Films

Don't let the title scare you off: The Fiend Who Walked the West is neither a routine sagebrusher nor a horror quickie but a taut Western resetting of that classic crime chiller of the late Forties, Kiss of Death, which introduced Richard Widmark to the screen as a giggling, psychopathic murderer. In the present version, ophic Robert Evans plays the Widmark role. Serving a short term in an Army prison for pouring booze into an Indian girl whom he later attacked and gaily tortured to death, Evans becomes chummy with cellmate Hugh O'Brian, an upstanding type, who was apprehended in a nice clean bank robbery (his part of the loot was to pay for medical aid for his ailing, pregnant wife, see?). When Evans insinuates that Mrs. O'Brian may be shacking up with a sugar daddy while her spouse is doing time, Mr. O'Brian thrashes him soundly. The pummeled psycho, who has a loathing for being touched, swears a vendetta and upon his release from prison forces O'Brian's bedridden wife into a miscarriage, picks up the stashed-away funds, does in an elderly, avaricious woman with an arrow and dispatches her con-niving son with a shot in the back – all with loving care and a great deal of gusto. At this point, O'Brian – as the nearest acquaintance of the unbalanced assassin – is given a provisional release to collect evidence that will convict Evans and send him to the gallows. The cat-and-mouse affair that follows is played for every bit of tension director Gordon Douglas could muster. He's mustered a heap.

Indiscreet is Norman Krasna's careful reworking of his play Kind Sir, laid in London's May fair instead of New York – which for some reason makes the practically weightless vehicle psychologically more acceptable. It is the story of how an American banker-diplomat (Cary Grant) falls in love with an English actress (Ingrid Bergman) but stoutly maintains he can't ever wed her because he is already irrevocably hitched. Presumably they live in sin (one never can be sure about these subjective surmises), but anyway they have good times going to the ballet, the Royal Naval College's Painted Hall and the Garrick Club, giving one another expensive presents (she gives him a left-hand violin, he buys her a Duke's yacht so she can go sailing), and acting sometimes like a pair of happy adolescents. When she discovers he's not married she's thoroughly peeved and some very funny antics ensue. Grant and Miss Bergman complement one another superbly and get strong support from Phyllis Calvert and Cecil Parker as the actress' sister and brother-in-law. Direction by Stanley Donen (who also produced) keeps things moving in a cheery, sprightly way, which is exactly what Krasna wanted.

What comes close to saving the film version of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead from being a run-of-the-kill Let's Go Get Us Some Japs opera is Aldo Ray's unilinear, uncompromisingly evil performance as Sergeant Croft, one of the foulest, most fascinating rats in modern fiction. Aldo's platoon does get plenty of Japs, hurling hand grenades four or five hundred yards and not protesting very vehemently when their sadistic Sarge murders prisoners in cold blood, later collecting their gold teeth. A bit of political philosophy is inserted by Raymond Massey as a jackass general who argues with his aide (Cliff Robertson) about the virtues of absolute power and who sends Robertson on a mission with Aldo's boys to get him knocked off for his insolence. The screenplay, by Denis and Terry Sanders, is pretty hack, considering the gutsy material they were working from, and Raoul Walsh's direction is imaginative enough when the platoon is in action but somehow stifled at other times. Robert Gist is fine as a cynical, tobacco-spitting GI, nightclub comic Joey Bishop is effective as religion-sensitive Private Roth and the kiddies will enjoy seeing all those Japs blown up. Lili St. Cyr and Barbara Nichols are dragged in briefly by their left heels – for the newspaper ads, apparently, because they sure don't propel the action.

Director Vincente Minnelli sets a peppy pace in the uproarious The Reluctant Debufanfe, which takes place in London during the coming-out season. This is the painful time when society's well-to-do thrust their callow daughters at panting young men at myriad balls and parties but worry like hell after midnight lest the misses' hot young blue blood plus all this proximity will get them into trouble. Besides, for the papas there are weeks on end of daily hangovers and no sleep. Rex Harrison plays bewildered, helpless Lord Jimmy Broadbent whose daughter (Sandra Dee), just arrived from America, must undergo this ordeal. Pert, resourceful Kay Kendall is his wife and Sandra's stepmother. They plan to marry the kid off to someone classy like Guardsman David Fenner (Peter Myers), but Sandra, bored by cotillions and creeps, likes American drummer David Parkson (John Saxon). The duplication of Davids causes an enormous mixup, with the near-hysterical lord and lady finally acting as voyeurs in their own home to protect their chee-yild from the assault of the drummer. The aforementioned people and Angela Lansbury (as a pushy mother) are all pretty funny, but Harrison and Myers are simply superb; the script, adapted by William Douglas Home from his Broadway play, affords these gifted performers one fat opportunity after another; and the result is a very funny picture.

O Lordy, what a beating those two boys take trying to escape the Georgia sheriff, his posse and their ravening hounds in Stanley Kramer's stark, blunt, tense The Defiant Ones. One is black, one white. Tony Curtis, nose-puttied and ear-thickened to play John "Joker" Jackson, a tough, bitter Southerner, is shackled by four feet of chain (the caprice of a warden with a sense of humor) to Sidney Poitier as Noah Cullen, a tough, resentful colored man, but with a nobility of character Curtis can't dig. Escaping in the rain from a crashed prison truck, the pair of felons gallop in tandem through the wilderness, buffet across a fierce river, claw out of a slimy pit, nearly get lynched, slog through swamps, sprint heartbreakingly after a train. Even though their desperate teamwork has an inspirational quality, both wear their hostility – toward society and toward the opposite color – so close to the surface that they mutually hate while they help. Respite from flight is offered by a widowed farm woman who gives them tools to bang off the bracelets and dallies briefly with the fevered Curtis. Then, chained by respect rather than links, they go to their inevitable end. A gripping chase story that is somewhat allegorical but decently free of overt preachments.