Showdown

Showdown finds Audie Murphy and Charles Drake who did a few films with Murphy as a pair of cowboy drifters coming to the town of Adonde to sell of the horse herd they've captured and for a little R&R. Drake gets in a poker game, gets drunk and stupid, and both wind up chained to a town may pole like post in the middle of the town main street. Also chained there is the town drunk Strother Martin and Harold J. Stone and his outlaw gang. The town has no jail and the pole is like the stocks in the village square in the colonial times.

Adonde wishes that they did invest in a jail after Stone breaks out taking Murphy and Drake with him and some money that the light fingered Drake lifted from the Express office. $12,000.00 in negotiable bonds. But he hides them and then it becomes a chess game between Murphy and Drake and Stone.

I won't go on with the plot, but it soon becomes apparent that the man Murphy's been riding with has a lot less character than he gave him credit for. In fact Drake's character is not unlike the one he played in the classic James Stewart western Winchester 73. Furthermore the girl he's been seeing Kathleen Crowley is not unlike Shelley Winters from that same film.

In fact this could have been a classic had Universal invested a little more money in script and direction. But at that time Audie Murphy's films were normally at the bottom of double bills in that last decade of them and Murphy was just serving out his contract.

Still the film has some grit to it with Murphy playing the only one in the film with any real character.

Audie Murphy was reportedly furious when he learned that "Showdown" would be in black and white for budget reasons. But the b&w seems appropriate for this western because Murphy's character is the perfect film noir hero. He usually played a gunfighter with a troubled past, a lawman, or a combination of the two but here he is Chris Foster, an ordinary cow puncher who just wants to collect his pay and celebrate with his pal Bert Pickett (Charles Drake). Because of Bert's drunken misbehavior, he and Chris have to go to "jail" which in the little New Mexico town means a post in the middle of the street with chains bolted to it and an iron collar for the prisoners. It is a very visually arresting (if you will pardon the expression) image. Also chained to the post is the notorious outlaw Lavalle (Harold J. Stone) and his gang which includes Foray (L.Q. Jones) and Caslon (Skip Homeier). When Lavalle and friends escape, Chris and Bert have to go with him putting them on the run from the law. From there, Chris tries to keep himself and his friend alive - not to mention clear their names - as they attempt to buy their way out with some bonds stolen from an express office. There is even, if not a femme fatale, a cynical dame who could help the two men out of their trouble but is unable to trust what Chris tells her. Now, if that's not a noir plot, I don't know what is. Noir, noir on the range. Not one of Audie's best, neither one of his worst (so far I haven't found a "worst"). But as always, Audie Murphy is a charismatic lead actor. The cinematographer is Ellis W. Carter. Location shooting was done at Lone Pine, California which is a good match for the film's setting in New Mexico, especially in the desert views.

That was not the first time that Audie Murphy and Charles Drake co starred: remember NO NAME ON THE BULLET and TO HELL AND BACK. And I am sure there were other features starring both. This one is a good early sixties western, made by a rough specialist, showing a good character portraits, rather moving, and bringing good scenes, shots, camera angles. This is not enough to make it exceptional but it is for me one of the best from RG Springsteen. Maybe after all RG Springsteen was a talented director who was just not ambitious enough to deliver many gems, or lucky enough to have good producers to deal with. So please, don't miss this gritty western, not the worst from Audie Murphy.

Murph Balked at the Non-Color Decision and Loudly Voiced it and Threatened to Walk but was Talked Out of it by His Agent.

This is one of the More Glum of Audie Murphy Westerns.

He was Aging and it Shows His 1963 Face and Frame Starting to Sprawl, just a Little.

But the War-Hero, Now a Veteran Screen Presence, still Manages to Impose and Intimidate Bad-Guys, and Lure Beautiful Women.

With His Unwavering Moral Compass and Sweet Looks.

Here, He Outwits a Snarling Psycho, Harold J. Stone, and His Pack of Dogs.

Punches His way out of Outnumbered Fisticuffs, and Takes to the Iron to Finish Off the Outlaws.

He is Totally Loyal to Charles Drake, a real Snake, as He Sides with His "Good Friend" until the End.

Kathleen Crowley's Beautiful Face is Caked with Make-Up and Mascara, False Eye-Lashes, and an Early Sixties Hair-Do. What were They Thinking?

The Movie has a Rich Supporting Cast.

The Film Features some Off-Beat Inclusions, like the "Iron May-Pole", and some Amped Violence that was Creeping its Way into Movies in the New Decade.

Overall, it is Underrated and Another Audie Murphy Western that is Put-Down and Ignored by Critics. But it's a Good One.

Ask those that Count, the Legions of Murph's Fans that are still Around Today.

SHOWDOWN (1963) has extensive location shooting around Lone Pine, California at the foot of the Sierras. Because it was shot in black-and-white, however, ostensibly to save money, the picturesque locations are not seen to their best advantage the way they are in Murphy's color westerns from that era (e.g. HELL BENT FOR LEATHER and SEVEN WAYS FROM SUNDOWN, both 1960). Color cinematography would have given us something interesting to look at during the labored proceedings. It's a low-budget affair with a contrived script provided by "Bronson Howitzer," a curious pseudonym for Ric Hardman, a writer of TV westerns. The plot is one of those routine potboilers about a group of outlaws holding the hero and various people hostage in hopes of a big payoff. At too many points in the script, people engage in uncharacteristic behavior in order to keep the basic situation intact. Two innocent cowboys, Chris (Audie Murphy) and Bert (Charles Drake), are detained after a drunken saloon fight and chained to an outdoor post alongside desperate outlaws in a town that doesn't have a jail. When the outlaws break free, the two friends inexplicably flee instead of staying and trying to explain their situation. Bert (Charles Drake) even steals some banknotes, which he then uses to bargain for his and Chris's life after the outlaws grab them. Each subsequent chain of events arises from the outlaw boss (Harold J. Stone) letting one friend or the other go off on his own on a mission involving the money, even though no self-respecting gang leader would place such trust in his hostages or let them go off on their own so easily. These outlaws are neither very tough nor very smart.

Things get more complicated when Bert's purported girl, a saloon singer named Estelle, enters the picture. She has a couple of dramatic scenes, including an extended monologue, that must have made the actress (Kathleen Crowley) quite happy but tend to slow the movie down. Only when Chris is on his own against the remaining gang members in rugged terrain does the picture get interesting. Unfortunately, there are not enough of these scenes to save the movie. Murphy's very good in a patented role as a decent ordinary guy caught up in the machinations of lawbreakers, but he would have been better in color and with a more thought-out script. There's a sense here that the production was just a bit on the hurried side.

Strother Martin plays a town drunk and L.Q. Jones plays a silent member of the gang. Both are among the town's prisoners chained to the same post early in the film. They're seen in shots together but don't interact. These two actors would make a memorable team six years later as the squabbling "gutter trash" bounty hunters Coffer and T.C. in Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH.

According to "No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy," by Don Graham, Murphy was quite upset when he learned that SHOWDOWN was being filmed in black-and-white and almost stopped working. "I'm not gonna act," is how he put it. The producer eventually talked him into finishing the movie, but Murphy vowed, "This is the last picture I'm gonna do in black and white." It was.

(Regarding the filming of Lone Pine locations cited in the first paragraph, I should stress that those landscapes can look absolutely breathtaking in black-and-white when captured by a master cinematographer. Just look at classic movies like LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935), CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) and HIGH SIERRA (1941), to name three. But we're simply not going to see images like that in the kind of rush job we get in SHOWDOWN.)