John Sturges

John Sturges directed this taut adaptation of Jack Higgins' suspense novel about an attempted kidnapping of Winston Churchill by the German high command during World War II. When it is discovered that in November 1943 Winston Churchill is scheduled to spend a weekend in a country home in Norfolk, the Germans plan to kidnap him. Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasence), under orders from Hitler, assigns Nazi colonel Max Radl (Robert Duvall) the chore of sneaking the English-hating Irishman Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland) into the British countryside and arranging for a 16-man task force to be parachuted into the English country town of Sudley Constable, under the auspices of Colonel Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine). The efficient planning works too well, and before long their exactingly perfect timetable begins to come apart. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The US title of this Italian-Spanish-French coproduction is Chino, in deference to the character played by star Charles Bronson. Having long suffered the stigma of being part-Indian, New Mexico horse breeder Chino Valdez (Bronson) wants nothing more than to be left alone with his beloved horses. Even so, Chino opens his heart and his home to teenaged runaway Jamie Wagner (Vincent Van Patten), who becomes his protégé. But things take an unpleasant turn when the formerly taciturn Chino falls in love with Louise (Jill Ireland, the half-sister of antagonistic rancher Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi, replacing the original choice for the role, Lino Ventura). This film was based on The Valdez Horses, a novel by Lee Hoffman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this tense and suspenseful science fiction thriller, Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) is the ground commander in Houston who monitors the space mission of three astronauts. Buzz (Gene Hackman), Jim (Richard Crenna) and Clayton (James Franciscus) have their lives put in jeopardy when the oxygen supply in the space capsule drops. Ted Dougherty (David Janssen) is sent to try and rescue the doomed astronauts. When it becomes clear there is not enough oxygen, it is suggested that one of the men commit suicide to allow the other two to live. Jim, the unit commander, makes an excuse to spacewalk. Under the guise of making repairs, he cuts himself loose from the life line and drifts away into the cold darkness of space. Russian cosmonauts race against time to try and save their American counterparts. An Oscar-winner for "Best Special Visual Effects," the film also picked up nominations for "Best Cinematography" and "Best Sound." It was later retitled Space Travelers. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

John Sturges directed this sequel to his Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which is more of a melancholy character study than an action Western. The Edward Anhalt screenplay (based on Douglas D. Martin's Tombstone's Epitaph) traces Wyatt Earp's (James Garner) moral decline from a lawman with high ideals to a mean-spirited vigilante bent on personal revenge. Ironically, Doc Holliday (Jason Robards), an admitted lawless gambler, reacts to Earp's vengeful turnabout by becoming the moral force that Earp has rejected. When Earp's brothers are killed by goons employed by Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan), Earp becomes obsessed with vengeance and organizes a posse to track down the killers. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In The Hallelujah Trail, Lee Remick plays temperance leader Cora Templeton Massingale, who is determined to halt a shipment of whiskey headed for Denver. The shipment is being escorted by the US cavalry, under the guidance of Col. Thadeus Gearhardt (Burt Lancaster). As the Denver miners thirstily await the precious booze, Gearhardt must fend off not only Cora and her minions, but a bibulous tribe of Sioux warriors, headed by Chief Walks-Stooped-Over (Martin Landau)-not to mention an outsized sandstorm. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Certain film historians are perpetually amazed that the doggedly unappetizing Laurence Harvey became a major film star. In Girl Named Tamiko, Harvey is once more the embittered heel, this time playing a Eurasian photographer who pretends to be in love with numerous American ladies. His only true interest is obtaining American citizenship, something most of his erstwhile amours find out all too late. Harvey's latest prospect is Martha Hyer; his true love, however, is innocent Japanese girl France Nuyen, the Tamiko of the title. Stuck with a cold fish for a leading man, producers Hal Wallis and Paul Newman and director John Sturges work overtime to get the audience to "pull" for the luckless Ms. Nuyen. A Girl Named Tamiko was one of several early-1960s Paramount films shot on location in the Orient--though certainly not the best of the group. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

There's always something simmering beneath the quaint and placid surface of small-town New England lives -- and that includes the usual maladies of alcoholism, rape, and suicide. At least this is the case if you go by the tortuous tale told in By Love Possessed, a Peyton Place knock-off, directed with glossy intensity by the usually reliable action director John Sturges (Bad Day at Black Rock and The Magnificent Seven). The tale chronicles the miserable lives of Arthur Winner (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), Julius Penrose (Jason Robards Jr.), and Noah Tuttle (Thomas Mitchell) -- legal counseling partners in a law firm that could probably use some good counseling themselves. Arthur's wife Clarissa (Barbara Bel Geddes) has nothing but contempt for poor Arthur because she considers their marriage as more a business deal than a love match. Then there's Julius's wife Marjorie (Lana Turner) who has become a full-time alcoholic ever since Julius has been rendered impotent by an automobile accident. Arthur and Marjorie's frustrations both gel into an illicit romantic union. Arthur certainly needs some kind of diversion since his son Warren (George Hamilton) refuses to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming a lawyer. As if that weren't enough, he also refuses to marry Helen Detweiller (Susan Kohner), the girl Arthur wants him to marry because she is rolling in money and is also the ward of Noah. Instead, Warren runs off with the local town whore (Yvonne Craig), who accuses Warren of raping her. Despondent, Helen resorts to desperate measures when she is rejected, and Arthur realizes that he must begin to reconsider his life choices. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Action director John Sturges had a few good films behind him (Bad Day at Black Rock, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral) and a few more to come (The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven) when he put together this colorful story of wartime romance. In addition to his talents as a director, this saga of an American Captain stationed with his Allied command in Burma during World War II is helped by a stellar cast. Frank Sinatra is Captain Tom Reynolds who is supposed to be battling the Japanese in Burma but gets side-tracked when his unit and his Kachin allies are attacked by Chiang Kai-shek's forces. In supporting roles are Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen (about to make his mark on the big screen), Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford, Brian Donlevy, and several others. After General Chiang's attack, Captain Reynolds leads the remainder of his men into Nationalist Chinese territory for a fast retaliation -- basically a wholesale slaughter. He is called on the carpet for this action later, and his would-be love, Carla Vesari (Lollobrigida) is suddenly faced with a decision to stay with her current man (Paul Heinreid) or take off for the unknown USA with the American Captain. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Ernest Hemingway's short novel The Old Man and the Sea was probably unfilmable to begin with, but this didn't stop John Sturges from trying to cinematize Hemingway's tight little character study. Spencer Tracy is the Old Man, a Cuban fisherman who tries to haul in a huge fish that he catches far from shore. Tracy's tiny boat is besieged by sharks and by natural elements, but the Old Man stubbornly sticks to his job. In the end, the fish is nothing more than a skeleton, and the Old Man returns to his tiny hovel to "dream about the lions." Spencer Tracy may have been dreaming about the Oscar when he agreed to make this film, but Old Man and the Sea is defeated by pretentiousness and by several unconvincing "sea" scenes shot in a studio tank (even though both Tracy and director Sturges underwent incredible hardships filming in a real boat on the real ocean). Old Man and the Sea was remade as a 1990 made-for-TV movie starring Anthony Quinn, which compounded the mistakes made in the Tracy version by grafting on a pointless love story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It's one of the sad details of John Sturges' life that he never thought much of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Perhaps he just resented the fact that it was a more popular and successful film than Hour of the Gun, the film account of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday's friendship that he produced as well as directed a decade later. Sturges always regarded Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as a Hal B. Wallis film on which he was just a hired hand, without a lot of control -- the script wasn't his and the project wasn't his, but he did his job well and then some, pulling out two of the more complex performances ever given by Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas, the former playing Wyatt Earp, as a frontier lawman who surprises himself with the violence that his decency can't prevent and, in fact, seems to instigate; and the latter as Doc Holliday, an embittered, self-destructive outcast, betrayed by his own body and the disease he can't shake, who finds a streak of decency in himself just large enough to give him a sliver of common ground with Earp. They're excellent on their own and off the scale when they're together in the same scene or shot. Additionally, Sturges set up some shots -- including a scene early in the movie between Lancaster and Douglas in a barber shop, involving a mirror, the cowboys' invasion of Dodge City and Lancaster's breaking up of their revels, and the build-up to the final shoot-out -- that are as good as any in the Western genre. And the final shoot-out, though hardly accurate historically, was about the best staged in any Western ever seen up to that time. Moreover, the supporting performances are mostly first-rate, from George Mathews to Jo Van Fleet, the latter giving a portrayal that is the perfect match for Douglas' doom-laden, self-tortured Doc Holliday, and Dennis Hopper gives one of his better performances from his early career as Billy Clanton, which anticipated his work in Curtis Harrington's Night Tide. That said, the movie does sacrifice a lot of historical accuracy; among many, many problems in this area, Wyatt Earp was nothing like the way he is portrayed in the script or by Lancaster (though he is so compelling in the part that one almost wishes it were true). Also, Rhonda Fleming's character is a somewhat awkward fit; she isn't essential to the plot, though Sturges does as much and as well with her as one could hope, and more than one would expect given the poor showing that most actresses (apart from Van Fleet here and Anne Francis in Bad Day at Black Rock) get in Sturges' movies. The title ballad, heard at various points in the movie as sung by Frankie Laine, may seem dated and hokey, but it does hold together a dramatic arc that stretches across months of time, three towns, and several vignettes that are often only linked in their backgrounds, and it is a very haunting tune as well. Sturges' subsequent film about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Hour of the Gun, done ten years later through his own production company, is more realistic and accurate in its historical portrayals, and less romantic and dramatic, but also less accessible. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

This powerfully tense, fast-paced suspense drama also yields a grim social message about racial prejudice. Spencer Tracy is John J. MacReedy, a one-armed stranger who comes to the tiny town of Black Rock one hot summer day in 1945, the first time the train has stopped there in years. He looks for both a hotel room and a local Japanese farmer named Komoko, but his inquiries are greeted at first with open hostility, then with blunt threats and harassment, and finally with escalating violence. MacReedy soon realizes that he will not be allowed to leave Black Rock; town boss Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who had Komoko killed because of his hatred of the Japanese, has also marked MacReedy for death. MacReedy must battle town thugs, a treacherous local woman (Anne Francis), and finally Smith himself to stay alive. The entire cast is flawless, especially Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin as the mean-spirited town bullies, and the relentlessly paced action never eclipses the film's sobering themes. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

The infamous Benedict Arnold affair is the basis of the lively MGM costumer The Scarlet Coat. Arnold is played with suitably subtle menace by Robert Douglas, while his principal co-conspirator, Major John Andre, is essayed by Michael Wilding. The largely speculative storyline concerns the efforts of one Major John Boulton (Cornel Wilde), a colonial counterspy, to foil Arnold's plans. Thanks to some deft scriptwriting, the much-abused Major Andre emerges as the most sympathetic character in the film, if only because he is willing to face the consequences for his actions. Less sympathetic is George Sanders in another of his patented "cad" roles, while Anne Francis is the spunky (if unnecessary) heroine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The answer is: A turgid melodrama. The question: What is Jeopardy? Barbara Stanwyck stars as a suburbanite on a Mexican vacation with her husband (Barry Sullivan) and son (Lee Aaker). The threesome runs afoul of escape convict Ralph Meeker. Stanwyck's dilemma: Attempting to rescue her husband from drowning, while staving off the carnal demands of Meeker, who holds Stanwyck and her son at gunpoint. Jeopardy is on and off in only 69 minutes, but 64 of those minutes seem far longer. Trivia note: When dramatized on Lux Radio Theater, Jeopardy costarred child actor Harry Shearer, later a comic regular on Saturday Night Live. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide