BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948)

 Picture Stolen from West of the River

The New York Times describes Blood on the Moon, “one of the best "psychological" westerns of the 1940s”. I’ve read this assessment from other sources as well. While I’ve turned this over and around in my head, I’m still not quite sure what it means.

Directed by Robert Wise (from an adaptation of Luke Short’s Gunman’s Chance by Lillie Hayward and Harold Shumate), Blood on the Moon stars Robert Mitchum as Jim Garry, a lonesome cowboy (and archetypal “Mitchum Good Guy Role”) who is first introduced to us on horseback and in the pouring rain, silhouetted against a steel gray sky. Making camp for the night beneath the shelter of the woods, he’s barely got his boots off before he has to climb a tree to escape a stampede of cattle. Coming up armed behind them is cowhand Bart Daniels (Lassie’s Robert Bray), who strongly suggests that Garry accompany him to his outfit’s camp. There he meets another pair of rifles, carried by steer boss John Lufton and Cap Willis (Tom Tully (Academy Award nominee for The Caine Mutiny) and latter-day Ed Wood regular Bud Osborne). “Make a fella feel right at home, don’t you?” says Garry.

He learns that Lufton was the main supplier of beef to the local Indian reservation but has since been kicked out by a new agent named Pindalest. Coincidentally, a guy name Tate Riling has been bringing in gunmen to support the local ranchers and homesteaders who sell through Pindalest. So, pardon the guns but, Lufton tells him, “It’s work for me or keep on riding.” As Garry is headed to the nearest town, Sundust, he decides on the latter. 

Lufton asks him the favor (and test) of delivering a note to his “womenfolk” over on his mesa spread along the way. There, Garry is greeted by Lufton’s younger daughter, Amy (Barbara Bel Geddes), who shoots at him to keep him from crossing the river. Circling behind her, Garry uses his own Winchester prowess to dance her back into the water to “cool off”. Once he delivers Lufton’s note to older daughter Carol, Amy shows up to give him his own dance lessons. “Guess I deserved that,” Garry says quietly. 

Things aren’t any less opaque in Sundust. Upon arrival, he’s immediately made for a gun hand apparently hired by Lufton in retaliation. Walking into the saloon, he becomes instantly aware of the tension. We’ve already been made privy to this because Walter Brennan (as Kris Barden) is sitting at the card table and he’s wearing his teeth, indicating a serious turn of events about to take place. Plus, unshaven Milo demands that one of his compatriots pretend to be Tate Riling, asking. “Want the law to come in here and find out what we’re doing?” Which isn’t the sort of thing honest folk would say, cards, teeth or not. Turns out that Tate himself had called for Garry, and since the two used to be partners, Jim sees through the masquerade immediately. Before long, people are turning over tables and crashing through doors. 

“Same old Jim,” says Tate, as his old partner steps out of the shadows. “When lighting strikes, you’re there.” Tate Riling is a man with big ideas. He’s partnered with Pindalest on a plan to set the ranchers against Lufton, and since Pindalest has already managed to revoke Lufton’s passthrough on Indian land, if his herd winds up across the mesa, the cattle will be seized by the U.S. Army. Faced with the choice of losing the herd or selling low, Lufton will have no choice but to accept Riling’s spontaneous offer of $4 per head. After which, Riling and Pindalest will make a profit after selling Lufton’s herd right back to the Indians. Jim is Riling’s whole card, and he’s willing to pay $10,000 to put it up his sleeve. “Lufton’s men are tough and my ranchers aren’t.” 

While Garry could certainly use the money, he isn’t keen on getting lumped in with nasty mercenaries like Joe Shotten (Clifton Young, Our Gang’s “Bonedust”) and Frank Reardon (Tom Tyler, who appeared as both Captain Marvel and The Phantom for the Republic and Columbia serials). Since Riling is played by Robert Preston, he really sells the job to Garry. “Shotten and Reardon get paid in gold eagles,” he says to Jim. “You get paid in thousands.”

“Yeah,” Garry replies. “The only difference between us is the price.” 

Now if you couldn’t tell by his second-billing or his being played by Robert Preston, Tate Riling is a bit of a snake and he’s playing both sides against the middle. Carol Lufton is in love with him, and he’s double-talked his way into convincing her that the fight is in her best interest too. After all, he’ll need money if they’re to get married, and her father has more than enough to spare. 

The next night, Riling and his men stampede Lufton’s herd back across the Massacree River, but both sides suffer losses. Bart is trampled and Bardens son falls off his horse and is dragged to his death. Lufton’s men remember him as a friend and a “nice boy”. In the morning, Garry delivers the news to Barden. “Big price to pay for a little bit of graze,” Barden whispers, then does some shaming: “I signed up with the little ranchers because I believed their fight was my fight. We ain’t being paid to fight, mister.”

When Garry has to stop Shotten and Reardon from gunning Lofton down in the Sundust streets, everything crystalizes for him. He tries to brush off Amy Lufton’s gratitude—“Don’t let a man’s whim fool you.”—but he can’t fool himself. Particularly after seeing the delight on Riling’s face. Knowing Lofton would never do business with him willingly, not even if forced to by the Army confiscation of his herd, Riling brought Garry in to intermediate. Now that Jim’s saved the older man’s life, Lufton will be obliged to work with the scheme. “It’s come all the way back around to here,” Garry says. “I’ve seen dogs wouldn’t claim you for a son, Tate.”

This magnificently-placed turn of phrase results in one of the most brutal fist fights the ‘40s have ever seen. (Possibly not to be rivaled until Richard Conte beats down Lee J. Cobb at the climax of Jules Dassin’s 1949 Thieves Highway.) The two men pummel each other with their fists until their knuckles are bloodied and broken. By the end, the winner can barely stand, dazed, hurt and looking hurt. Which is why Barden tells the bartender, “Give ‘im a minute,” before escorting him out of the bar. 

The remainder of the film plays out as most range-war dramas do. You won’t need a program to know the players or to predict the outcome. As far as the central story goes, it really is straightforward. But “psychological”? Well…

In 1947, Mitchum starred in an extremely dark Warner Brothers western titled Pursued, directed by Raoul Walsh with photography by James Wong Howe. Dark in both shadow and theme, Pursued involves the sole-survivor of a family massacred by very bad men and his desperation to avoid them in later life. In many ways, Blood on the Moon is not only considered to be a thematic follow-up to Pursued, but also RKO’s answer to the decently-received film. Like Walsh, Robert Wise took a fairly standard western story and presented it like a film noir, the hardboiled film genre that was all the rage in Post-War America. The movie is set predominantly at night, exterior day scenes are sparce and short—and RKO’s cheap rear-projection of mountain tops on close-up shots add an artificiality to the daylight. Inside the bars and cabins there are more swaths of shadow than there are characters. So much of that savage fight between Mitchum and Preston take place outside of the lantern light, with fists emerging from the black to evoke hard grunts and cries of pain from the receiver. 

Key to Blood on the Moon’s look is cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who sculpted with light and created the now-legendary fog-thick moods of Val Lewton’s masterpiece productions Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), Cat People (1942) and The Seventh Victim (1943), as well as one of the most perfect noir mysteries ever made, Out of the Past. As per film historian Eric Schaefer: “Along with Gregg Toland's work on Citizen Kane , Musuraca's cinematography for The Stranger on the Third Floor defined the visual conventions for the film noir and codified the RKO look for the 1940s. Musuraca's photography begins and ends with shadows, owing a major debt to German Expressionism, and can be seen as the leading factor in the resurrection of the style in Hollywood in the 1940s. The dominant tone in his work is black, a stylistic bias that lent itself to the film noir and the moody horror films of Val Lewton. But even within the confines of the studio system Musuraca succeeded in transposing his style to other genres. The western Blood on the Moon and George Stevens's nostalgic family drama I Remember Mama are both infused with the same shadowy visuals that Musuraca brought to the horror film in Cat People and the film noir in The Locket . Through the conventions of varying genres and the differing requirements of numerous directors, Musuraca maintained a uniform personal aesthetic.” His aesthetic has led Schaefer to further consider, “Nicholas Musuraca's name remains unjustly obscure among the ranks of cinematographers from Hollywood's golden age.”

At the time, The New York Times wrote, “Lillie Hayward's screen play, taken from a novel by Luke Short, is solidly constructed and by not over-emphasizing Jim Garry's inherent honesty, she has permitted Mr. Mitchum to illuminate a character that is reasonable and most always interesting.” The review further praises the rest of the cast, but where Bel Geddes is certainly spunky and atypical of the suffering female of the range war drama—this role is fulfilled by Phyllis Thaxter as Carol)—Mitchum and Preston manage to make the most out of what should be stock characters. To take nothing away from Short’s source novel or Hayward’s adaptation, the actors sculpt these characters from within. Preston never lets Riling’s malevolence slip to dastardly. He’s actually a pleasant sort and fairly easy going (until that “dog” comment). Riling is a man who has a great idea to strike it rich. He certainly doesn’t want or intend for anyone to get hurt, but if it happens, it happens. His love affair with Carol is as insincere and transparent as you can get, but his affection for his former partner is never in question, nor does he ever imply that Garry’s higher moral character is a sign of weakness or stupidity. There’s a genuine respect that Riling feels for Jim Garry. 

Mitchum, too, carves Garry out of deeds rather than words. We don’t know much about his past relationship with Tate, but we don’t have to. The men have a history that doesn’t need to be marred by hand-holding exposition. “Remember that time we…” The only catching up they do is to fill in the space between when they weren’t partners to their most recent meeting, and only then with a handful of words. Indeed, Garry is so tight-lipped that he doesn’t even let the audience in on whose side he’s on until he makes up his own mind. He has an altruism that doesn’t feed him during the lean times and maybe he’s even considered Riling’s Big Idea to be okay so long as no one really gets hurt. It’s not until Fred Barden and Bart are killed by actions he’s participated in, that he really starts to see how these things are fairing. The two actors can be witnessed thinking through their scenes and their character’s actions, and everything unfolds naturally. When their fight erupts, it comes with deep resentment, hurt and the need to prevail and make a point. This isn’t a typical Hollywood dust-up; these men aim to kill each other. And it’s only through outside intervention that they fail. Maybe this is the “psychological” part the critics referred to.

(Brennan, too, has a good turn midway through. His character Barden is the real deal, a tough bastard who carved his way of living out of the harshest of environments. He’s no shrinking, cowering townie from High Noon. When he receives news of his son’s death, you can see the years of regret and wasted effort welling up behind his words to Garry. Later, he definitely means it when he says, “I always wanted to shoot one of ya. And he was the handiest.”)

While it looks familiar, Blood on the Moon really is a tough film the chew through, and I don’t mean that disparagingly. It’s “leisurely pace”—to use the words most often used by its critics—is measured and steeped with a tension of upcoming violence. You feel it from the opening shot, before you even know who Jim Garry is, or what he’s doing so far out in the nothing and in the pouring rain.

Now, the movie is one of those famous copyright orphans. Having slipped through the legal cracks during RKO’s change of hands over the years, Blood on the Moon pops up on TCM every now and then—and before TCM, it was really hard to catch by chance on TV, believe me, I know—and if you dig deep enough into those 25-movie collections at the bottom of the Wal-Mart bins, you may find a cheap transfer of the public domain print, with its snowy “white dirt” noise and scratches that grow into visibly taped-up tears running through entire shots. Interestingly, the extreme high contrast of the print actually adds to the western’s noirish feel, making even the outdoor sequences on the mountains, feel constrained and claustrophobic. Certainly well worth keeping an eye-out.

Visit TCM and check out the film's trailer.

THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER (1963)

In 1963, larger-than-life-in-a-Hemingway-er-way director John Huston perpetrated a hoax on audiences far and farther. Not a huge hoax; actually more like a dirty trick. Thankfully, it was concealed inside a terrific movie.

A soft-spoken little thriller set amongst the near-royalty of the British top-most crust. After we witness a night-time murder and a name scratched from a list, we meet first Anthony Gethryn (George C. Scott), formerly of British Intelligence MI5, then unassuming writer Adrian Messenger (John Merivale). Messenger believes that a series of accidental deaths weren’t so accidental and that the men were likely murdered. He asks Gethryn to look into these seemingly unrelated events, then promptly meets his doom when his plane inexplicably (to everyone who is in the movie and not the audience) explodes. Before dying, Messenger manages to croak out a few disjointed sentences to the plane’s only survivor, Raoul Le Borg. Le Borg, as it turns out, was Gethryn’s Great War ally in the French Resistance, and he joins the former agent in his quest, now that it’s become personal. The main clue in Messenger’s utterings is the word “broom”, which Le Borg misremembers as “brush”. But who is giving the brush to whom?

Gethryn and Le Borg investigate Messenger’s list and their hunt takes them all over England, bringing them into contact with a crippled Cockney soldier (“Lost me barrel and keg [in Burma]”), a mysterious gypsy, an Italian food-cart vendor, and fox hunt protestors (“It’s the unspeakable after the uneatable!”), not to mention joining a couple of fox hunts themselves upon the Bruttenholm estate. All the while, the mysterious killer remains one step ahead of them, donning a series of disguises before revealing himself to be Kirk Douglas—er, George Brougham.

Incidentally, “Brougham” and “Bruttenholm” are both pronounced “broom”. And once we discover that old George is not only a distant heir to the Bruttenholm legacy but was also a prisoner of war in Burma with the entirety of the dead men on the list, it’s not too hard to place the rest of the pieces in the puzzle, especially when the corners are so well-defined and the size of dinner plates.

Ultimately, there’s not a lot of mystery in The List of Adrian Messenger, but there is an awful lot of fun. With Scott as our guide through the foggy underbelly of England to the magnificent grounds of the Bruttenholm estate, we meet a wonderful assortment of characters and red herrings. The opening credits boast a lot of names—Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum—and they’re present in the film in disguises, just like Douglas’ Brougham. In the film’s post-script coda, all the disguised cameo characters unmask themselves and reveal their famous faces. And we all laugh and delight in the trickery.

To modern eyes, the made-up characters are extremely easy to spot. Douglas’ first quick-change in a rest room, slipping out sclera contacts and replacing a bald cap, is still a marvelously-staged sequence, and was likely quite a shock to ‘60s audiences. Now that every film fan is world-weary, delighting in proclaiming “that’s so fake!” at every movie’s slight-of-hand, the masquerades designed by Bud Westmore in Messenger will be unlikely to impress. But if you’re heart isn’t two-sizes too-small, you’ll let it go and just have a good time.

But here’s where Huston’s hoax really comes into play. As it turns out, his trickery was not in the disguises but the disguised. With the sole exception of Robert Mitchum playing a sinister soldier, none of the famous actors are in the movie. They’re only in the unmasking sequence! Accounts differ as to who played whom and to what extent, but character actor Dave Willock definitely doubled for Douglas during some of the lengthier disguise sequences while the rest were likely portrayed by Space Patrol’s Jan Merlin. In fact, Merlin’s novel, Shooting Montezuma, involves the making of a movie where disguise and deception plays a key role. To add insult to injury, the legendary Paul Frees provided the voices for Sinatra, Curtis and Lancaster.

In the end, Huston makes monkeys out of us all twice. It’s up to the deceived to decide if it was a low-down rotten trick or a mastery of public relations. After all, he didn’t have to pay exorbitant fees for his cameo-ees, outside of a couple hours’ worth of scratch for the masking and reveal, and he still got some glamorous mugs for the curtain call and the advertising. You can’t say that Sinatra or Lancaster aren’t in the movie, just not in the way you expect. Not a rare rug-pull then and it’s still used today. The “Famous Face on the Box” Deception.

But that doesn’t make The List of Adrian Messenger any less a joy to watch than do the visible wires attached to the actors during the climactic fox hunt. It’s all Hollywood magic trickery, from the exciting but predictable plot (based on the 1961 book by Philip MacDonald) to the bombastic acting to Scott’s amused grin permanently-affixed beneath his impressive moustache. It’s a Golden Age film for an audience growing more and more sophisticated with each release.

Now, the usual sturm and drang: The List of Adrian Messenger can only be found on the Warner Brothers Collection DVD-R-on-Demand service, unless you want to try and catch it on cable (TCM runs it frequently). It might be one movie where the remastering is to its detriment. The clarity of the wires and seams (both in terms of make-up and plot threads) are made too visible by technology.

A KILLER IN THE FAMILY (1983)

Here’s an unusual little movie for you: a made-for-TV true-crime drama starring Robert Mitchum, The Rockford Files’ Stuart Margolin, and a roster of up-and-comers including Eric Stoltz, Amanda Wyss, Catherine Mary Stewart and a guy we like to call James Spader. Shockingly violent for its time, A Killer in the Family wastes no time in getting the main characters into motion and on the road.

Serving two consecutive life sentences for murder, Gary Tison tries to be a good dad to his three sons, Donny (Spader), Ricky (Stoltz) and Ray (James at 15’s Lance Kerwin). He gives them sage advice and is proud of the pre-law student Donny. But he lets slip that it’s dangerous in prison and that his life is in danger from a very large and tough inmate. Not that they should worry about that, though.

It’s not too long before Ray and Ricky hatch a plan to break the old man out of jail, and Donny joins the gang to make sure no one gets hurt on either side of the bust-out. He is the smart one, after all. Coming with them is Gary’s cell-mate Randy Greenawalt, also serving life for murder. The break goes more or less smoothly, dumping the quintet of fugitives into the middle of the desert in a heap of a car. After sustaining a flat, they flag another car down, containing the Lyons family, including their months-old infant. After switching cars, Gary and Randy make the decision to murder the whole family and eliminate the witnesses—much to Donny’s horror.

It’s here that the movie takes a turn from gritty road movie to a grim battle of wills between father and son—but not sons. Ricky and Ray are trapped in inescapable indecision. They love their father, they hate what he’s doing, they’re afraid he’ll kill them, they’re afraid he’ll be killed, they’re afraid to be caught—so they slip simply into “tell me what to do” mode without argument. And it’s clear that Gary wishes Donny would fall into step with them. But not because he wants to keep them safe. Gone is the concerned dad. He didn’t break out with this hardened criminal. Somehow, Gary Tison left the human side of himself back in prison. And when it’s revealed that the threat to his life was just a manipulation, we’re left to wonder, like Donny, if the human side had ever been there.

Experience will tell you that no true crime movie is going to end with hugs and puppies. If you remember anything at all about the Tison crime spree it’s that the old man didn’t get out alive—not that he got what he deserved, either—and that a landmark court case was decided by the Supreme Court in which none other than Sandra Day O’Connor cast the deciding decision that those whose decisions lead to capital murder, even if not by their hands, make them just as culpable for the death penalty, thereby sealing Ricky and Ray’s fate alongside Greenawalt (who was executed, though the boys had their sentences commuted to life in prison). This is all detailed in the film in a post-script, but it’s the central relationship between Gary and Donny that is the most fascinating, largely because so little of it is “on the page” so to speak. There are heated arguments and shouting matches between the characters, to be sure, but so much of the conflict exist in the unspoken interaction between Spader and the veteran Mitchum. A Killer in the Family was for all intents and purposes Spader’s first starring role and it would be another three years before he broke out into leading man status in Tuff Turf, made palatable by him and Robert Downey, Jr., alone. But here in this little TV movie, Spader more than holds his own in scenes with Mitchum—who was not intimidating in real life but never played a character who backed down easily—and you can see so much of the same ice in both actors’ eyes, as if they really were genetically linked.

For that reason alone, A Killer in the Family is worth running down. Fortunately, TCM and Warner Brothers have made it available on DVD-R—a trend I hope catches on but becomes more affordable. The crummy TV-print I watched had jumps and mis-starts and abrupt leaps to commercial break, which doesn’t strike this expert as the best way to see anything.

Is A Killer in the Family a classic? Not really. But it is Mitchum’s most morally-revolting character since Cape Fear (though not as deranged as he was in Night of the Hunter). Richard Heffron’s direction keeps Robert Aller’s screenplay moving along at a good clip. There are no weak links in the acting and it’s nice to see Nightmare on Elm Street’s Amanday Wyss focusing her little eyes in anger again in a small but very important scene that she does her best to own.

HDYEStM: HOLIDAY AFFAIR (1949)

Like It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, both undeservedly ignored upon their initial releases but going on to become holiday television staples, Holiday Affair was similarly ignored at the box office but hasn’t quite—yet—become a beloved classic of the most wonderful time of the year. TCM has been giving it plenty of support these past few years, but audiences haven’t yet pinned their stockings to it the way they have other Christmas favorites. Which is a shame because in a few ways it’s the best of the bunch.

Starring Robert Mitchum, taking a break from his usual amiable tough-guy roles, Holiday Affair stars with a fateful meeting between a department store clerk and a “secret shopper” (eleven years away from her life-changing shower in Psycho)—more or less a consumer spy for rival department stores, buying merchandise for comparison prices, etc. When Steve catches young miss Connie Ennis in the act, his duty is to the store, to turn her in to the store detective, which would cost her her job. Instead, upon learning that she’s a single mother (thanks to World War II), with a young son to support, Steve turns a blind eye. Which results to him losing his job during the holiday season. And, of course, it also leads to a series of guilt-fueled run-ins on Connie’s part, to make sure that his act of kindness doesn’t go unrewarded. It also leads to a budding romance, which is complicated by her engagement to Carl (professional “also-ran” Wendell Corey who doesn’t have a lot going against him except for the fact that he isn’t Robert Mitchum). In the meantime, Connie’s son, Timmy (Gordon Gebert, turning in a surprisingly non-aggravating child-actor performance, and whose high-pitched voice is actually more endearing than grating), has taken a shine to Steve, connecting to him as a better ersatz father figure than bland-ol’-agreeable Carl. This all culminates in a series of genuinely funny and touching scenes that encompass everything good and magical about the holidays—stuff we’ve seen countless times over the years but seeming more sincere here. Holiday Affair, in truth, is utterly without irony, which is the most refreshing thing about it.

There are dozens of wonderful touches throughout—Steve spends his lunch hour in the Central Park Zoo feeding the sea lions and tending to “an orphan squirrel”; another visitor to the zoo is a little girl on roller skates who has a balloon tied to the top of her wool cap; Harry Morgan plays a befuddled policeman—and the relationships come off as realistic and caring. Steve doesn’t mean to come between Connie and Carl, but it happens. Timmy doesn’t mean to jeopardize his mother’s job, but it happens. Connie isn’t playing hard to get with either Steve or Carl, but is honestly conflicted about her feelings for both—all stemming from her lingering grief over the loss of her soldier husband. In fact, the resolutions of all these plot lines is handled not only with dignity for all involved (not to mention, in some cases, hilarity), but maturity. Carl is not an unctuous villain out to suppress Connie and Timmy but really does care for them—which seems like an almost foreign ideal compared to the “other man” character in modern romantic comedies—and it’s almost a shock to find yourself taking his side during several scenes!

But in the end, the show belongs to Mitchum. His charisma carries out but he does his generous best to allow Leigh and Gebert their side of the screen as well. Nothing about Holiday Affair feels forced or saccharine or cloying. It’s “sweet” in the best sense of the word, but it never hurts your teeth. Unlike, say, the Richard Attenborough version of Miracle on 34^th Street, you won’t be reaching for a dose of insulin by the time the credits roll.

The real surprise is how little regard it was given in 1949, although perhaps RKO’s marketing of it as they did—with a mis-leading poster depicting it as another Mitchum noir—might have had something to do with its initial failure. The disrespect followed it for more than fifty years, as Holiday Affair was long unavailable for viewing save for its annual TCM screening and a blurry VHS. These days, largely thanks to TCM, a DVD can be had with its glorious black and white image restored. This writer would recommend picking it up and pairing it with Barbara Robinson’s 1972 novel The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to start a new family tradition.