“There’ll be no killing around this church
unless I do the killing … Amen!”
Although
it pays lip service to the revisionist leanings of New Hollywood cinema,
Katzin’s film doesn’t deliver on its potential. It is, however, a diverting and
handsomely photographed genre piece, recalling any number of B-westerns in
which inscrutable gunmen intervene in quarrels between small farmers and
bigger, usually ruthless, enterprises. When
Jim Killian buries a Native American sheep farmer who has been lynched by Coke
Beck, little does the divided town of Vinegaroon know that this laconic gunman could
be the agent that finally unites them.
Uber-confident
and quick with a six-gun, Killian confounds Vinegaroon with the revelation that
he is an ordained man of God, and converts a barn into a chapel – a place where
all across the grazing divide are welcome to worship in safety. He makes it
clear that any man who draws a gun on another will be dealt with forcefully. Coke’s
father, Asa, refusing to share cattle land with sheep farmers, exposes Killian
as a jailbird by hiring the pastor’s former cell mate, the deadly and venomous
Mace (J.D. Cannon).
Vinegaroon
is a town at odds with itself. Mistrust and rivalry between cattlemen and
sheepmen are manifest in moments of stylistically exploitative and savage violence.
Koenekamp’s camera leeringly relays graphic images of lambs being shot and the
hanging of the Indian, while a prolonged scene in which the Indian’s daughter,
Leeloopa, is raped by Coke leaves a sour taste.
Abe Murdock (an accomplished portrayal of shamed desperation by James
Griffith) is graphically shorn to the scalp by Asa’s men and is seen later
perpetrating ugly acts of revenge. Trailing
in the wake of Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
and the westerns of Peckinpah and Martin Ritt, Katzin’s film certainly chimes
with New Hollywood’s more sanguinary portrayal of violence. Where those films were
amoral, however, signalling a break with the past, here what first appears to
be a ‘modern’ action western drifts into something far cosier and more virtuous.
Ford,
a truly undervalued movie star, hardened with age, plays Killian cool. When he
sees Abe being humiliated, he growls, “Turn him loose... I’m only going to say
it once.” His terse demeanour changes when he returns home to find that
Leeloopa, the daughter of the murdered Indian, has invited herself into his
home. “I belong to you,” she declares, offering herself as a home help. Seeing she has nowhere to go, he accepts; embarrassing
comic relief ensues when some of the townsfolk jump to salacious conclusions. While
the film demonstrates sympathy for Native Americans and Hershey is radiant and
enthusiastic, the handling of Leeloopa’s scenes could have been far more adroit.
Ranged
against Killian’s nobility are the boorish Becks and their rum-looking
henchmen. With his rangy frame, gaunt features and theatrical delivery, John
Anderson bears more than a passing resemblance, and style, to John Carradine, whose
son David, then a relative newcomer, responds well to Anderson. The script even
allows for more reserved, intimate moments between them amid the turbulence and
violence, creating an entirely believable filial bond. Mace, adorned with a
scarlet shirt, is the devil to Killian’s angel; in a heavily stylised gunfight
– one of a handful of scenes replete with hallmarks of the increasingly popular
spaghetti westerns – they eventually face off, both with their guns drawn under
a table.
Bogus
preachers or gun-toting men of God were certainly in vogue in westerns of the
time, particularly in the Italian form where, as Kevin Grant observes,
film-makers have “typically depicted churchmen in the same unflattering light
as... politicians, lawmakers and other members of the ruling class”.[i] Here, though, away from the Vatican’s shadow,
the more politically neutral Katzin directs no such criticism at his religious
protagonist. With Asa blockading the watering lake with his herd and Madge encouraging
Killian to put his trust in the Lord rather than his guns, the pastor enters
the final fray unarmed – a decision that opposes genre conventions and results
in a rather muted conclusion. The western had taken a far more radical,
anti-establishment direction by 1969. While the likes of Sam Peckinpah probed the
cracks in societal harmony and rained bullets onto a Temperance Union march,
Katzin abandons his full-blooded approach for something more sanctimonious.
Clark Hodgkiss
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