Violence à Jericho

Dean Martin plays the villain for the first time, but doesn't add any dimension to his role. George Peppard steals the movie as a gambler who doesn't want any trouble until situation becomes impossible. Jean Simmons is adorable as usual.

The plots are quite routine, the action scenes passable. It's a bit unreasonable that Simmons would let Peppard, a stranger who rides to town on her stagecoach, stay in her house. Although such arrangement is made by the writers, it's a shame that their relationship is not fully developed.

Fortunately we see some familiar supporting actors, including Don Galloway (of TV series IRONSIDE), John McIntire (of WAGON TRAIN), and it's interesting to watch comic actor Slim Pickens as mean, sadistic character again after his wonderful performance in ONE-EYED JACKS (1961).

Dean Martin owns 51% of everything in town, except former lover Jean Simmons' stage line. When he and his hired guns start squeezing her, she writes former marshal John McIntire. He shows up, but remains abed while George Peppard scouts out the situation.

This metaphorical western about the corruption of society by business interests makes use of symbolic values of B westerns, and balances the traditional B Western values of action with some decent speeches, with Dean Martin playing the darker edge of his screen persona in the midst of his Matt Helm era. Miss Simmons also gives a fine performance that reinvigorated her career. She and Peppard have a great drinking scene. Yet there are issues with this movie that are disturbing, both in the way that the film makers seem to have forgotten how to make a western -- the score by Don Costa is overly dramatic in a TV-Western manner that makes it seem that the events are less important than they should be within the movie, and cinematographer Russell Metty shoots the action sequences with a zoomed-in telephoto lens that makes those passages weightless.

The net impact is that the film makers feel the movie is simultaneously more important and less important than it is. Perhaps the only way to get this film made was to populate it with major talent in front of the camera. Certainly the actors take the subtext seriously. It's too bad the people behind the camera overburdened a good story with unnecessary technique, making this an interesting and watchable western, but little more.

Although the splendid title offers nocturnal action, for the most part 'Rough Night in Jericho' is all very routine, full of roughnecks, fatally lacking in humour, with much talk of hanging and punctuated by bursts of vicious violence (including an extremely nasty fight involving a whip-wielding Slim Pickens).

Although George Peppard is technically the hero, he and Dean Martin make a pretty charmless pair of leads; while rather out of place amidst all this toxic masculinity is the radiant Jean Simmons - rather mature for a leading lady (inevitably playing a widow) who gives this film what passes for a soul.

An ex-lawman from Santa Fe and his ex-deputy (John McIntire and George Peppard) come to an Arizona town to assist the female owner of a stagecoach line (Jean Simmons), who happens to be persecuted by the town's venal mogul, also an ex-lawman (Dean Martin). Since the odds are against winning a tangle with this boss, Dolan (Peppard) is determined to move on. Is he yella or will he make a stand?

"Rough Night in Jericho" (1967) comes in the spirit of "Rio Bravo" and "El Dorado," just minus John Wayne. It's mostly town-bound, but there are more than enough scenic sequences shot in the Southwest wilderness (cited below). The emphasis is human interest, which effectively draws you into the lives of the characters at play.

A minor example is when a certain man is humiliated and written off as a coward, but he's later given a chance to prove his mettle. A better example is how Flood (Martin) and Dolan are fleshed out with several interesting dialogues. You just know they're gonna have a showdown.

There's also a great knock-down-drag-out fight between Dolan and Yarbrough (Slim Pickens). Impressive Steve Sandor plays a side character in this particular sequence as Flood's henchman Simms; the role happened to be his cinematic debut.

Regrettably, the ending needed tightened up and the flick is strapped with a professional-but-unfitting score that's unmemorable. It needed a composition along the lines of, say, "Bandolero!" or "Duel at Diablo." Yet this isn't a deal-breaker and arguably adds a unique charm to the film. In any case, it's superior to Martin's "5 Card Stud," but not quite on the level of his "Bandolero!"

It runs 1 hour, 44 minutes, and was shot in Old Tucson, Arizona, with out-of-town stuff done in southern Utah at Glen Canyon, Kanab Canyon, Paria and the Gap, as well as Vermilion Cliffs and Colorado City in nearby Arizona.

GRADE: B.

Normally I love westerns, and I am willing to accept some flaws in them, but I found this particular western a chore to sit through. The lead performances, for one thing, hurt the movie. Now, I am not saying that Peppard and Martin were miscast, but they were not directed well here. Peppard seems out of place, while Martin does not come across as ruthless enough to be believable as a villain.

But what really hurts the movie is the script. The mix between comic sequences and brutal action do not fit together very well. Also, the first half of the movie is almost all talk talk talk, and not very interesting talk. And Peppard's character doesn't do anything in that first half to try and change the desperate situation. Things do pick up somewhat in the last part of the second half, but it's too little too late.

By the way, Leonard Maltin's video guide branded this movie as "gory", but by today's standards it's not very bloody.