Le colline bruciano

Louis L'Amour wrote well-structured western stories that were very entertaining. Usually, there's a hero who never goes out of his way to hurt anyone. And the force(s) of villainy are clearly defined. But Hollywood wanted to pair Natalie Wood and Tab Hunter, so the love story in this film includes some amorous un-L'Amourous scenes to cater to young viewers.

The first couple of scenes establish who our hero is (Tab Hunter as Trace Jordan) and how bad the villains are. Natalie plays Maria, a strong-willed young woman who is also victimized by the gang of gunslingers who enforce the evil dictates of one Joe Sutton (Ray Teal). After Trace attempts to bring the bad guys to justice, they chase him over the countryside. Maria tries to help him.

Members of the gang include Claude Akins, who also appeared in "The Sea Chase" with Tab Hunter in 1955. One of the orneriest gang members is played by Earl Holliman. After this film, he would appear consecutively in "Giant", "The Rainmaker" and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral". Talk about being in the right places at the right time.

Unfortunately, certain scenes are marred by some very corny lines. The result is a great L'Amour story burdened by Hollywood "enhancements". You can judge for yourself if Natalie Wood's accent is horrible or not. She surely took a lot of criticism for Maria's accent in "West Side Story", which would follow in five years.

A very routine western ,with a plot the average viewer has already seen fifty times (the wealthy landlord who wants to get rid of all the little farmers around,and his nasty offspring),this is nevertheless an entertaining nervy work ,with a good chemistry between the two principals .Natalie Wood ,who was only 18 at the time ,displays strength and resilience against a bunch of villains who ceaselessly harass her.She's the only man in her family ,her uncle and her little brother are sissies ,but we're told her father was a brave man ,just like Daniel Jordan,the man she helps to fight the criminals who killed his brother.A rather violent western,with a lot of death,and a splendid cinematography.

As his nicely self-depreciating autobiography suggests Tab Hunter was a slightly more complex and perhaps a somewhat less malleable young actor than maybe his studio would have liked him to be. For starters he was gay and was, to all accounts, comfortable with it, determined to have a private life as well as a public one. He was an early victim of the gossip columnists but he learned to live with it and if he never became a star of the first rank, was seldom out of work.

This formulaic western was designed as a vehicle for him and his attractive persona is one reason why it is so watchable. There is nothing particularly original about it and it may come as something of a surprise that it was written by Irving Wallace from a novel by Louis L'Amour. Hunter is the young rancher looking to revenge the murder of his brother, (by dastardly Skip Homeier who likes shooting men in the back). Other villains include Claude Akins and Earl Holliman and the romantic interest is provided by an inadequate but young Natalie Wood. Hunter and Ted McCord's cinema-scope photography ensure it is always easy on the eye.

Both Tab Hunter and Skip Homeier put in excellent performances in this film. Both are well-cast for the roles they play - Tab, the "good guy" and Skip, the "bad, ruthless killer." The final fight scene between Tab Hunter and Skip Homeier is one of the best I have seen staged in a western. The final outcome was in no way predictable. The movie stands up well after 40 years.

Louis L'Amour novels make good reading and fine western cinema and The Burning Hills is no exception. Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood who were a screen team and studio public relations created off screen romance star in this film which has Tab Hunter on the run and Natalie Wood helping him.

Hunter's got plenty of reason to run, his brother was killed and he shoots Ray Teal who is the overlord of the local Ponderosa. The wounded Teal who really doesn't have title to a lot of the land he runs roughshod over and he sends his rotten son Skip Homeier and foreman Claude Akins with some of his riders after him. At no time are they a legally constituted posse and Homeier and Akins can't stand each other and have many issues between them.

Skip Homeier ever since he shot Gregory Peck in the back in The Gunfighter made a good career of playing some really nasty punk villains and he's certainly at his nastiest here. Eduard Franz has a strange and interesting part also as a mixed race tracker that Akins insists on having in the posse. He's a person of interesting and shifting loyalties.

Wood and Hunter were certainly an attractive pair and the teens and Tweens in the audience got some thrills as Hunter had to appear topless as Wood nursed him with his injuries. The Burning Hills has a lot of tension in it as the posse closes in and Hunter is a pretty resourceful man. Wood has a few tricks of her own to baffle the posse and not all of them involve sex.

The Burning Hills is a nicely constructed western that I'm sure Louis L'Amour took some pride in the screen version of his work.