Le jour des Apaches

An offbeat ,almost dusky western ,with two veterans of the genre ,Arthur Kennedy and Glenn Ford ,both at their best and giving their characters substance :who is really the"hero"?Even when the movie is over ,you will not know..

The subject is well known and was often treated in the past notably by John Ford : rescuing women captured by the Indians ,but the script is bizarre,including scenes which you would not expect ,which makes the two men's adventures an odyssey in miniature :the prisoners ,tied under the blistering sun ,and the birds of prey which gather à la Hitchcock's "the birds";the town where cholera is rampant;the pacifist man who does not understand why one can murder his fellow man.

Not very plausible (particularly the final stampede ) ,most likely a fable with an ambiguous "moral".

Jerry Thorpe may have been something of a lightweight director but even lightweights can hit pay-dirt once in awhile and "Day of the Evil Gun", which he made in 1968, is a fine and somewhat unusual western. The story is not dissimilar to such earlier westerns as "The Searchers" and "Two Rode Together", (two men searching for a woman abducted by the Apaches), but it takes a few diversions along the way. The men in question are played by veterans Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy and the slightly grizzled cast also includes Dean Jagger, Paul Fix and John Anderson as well as a young Dean Stanton sans the Harry. It's no classic, I'll grant you but it's sufficiently different to be of interest and fans of the western won't be disappointed.

I like Glen FORD and consider this western a minor classic. Pretty unknown and still waiting to be recognized even by movie buffs this little gem has definitely not yet the reputation it deserves.

"Directed with lazy assurance" as the TIME OUT FILM GUIDE correctly writes, by veteran director Jerry Thorpe, and played with laid back gusto by all involved, this western offers a very grim and dark view on the "old west", more influenced by the Italo-western (which was in full bloom in the later 60ies) than the classic US-flick. Gunfighter FORD, aged, bored, tired and with "have-seen-it-all" eyes, comes back home just to find his wife and 2 small daughter carried away by Apaches. Arthur KENNEDY claims his wife was about to marry him and after an incredibly tough fist-fight they team up (unwillingly) to rescue them.

What follows is an odyssey through some very bizarre situations, staged with the aforementioned lazy assurance, situations, which one does not happen to see in many other US-western: everything is dark, depressing, cynical and void of any sympathy. Whereas THE SEARCHERS had some hope underneath, this is more than 10 years later and the characters, scripted by veteran scriptwriter Charles Marquis Warren, are driven by the urge to do what has to be done, but equipped with little hope. FORD plays the "lost character" in an old west with dark cynical humor, one of his best later performances. Kennedy is fine, too, and also very worth mentioning is the character played by Nico Minardos, whom you would more expect to find in any Quentin Tarantino movie than in a B-western from the later 60ies. Great rough music by Jeff Alexander! All in all a very watchable outing, made by experts, each of whom must have had a dozen or more western to his credit at the time, when they teamed up to put DAY OF THE EVIL GUN on celluloid.

Watch out for this and don't miss it, it's very well worth a viewing !

An ex-gunfighter searching for his kidnapped wife and children is joined by his peaceful neighbour. Accompanied by an eccentric scout and a trader, the men run into Apaches and bandits - encounters that eventually turn the neighbour into a cold-blooded killer.

Though a traditional western, Day of the evil gun has touches of the spaghetti western with its grittiness and violence. A reworking of the Searchers, it's a bleak film that starts slow and without much energy, but it gradually hooks you, especially with the two performances from Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy, who make an uneasy alliance, which adds some tension. I mean, they have enough to contend with- Apaches, Army deserters.

Day of the evil gun isn't a great western, but it's watchable and gets better as it goes on. The location adds to the grim mission our heroes are on.

Ford's performance as Warfield anticipated by nearly a decade the western anti-heroes of Sam Peckinpah. It is a gripping and surprisingly well-produced oater (considering its modest budget). It really succeeds in evoking the terror of man alone against the wilderness. The villains - of which there are a number - appear two-dimensional and even sympathetic; e.g., Captain Addis and his men, reduced by massacre and desertion, perform almost heroically in their desperation (watch for Harry Dean Stanton's understated role as a cavalry sergeant). The Apaches are seen as brutal, but no more so than their white enemies or the surrounding deserts and moutains, which are haughtingly evoked in this first-rate western. Highly recommended.