Les forbans

A gang intent on stealing the gold mine owned by Jeff Chandler and John McIntire come to Nome during the Alaskan gold rush.

It's the fifth screen version of Reach Beach's sturdy novel, and Universal put its best foot forward in casting from among their stock company. Anne Baxter comes close to busting out of her decolletage as Cherry Malotte, Rory Calhoun gives a fine performance as the smooth Alex McNamara, and Ray Danton, Barbara Britton, Wallace Ford, Carl Benton Reid, Raymond Walburn (in his last big screen performance) and Ruth Donnelly show up. But Jesse Hibbs direction is adequate, and the stunt men doubling for Chandler and Calhoun don't actually try to kill each other, as William Farnum and Tom Santschi did in the 1914 version. It's quite enjoyable, but as with many a 1950s version of a durable property, it seems a bit rote, less connected to the characters Beach had met when he fell to gold fever in Alaska, and more to roles that had become a bit stereotyped over the decades. Still, it's always fun to see people fall into the thick, gluey mud.

The first scene gave me great hopes. The miner's dirty clothes, the looks of the town and the muddy street. Then my hopes were dashed when the lady showed up. This was Nome, Alaska in 1899 and she show up wearing a dress, hat and feathers that would be more appropriate at a San Francisco opera. During the rest of the movie, all the major characters wore clothes that were always clean, pressed and way too fancy for the time and place. I've never understood why directors would allow a movie to be made with such obvious flaws. Makes no sense. The movie had a pretty good plot but for me, the 1956 style acting, script and special effects could have been done so much better with a little more thought.

IMDB and wiki says this is less than an hour and a half. The version I saw was nearly two hours. The main title also had a title in Spanish translating into The Corruption of Alaska. Could this be a Spanish version? There's also a good amount of time between the ending that wiki describes and the ending in this film. I wonder if there is added footage?

Another odd thing -- it appears to be based in the late 1800's but there's a scene early on where a bar tender presses an electrical button to alert someone that a person has come into the saloon/gambling joint.

Overall, this is a B western in my book. Directed like a TV movie.

In the small western town of Nome, "spoiling" is rife – that is the practice of driving others off their land and jumping onto others' claims as if they were your own. Without law and order Dextry and his partner Roy Glennister risk losing their mine to a group of characters out to jump their claim. The law is controlled by Alexander McNamara who stands to greatly benefit from getting control of the mines. As if the tension between Glennister and McNamara isn't tight enough as a result of this, McNamara also has eyes for Glennister's longtime girlfriend, hostess Cherry Malotte.

Having seen several westerns from the 1950's recently, I came to this with the impression that it would be just yet another forgettable genre film and, in a way, I suppose it was. However this is not to say that it is an average film because it is actually a pretty enjoyable genre picture. The plot mixes gun fights with crime with semi-love triangles and an air of comedy. It doesn't all sit well together but it does enough to provide an entertaining 90 minutes in the way that films of this nature used to try and do for their audiences. I personally didn't buy the love conflict aspect of it and would have liked that toned down a little bit in favour of more of the claim-jumping aspect but it all did enough to distract me on a quiet evening in.

The cast are solid enough but none of them particularly stuck in my mind. Baxter is colourful and does bring life to the film but the two male leads didn't impress me at all. Calhoun is just a mould of a leading man – nice smile, big chest, big jaw but nothing specific or special about him. Meanwhile Chandler just seems too old and grey for the character he is asked to play and I kept feeling like I was losing sight of him among the extras. Support from McIntire, Danton and others is OK but mostly the cast are just doing what the genre requires and no more.

Overall this is an enjoyable genre picture and it will provide entertainment for fans. The casual viewer will note the weaknesses that are inherent in this type of film but to be fair to it, it only does what you expect and for me it did it well enough to be a distracting piece of fun when I was in the mood for a solid bawdry western and nothing more.

Rex Beaches 1906 novel had been done 2 times as a silent film, twice as a sound film prior to this outing. So the plot had been used and reused with slight differences. This one pretty much follows the same plot.

The 1942 version with Marlenea Deitrich, and John Wayne is better that this one for star power. The 1930 version starring Gary Cooper was once in a late show tv package in the 1960's but is now considered a lost film. The silents are impossible for most modern viewers to watch. That brings us to 1955.

Rory Calhoun is a fairly big name actor, while Jeff Chandler is most comfortable in formats other than westerns which even though this is Alaska, it plays mostly as a Western. Anne Baxter is okay here. In fact the whole cast is okay. That's the problem, as this film really adds nothing to the previous versions and the stars are not as good as the John Wayne / Randolph Scott version.

This version is currently on Grit. Would love it if the channel could run the Scott/Wayne/Dietrich version with this as a double feature. If they could run the Cooper version too, it would make an interesting triple. Especially with all those bulb head commercials the channel runs. If they could remake it today and make it more of an "R" rated film, it could actually sell tickets. With a good cast, it could be re-made well and use some modern effects and some :mature loving plot to update it.