Le trésor des sept collines

While on hiatus from their Warner Brothers series, Clint Walker from Cheyenne and Roger Moore from Maverick, the studio got them for this rather grim western Gold Of The Seven Saints.

Moore while buying a pack horse in town pays with a gold nugget that interests bandit Gene Evans. He comes after Moore and his partner Clint Walker with his gang. But Moore and Walker get help from an old running buddy of Walker's former bandit chief Robert Middleton and doctor/gunfighter Chill Wills.

Neither Walker or Moore are any kind of cowboy heroes. The 50s marked the adult western and these adults are no better than they ought to be. Even Clint Walker whom Warner Brothers had hopes of turning into a new generation's Gary Cooper.

Not much budget was spent on Gold Of The Seven Saints. But the players really deliver on this one.

Openly do I admit my ignorance about Director Gordon Douglas' career. Even worse, I prejudged that a person with such common names would find it hard to have his talent recognized, but since then I have found in Wikepedia that Douglas directed a minor sci-fi master work like THEM!, and a handful of other above average flicks.

Clint Walker and R Moore make an interesting duo. Playing a man older and more aware of multafrious frontier perils, Walker wisely reserves judgement, whereas Moore acts as his fancy propels him, often underestimating the enemy while talking like Simon Templar (Moore was then in the early stages of the famous British TV series, THE SAINT, strangely appropriate that he should be carrying gold... of THE SEVEN SAINTS!)

Good photography,

'Gold of the Seven Saints' reminded me quite a bit of 1948's 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre', but with more humour.

When horse thief Shaun Garrett (Roger Moore) is caught in the act stealing a horse and forced to pay for the horse, he pays with gold. Now, him and his partner Jim Rainbolt (Clint Walker) are being followed by a group of bandits, who demand half their gold.

With the weight of the gold slowing them down, Jim and Shaun decide to bury the gold. After a gunfight with the bandits, Doc Wilson Gate (Chill Wills) shows up, and attends to Shaun's wound, having been shot. He, too, would like a share of the gold, but unlike the bandits he helps Jim and Shaun.

They take refuge at the home of Jim's old friend, Amos Gondora (Robert Middleton), where they meet the lovely maiden Tita (Letícia Román), who allows for many humerous moments as both men vie for her attention.

However, it soon becomes clear Amos Gondora is also after the gold, and he pursues Jim and Shaun when they leave the following day. There's action and adventure all the way as Jim and Shaun is being pursuit be several people wanting the gold. And when it comes to gold, no 'good intentions' are good.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Clint Walker is a delicious hunk of a man and fortunately the film finds excuses to show off his muscular, hairy physique. I mean, this hunk stood almost 2m (6 foot 6 inches) tall with a 120cm (32 inch) chest!

Roger Moore was fabulous as Shaun, who served mostly as comic relief. I enjoyed the chemistry between Shaun and Jim as they stood together in the face of danger. I enjoyed this movie.

Gold of the Seven Saints is directed by Gordon Douglas and adapted to screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Leonard Freeman from Steve Frazee's novel. It stars Clint Walker, Roger Moore, Robert Middleton, Chill Wills and Leticia Roman. Filmed in Warnerscope, cinematography is by Joseph F. Biroc and the music is scored by Howard Jackson.

Jim Rainbolt (Walker) and Shaun Garrett (Moore) strike it rich and quickly find themselves pursued across the sun scorched lands by money hungry baddies...

OK! It's what can be termed as a poor man's Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It also has Roger Moore in a Western movie trying to do an Irish accent! And! It's also in black and white, which when you see how beautifully crisp Biroc's photography is - as the Utah landscapes scorch the eyes - seems such a waste of an opportunity. Yet there's a lot of fun here, some perky scripting and deftly staged action, even some genuine moments of suspense. While Chill Wills pops in for a dandy performance to please the Western faithful.

Leticia Roman is a token lady offering, the resolution is a bit of a damp squib, but Walker, Wills and Moore are darn fine company to be in, which in this case is enough to make time spent with this movie time well spent. 6.5/10

Clint Walker probably does not jump to anyone's mind anymore when thinking about B-Western stars, but he is worth remembering. Although a mammoth of a man, his characters tend to be genial and soft-spoken - imagine an appealing combination of Paul Bunyan and Henry Fonda. Too bad he didn't make more Westerns than he did.

In "Gold of the Seven Saints", Walker and his partner Roger Moore are on the run, trying to escape basically everyone else, because the partners are carrying a large amount of gold that everyone wants a piece of. Walker never loses his cool when things go wrong, as they often do here. In a beautiful, and perhaps deliberate, contrast to the potential explosive violence contained in his titanic frame, Walker reacts to the wrong turns fate throws at him with a laconic acceptance that is pleasingly understated. His innately kindly and gentle personality always shines through. A very likable hero indeed.

I am not sure Roger Moore was the best pick for this Western. His accent keeps changing, especially early in the film, until at some point he is definitively identified as Irish. And he definitely comes in a distant second in the battle of the chests: Walker's massive upper body dominates the screen, and Moore's hairless average looking torso contrasts poorly.

The dialogue mostly avoids becoming to clichéd, and the action avoids unnecessary subplots, focusing relentlessly on Walker and Moore's striving to attain apparently unattainable safety and peace of mind. The camera-work is in spectacular black and white, with almost the whole movie shot outdoors in the desert, where majestic mesas and scrub brush dominate the landscape.

One interesting moment occurs when Chill Wills, having just induced the delivery of a baby by blowing snuff up the mother's nose, says something along the lines of "it is amazing what wonderful things you can do with snuff!" Fans of Terry Gilliam will recognize an eerie similarity between this line and the one Gilliam's Baron Munchaussen delivers, "I have found that a modicum of snuff can be most efficacious!"

Overall, this is a fine and satisfying way to spend an hour and a half in the West.