The Restless Breed

There is an obvious absence of finance behind this film but it excels for all that. Somehow, even the obvious stage/studio setting enhances the experience of this modest effort. It is a play... and if the audience is to be drawn in... it will be through the characterization, the dialogue and the drama... not through stunning visuals and computer generated crowd scenes.

The fundamental flaw is the age of the two principals. Bancroft was 26 at the time this was filmed and Brady 33. Angelita (Bancroft) is supposed to be a "child" of about sixteen and Mitch (Brady) is playing the part of an educated young man (late teens ?) so incensed by his father's murder that he is in danger of "taking the wrong road". It's remarkable... when you contemplate that this detail of age is fundamental to the story and to the drama... that the principals carry the thing so well and that it still works.

For its time, it must have been something of a "blood fest" with people being killed from the outset. And again, they get it right. Lots of blood, guts and gore does not add significance to the fact that someone is killed or murdered.

Some nice touches of humour and some becoming self-parody by some of the actors adds to the stage play quality of the film.

Young Scott Marlowe was already hanging out with hoods well before 'A Cold Wind in August' when he here played one of Jim Davis's gang. Unfortunately for Anne Bancroft Mrs Robinson was still ten years away in the future, and she decided she'd had it with Hollywood and abandoned the screen for the stage after playing yet another dusky maiden in this good-looking western potboiler into which veteran director Dwan managed to insert the occasional visual flourish in his final western.

The biggest surprise is Myron Healey playing a good guy for a change as the honest sheriff squaring up against Davis' mean-looking sidekick Leo Gordon.

I heard this might be okay but although I liked the skies and Anne Bancroft and especially the dancing but not enough good dialogue and exciting action. We saw the splendid picture of the dancer on the wall so many times, I assumed we would see much more of the dancing but just some romancing, although not really that either but she weeps. I didn't really liked Scott Brady in this but I think it was because the script so weak. Both the lovely Bancroft and even Brady would do much better, with him before in Johnny Guitar (1953) and later like Gremlins (1984) and her as, of course with The Graduate (1967) and really good in The Miracle Worker (1962).

When his father is murdered trying to stop the illegal sale of guns across the Mexican border, his son, Mitch Baker, leaves his job and sets out for revenge. He arrives in the small western town to find it lawless and rowdy.

He finds lodging with a local reverend and his adopted children and starts to fall for the eldest – the beautiful Angelita, but at the same time his desire for revenge and justice begin to eat him up inside. The reverend and Marshall Steve Evans both try and save him from himself.

From the opening cheese of the title song (which is awful!) you know that you are in b-movie land, and you'd be right to believe that for that is just what this film is. The plot is the usual revenge storyline with the usual romance thrown in to stretch it out. It is rather plodding at times and one has to wonder why it moves so very slowly and without action – usually b-movies will fall back on tough talk and tough action to cover the lacking substance. For what it is it just about manages to be passable as a film but it is not great and it is also frustrating because it has elements that could have been used to better effect.

The character of Mitch is the main element that the film could have used better. He is a haunted, lonely man who needs saving just as much as the town he has come to does. However, other than referring to this several times during the film, it doesn't actually do anything interesting with it – certainly all we see of this inner pain is that Mitch gets drunk once and staggers round town for 10 minutes like a bear with a sore head. Of course this failing and others all come down to the fact that there really isn't much of a script here and much of it is contrived to try and make it reach a respectable running time. Like I said, it still does what you expect it to (it certainly gets no worse than the title song!) but it could have been a much better movie, albeit still a b-movie.

The cast reflects the film's status. Brady is hardly a memorable leading man and he can't mange to make a complex character out of the material he is given. Instead it's like he flicks between normal mode and 'painful' mode, contributing to the feeling that the inner suffering thread is not really a thread so much as an afterthought that doesn't work. Bancroft's involvement is made more interesting by the fact that she is better known now than then.

Her character is flat though and she can do nothing with it apart from the usual love interest stuff, sadly she isn't even good enough looking to fill the traditional role of the genre. The rest of the cast are very much b-movie fare – some are OK (Flippen and Davis) but some are poor (Gordon's Cherokee in particular).

Overall this is below average for the b-movie genre. It does what you expect it to do and it isn't actually that bad but it doesn't really do anything well at all – from acting, the script, action right through to the delivery. It's just a shame that it didn't manage to do anything of note with the central character of Mitch other than hint at him having a character that is hardly touched on by the script.

At least from his last part of a sooo long career. Alan Dwann began during the silent era, don't forget this, is one of the most prolific director in Hollywood studios history. His last films were, for most of them, produced by Benedict Bogeaus, but this one, no. Edward Alperson did and the result is a true beautiful, atmospheric western, despite a overused scheme. But Scott Brady, Leo Gordon Rhys Williams and above all a surprising Anne Bancroft, make us forget this surpriseless story. Terrific music score that you hear all long this story. I don't get boed every time I watch it, precisely because of the exceptional atmosphere, that not so many film can provide.