sat46

High Noon is the best Western film ever made. Gary Cooper is superb as a newly married, retiring lawman, who is forced to face four killers all alone when the town's people he once protected abandon him in his hour of need. The noon train is coming and the clock is running as one by one all of friends desert him. In the end only one person stands by him, and who that person is makes this movie what it is.

The mid fifties television production of Walt Disney's "Davy Crockett" struck a nerve in the physic of American children. This three part TV mini-series launched the "Davy Crockett Craze", a phenomena that swept the Nation for some time.

Davy Crockett collecting cards, coonskin caps, toys, other assorted memorabilia, and the ever popular recording of the "Ballad of Davy Crockett", were only some of the outward signs of it's vast popularity. Actors, Fess Parker, as Davy Crockett, and Buddy Ebson as his sidekick, Georgie Russell became popular with almost most every child in America, practically over night. The show was so successful that the original three part series was clipped together and released to theaters as a full length movie. Then the Disney Studio produced a two part TV sequel the following year.

There is little doubt that by today's standards there was nothing special about it's plot, or dialog, or the acting, etc. Some critics might go as far to say it was rather silly, childish, and a mediocre production at best.

Perhaps that's all true, but it would miss the most important point. Seldom has any TV production cause so many young people to love a couple of screen characters so deeply, and with such spontaneous joy. In this regard it is a Classic and holds a special place in the history of television art.

I believe this movie was made to be bad on purpose. The Vietnam War an unmentionable except for the John Wayne, feel good about war flick, the "Green Berets". This terrible western had seven dumb and dumber young Texans go of to play soldiers in the God awful killing fields of the Civil War. They find that war to be just that, and anything but an heroic adventure. It says war is not a kids game, not back then and more importantly, not now. The film shows what an old fashion heroes film might have said if it were as honest. This is perhaps the most misunderstood film ever made. Most people thought it was just a piece of silly junk. I think the author wanted it that way, so his anti-war theme was told, while no one was any the wiser to it, but a young targeted audience. It had a message folks, it really did. No heroes, only death and pain paid in full for nothing, sheep to the slaughter theme. "Brilliant" Amen