L'homme aux colts d'or

Warlock is a small town suffering from visits by a gang of thugs led by Abe McQuown. The honest townsfolk meet and decide to hire infamous gunslinger Clay Blaisedell to act as a Marshal. Blaisdell, aided by his trusty companion Tom Morgan, proceeds to clean up the town and promptly takes control of the gambling and dance parlour. But things are rarely straight forward in a town of this type, one of the thugs (Johnny Gannon) decides to reform himself and takes on the role of legal sheriff. Things are further complicated when a woman arrives in town proclaiming that Blaisedell and Morgan killed the love of her life! This coupled with the fact that McQuown and his thugs are plotting destructive revenge, means that Warlock and it's array of complex characters are heading for judgement day - one way or another.

The basic plot sounds like nothing out of the ordinary, the tough gunslinger with a reputation hired to clean up a town has been done a fair few times, with varying degrees of success. What lifts this Edward Dmytryk directed (and produced) Western above other films of its ilk is that it goes deeper than most of those other genre pieces. Blaisedell may be a fearsome gunslinger but we are at a time when a new breed of faster and more thuggish cowboys exist, and so his very being is crucial to the number of events that transpire in Warlock. Here all central characters are multi-layered, there is a plenty going on that begs the utmost attention, where tragedy hangs heavy with its looming presence, and Dmytryk threads all the story strands together with thoughtfully potent results.

Adapted by Robert Alan Aurthur from Oakley Hall's novel, Warlock boasts three excellent male lead performances and a firing on all cylinders supporting cast. Henry Fonda (Blaisedell), Richard Widmark (Gannon) and Anthony Quinn (Tom Morgan) are superb, while Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels, Tom Drake, DeForest Kelly, Frank Gorshin (sadly uncredited) and Wallace Ford come up trumps with excellent shows for totally important characters. The only gripe I can come up with is that I would have liked a bit more use of the Utah location courtesy of Joseph MacDonald's Cinemascope Technicolor, but since this story is primarily set within the confines of Warlock the town, one can be and is a touch forgiving.

During the last few years I have spent a lot of time revisiting the Western genre, and I have been rewarded with a ream of excellent adult pieces by the likes of Anthony Mann, Henry King and Budd Boetticher. Few of them are as undervalued, and maybe as forgotten, as this first class effort from all involved, it's a must see for any serious Western fan. 9/10

Warlock is a little mining town in the Wild West. Local heavies from San Pablo are terrorising the citizens of Warlock, and the movie starts with the sheriff being run out of town. The citizens' committee decides to hire the notorious Clay Blaisdell to reimpose order.

Ethical positions are relative in the strange little world of Warlock. The citizens are willing to give Blaisdell free rein when it comes to cleaning up the town, even though his methods are famously ruthless, and his 'package' includes installing himself and his partner Tom Morgan in the saloon with their travelling casino. Blaisdell intends to earn a rake-off as the faro dealer. He will also collect $400 per month as the 'marshall', even though Warlock has no town charter and does not qualify for a marshall.

Blaisdell is himself a man of deep moral equivocation. Henry Fonda plays him as an emotionless killer who paradoxically forms deep personal attachments - first to Morgan, then later to Jessie Marlow (Dolores Michaels). He crusades to rid western towns of their bad guys, but does so on a strictly commercial basis. Blaisdell knows that the citizens' hero-worship will turn in time to resentment, and he and Morgan will have to move on to the next beleaguered town.

Morgan, too, is a man of profound contradictions. The cynical casino owner has little regard for the human race, but adores Blaisdell, "the only person ... who looked at me and didn't see a cripple." Morgan is Blaisdell's partner in the law-and-order campaign, and yet there is a strong suggestion that Lily is a whore and Morgan her pimp. The relationship between Blaisdell and Morgan has a definite homoerotic tinge, and when Blaisdell takes up with Jessie, Morgan behaves like a jealous lover. Eventually, he even gives up the will to live.

"Warlock" is an idiosyncratic film with its own look, its own terminology and a curious plot. The quaint high street with its rutted red clay is quite unlike standard western towns. When the characters talk of 'road agents', they mean stagecoach hijackers. 'Backshooters' are men who shoot others in the back. In the mean moral climate of Warlock, backshooters are everywhere. McEwan never sets up a confrontation without putting his backshooters in place, and Blaisdell's answer to the San Pablo boys is to cover their backshooters with backshooters of his own.

Richard Widmark plays Johnny Gannon, the San Pablo man who throws his lot in with the people of Warlock. Johnny is the measure of the town's growing maturity. If the people are prepared to back Johnny against the bad men, there will be no need for hired guns such as Blaisdell. The judge warns Johnny that his status as the town's totem will single him out for trouble - "You're a target, a symbol, and they must come after you." And so it transpires.

Changes of clothing signify changes of heart. Once Johnny decides to embrace the law, he doffs his denim jacket and starts wearing fancy duds. When Clay transfers his allegiance from Morgan to Jessie, he discards the silk waistcoats which are Morgan's 'uniform'.

"Star Trek" fans will spot DeForest Kelly ("Bones") in the role of Curly, the sarcastic joker of the San Pablo gang. We quickly form the view that Curly is not as brutal as the others, and this is borne out when the shooting starts in earnest.

The film has two climaxes. First, Johnny has to face down McEwan and his men, and then there has to be a reckoning with Blaisdell. This eccentric film manages to contrive an unexpected ending.

In a strong cast, Fonda and Quinn stand out as the ill-matched friends - the cold killer and the emotional gambler.

Warlock (1959)

Director Edward Dmytryk is one of those dependable Golden Age mainstays who is pulling off tightly made movies even this late in the game. After many archetypal movies, often just short of greatness, he is still putting on a good game with first rate camera-work (Joe MacDonald) and top shelf actors (Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, and Richard Widmark, all in major roles). And so this is actually a strong, complex movie.

It helps that the plot, even though apparently another retread of Western clichés, is complex and well balanced. That the bad guys are partly very good and vice versa is exactly what the genre needs, and it is filmed so gorgeously--the night and interior stuff especially--it has a feeling of total command. It's a strong if still conventional film, a true Western in the best Anthony Mann sense rather than John Ford.

The plot is too complex to even analyze quickly, but a couple key elements play out. First, Fonda and Quinn play hired marshals who come into towns overwhelmed by some bad guys. They are hired for their ruthlessness because the town has no choice, but when they get to work, the town begins to doubt itself. And then there are all the secret past events that seem to converge here, almost too perfectly, but creating a layered and sometimes confusing backstory that gradually moves front and center.

All three male actors are in top form--I'll assume it's because the whole lot of them were consummate professionals there to get a job done well. While this was made years after the official end of the old studio system, it still is made (on location) with the same general factory ethic--tight production standards, familiar genres, efficient entertainment. It works, and it works better than it should. Certainly not a classic like "High Noon" or "Stagecoach," but a solid entry even for people who think they don't like westerns.

What looks at first like it will be an enjoyable but mindless genre Western turns gradually into something rather darker and more nuanced. Almost nobody in this film is who they seem at first, and several characters undergrow gradual inversions, with results ranging from noble to deeply creepy. Who are the heroes? Who are the villains? You'll leave this movie much less certain than you were when you arrived.

Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn are nearly upstaged by -- of all people -- DeForest Kelley, seen here just a few years before his career would be wrenched sideways by the role of Leonard McCoy in the original Star Trek.

A professional town-tamer named Blaisdell (Henry Fonda) is hired as an independent marshal by the citizens of Warlock to rid them of an unruly gang; meanwhile a repentant member of the bunch becomes deputy sheriff (Richard Widmark), which creates friction. Anthony Quinn plays the former's faithful sidekick.

"Warlock" (1959) is an adult Western cut from the same dramatic cloth as similar late 50s/early 60's Westerns like "Man of the West" (1958). The mature and psychological script was based on Oakley Hall's novel, which was a fictionalization of the OK Corral legends, which is why it's not too difficult to read Earp/Holliday into the Fonda/Quinn characters and Abe McQuown's gang as the Clanton/McLaury gang.

The fact that Quinn's Morgan character is loosely based on Doc Holliday is a good reason to reject the supposed 'homosexual subtext' of Morgan. There's not enough evidence to draw such a radical conclusion. Morgan was simply Blaisedell's loyal and ruthless partner; he loved Blaisedell like close members of a military squad or like a brother.

On the female front we have two very striking women: Dolores Michaels plays Blaisedell's potential babe, Jessie Marlow, while Dorothy Malone is on hand as Lily Dollar, a mysterious woman from Blaisedell's past who takes interest in the new deputy sheriff (Widmark).

The town scenes were filmed at 20th Century Fox Studios in Century City, CA, whereas the scenic sequences were all shot in Moab, Utah, near Arches National Park. Needless to say, the latter locations are magnificent.

The movie runs 2 hours, 2 minutes.

GRADE: B+