Showdown

I loved this movie. Having watched so many old westerns recently that lacked much realism, I found this to be quite a hard edged and grim atmospheric piece that I really enjoyed. Audie Murphy with his baby face can be very convincing and was perhaps a better actor than I previously remembered from when I was young, and I'm constantly having to remind myself that he was the most decorated American soldier of World War II. Kathleen Crowley,who I had forgotten about, was quite sexy in a mature way, and I grew to like her as her part went on. There's a great cast of old character actors who never fail to please in old westerns, Harold J. Stone, Skip Homier, L. Q. Jones, Strother Martin and Charles Drake. There's not a lot to not like I thought, although I kept thinking this would have been so much better in colour and wide screen which let it down just a little bit. I thought it was quite tense throughout, mainly brought about by the fact that Murphy is chased (and I love chase pictures) throughout the film by various characters and for the most part he has to outsmart his opponents and overcome them in spite of the fact that he rarely has the chance of acquiring a weapon. Very well made on what appears to be a low budget.

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.

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.)

Showdown is directed by R.G. Springsteen and written by Bronson Howitzer. It stars Audie Murphy, Kathleen Crowley, Charles Drake, Harold J. Stone, Skip Homeier, L. Q. Jones and Strother Martin. Music is by Hans J. Salter and cinematography by Ellis W. Carter.

Plot has Murphy as Chris Foster who has to get 12,000 dollars in stolen bonds from the ex-girlfriend of his partner, Bert Pickett (Drake), or the gang holding him hostage will kill him.

Filmed in black and white, something which didn't sit well with Murphy, this turns out to be a well photographed (the sumptuous back drop of the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine) low budget Oater of interesting ideas. The outdoor prison used here - criminals chained by neck collars to a pole in the center of town - is refreshingly original and a superb plot device that thrusts good guys (Chris and Bert) and bad guys together as a unit, for a while at least that is...

Trouble is, is that this is only a small section of the story which occurs at the pic's beginning. We get some exciting action and character laying foundations for the inevitable break out, and then it moves away from the jail scenario. The premise is so good one kind of hankers for much longer of this story angle, maybe even for the story to have been different and made this the bulk of the movie as a character piece - with the break out and subsequent held to ransom aspect in the last third. But I digress whilst forgetting this is a 1960s low budget job.

Narrative contains themes of addiction, tortured love and blind loyalty, which is credit to the writing of the wonderfully named Bronson Howitzer (really Ric Hardman!). However, the romantic thread bogs things down since it comes off as nonsense, with Crowley - as lovely as she looks - utterly unbelievable in the Western setting. Worse still is the head villain played by Stone, who not only makes preposterous decisions, he's also just not very villainous into the bargain. Still, Murphy is on good enough form and he's backed up by some notable genre performers.

A mixture of the usual good and bad for a Murphy 1960s Oater, but enough here to make it a comfortable recommendation to fans of star and genre. 6.5/10

Partners Audie Murphy and Charles Drake wind up in a jailbreak with Harold Stone and his gang. When they find out that Drake has $12,000 hidden with his girl, Kathleen Crowley, they send Murphy to fetch it. But she wants the money, too.

I have some issues with how the situation is set up, but once it starts moving, it's pretty good: people doing what they're doing, and story being the conflict that occurs when their paths intersect and no one will walk away. It's why director R. G. Springsteen was still directing this western, the last one released under the Universal-International banner: a good eye, story sense, and ability to get good performances out of actors, even when the lines are overblown. Producer Gordon Kay may have ordered this shot in black & white to save some money, but cameraman Ellis Carter shoots the Alabama Hills as dry and dusty.