Laurie Casserly

I love this film God help me. It is the epitome of everybody’s favorite genre, of course, film noir. I said to myself, after I watched it for the second time in a week, okay, it’s no Night of the Hunter and it’s not Chinatown but it IS devastating. What happened to the girl- it was a while back- whose favorite director was William Wyler and The Letter and DeadEnd were two of her favorite films? Well I guess I grew up-well maybe I got old . Me, in love(lust?) with Ralph Meeker? I guess so. But it was so much more. It had both an extreme earthiness and an ultra-modernest feel. The characters are way more than run of the mill, they’re smart they read they like music classical and jazz. Ralph Meeker is no run of the mill private eye either, he has a quiet intelligence. He never wastes a word. His friends run the gamut. Speaking of which, let me not waste any: Suffice it to say Halliwell gives it three stars. And he was the best reviewer ever.

This film is a fascinating character study. Two men, each with a definitive sense of himself and the part he must play in life, meet in a life or death struggle. One is an outlaw recently caught by a bounty hunter. The other, a farmer not a lawman, has given his word to bring this outlaw to the station and put him on the train. Like the main character in High Noon the farmer has no one to help him in a fight where he is greatly out manned. The irony is he realizes and the outlaw does his best to convince him that this job he’s taken on is not his responsibility. The only reason he’s doing it is that he gave his word. He is a true man of honor. And he is scared concerned about his wife and family and what could happen to them if he’s killed. This is the crux of the story. One wonders as the story continues just why he’s taking such a chance. Is the outlaw’s arrest and punishment worth his life? Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are superb in their roles being the consummate actors they are. Oh, by the way, the original with Glenn Ford as the outlaw and Van Heflin as the farmer/ rancher. It’s a joy to see Glenn Ford as a bad guy.

Truly frightening. And so dark in a way the earlier version couldn’t touch. I saw it when it first came out and I am not sure how to explain it but I felt as if the world had taken on another dimension and it changed me somehow. I am more sensitive than most. This version is set in a city in which people can seem strange to us normally. The camera pans the city streets and its inhabitants forcing us to wonder who they really are. The special effects are wonderfully bizarre In that they are completely organic representing crazed plant life. The best line in the film: “Why do we always think they’ll come in metal ships?” Of course it refers to invaders from outer space.