled actors and it's clear they didn't 'gel' at all.

While Garden of Evil is not known to most film fans, it is a favorite of many. Everything about this film is great. The scenery, the music, the incredible cast. Unlike today's films it has lots of say about greed, heroism, love between men, loyalty, and betrayal. It also has more great lines than most movies - all

delivered brilliantly by Susan Hayward, Gary Cooper and Richard Widmark.Here are some as I remember them (not necessarily accurate). Susan to Coop: You need me. Because without me, Mister, you're lost. And when you're lost in this country, you're dead. Widmark to Coop: See that. Every night the sun goes down, and it always takes someone with it. Tonight it's me. Coop to himself: If the earth would made of gold, men would kill for a handful of dirt.

This should be on list of the ten best westerns, right up there with Shane and The Searchers