Steven Darrell Movies

This unexceptional adventure yarn by director Jacques Tourneur is set in the French Sudan during the beginning of World War II, when the French Foreign Legion was doing battle with the Tuaregs. In order to bring a halt to the hostilities, a powerful Muslim religious leader has to make it to Timbuktu, the center of the conflict. In the meantime, an American merchant-adventurer (Victor Mature) is helping out the French commander of the garrison at Timbuktu, and falling in love with the commander's wife (Yvonne De Carlo). Between the forbidden romance, the journey of the Muslim leader, and the angry Tuaregs, there are no dull moments even if the tension is not exactly unbearable. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Rory Calhoun is Utah Blaine in this pinch-penny Sam Katzman-produced western. Adapted from a novel by Louis L'Amour, the story concerns the efforts of gunslinger Blaine to save a group of ranchers from an outlaw gang. When one the ranchers is killed, Utah finds himself half-owner of a valuable spread, placing him directly in the line of fire along with his attractive "business partner" Angie Kinyon (Susan Cummings). Ray Teal is all snarls as the outlaw leader, while former boxer Max Baer Sr. does a brief turn as a slow-witted hooligan. Like most Sam Katzman efforts, Utah Blaine turned a tidy profit for Katzman's home base of Columbia. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A tall horseman (Jock Mahoney) rides into the small town of Arborville, deserted except for redheaded Jody (Luana Patten), who's uncomfortable about it. Outside town, the rider finds all the townspeople working on an oil rig on a small ranch. They're led by Cal Moore (Charles McGraw), and include brothers Aaron (Claude Akins) and Adam Grant (Lee Van Cleef). The stranger asks a few questions, rousing the ire of the hot-tempered brothers, who toss him into a pool of oil. Glossy black but unconcerned, the stranger ambles out and rides back to town. Jody helps him clean up, so he tells her he has come to meet an old Indian who lived on the property where the oil well now is; he's clearly surprised when she refers to the old man, now missing, as Joe Dakota. Meanwhile, the townspeople gather, and we learn that Cal is a newcomer to town, an oil expert who decided to cast his lot with Arborville. We also learn that something happened to the old Indian, and that the townspeople were involved. The townspeople later are horrified when the stranger announces that he owns the land where the oil well is, and that his name is Joe Dakota.

Later, Jody comes to see Joe at the ranch, and reveals that the old man was her friend; she often came out to visit him. Joe tells her that the old man, whom he'd known well some years before, had simply borrowed his name. Jody says that the last time she'd visited the old Indian, he'd been drunk and had attacked (but not raped) her. Egged on by Cal, the townspeople had lynched him. The next day, Joe hangs a noose on the Arborville town sign, and puts a cross on the old man's grave. He explains that he was a captain in the infantry, and the old man was the finest scout he'd ever known. Everyone gathers at the oil well, where Joe explains that it was Cal who had attacked Jody, framing the old man for the crime to get the town to lynch him. He and Cal have a fight, but the townspeople, ashamed of what they've done, side with Joe.

Universal-International turned out quite a number of well-down, medium-budget westerns in the late 1950s, often starring Audie Murphy. This time, however, the lead is former stuntman Jock Mahoney, whom the studio was trying to groom as a star; his easy-going but very masculine personality made him ideal for roles such as this. The movie, co-written by Perry Mason's "Hamilton Burger," (William Talman), seems to owe something to Bad Day at Black Rock, but the plot works well in this context, too. There are good small details, like a wine store instead of a saloon, the town's beloved water trough, and the stranger's midnight shave. Richard H. Bartlett's direction is as low-key as the movie -- scarcely a shot is fired, and few wear guns -- and as likable. Joe Dakota is "just another movie," but it's a very good example of its long-gone kind. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

A small Kansas town braces itself for the arrival of the first Texas trail herd. The marshal (Robert Ryan) expects trouble from the herd drivers, who'll be thirsty and lascivious after months on the trail. The town's saloon owner (Robert Middleton), anticipating a business boom, wants to remove the marshal and thus leave the town wide open. The marshal can expect little help from his deputy (Jeffrey Hunter), whose father was killed by the lawman. The Proud Ones builds slowly to an explosive climax, in which the deputy chooses the right side and Law & Order is maintained. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Zachary Scott heads the cast of the heavily plotted western Treasure of Ruby Hills. The son of a notorious outlaw, Haney (Scott) intends to settle down peacefully in Soledad, Arizona. This proves difficult when Haney finds himself in the middle of a violent feud over water rights. The heavy of the piece is ranch foreman Doran (Dick Foran), who plays both sides down the middle in hopes of grabbing control of the water for himself. Carole Mathews co-stars as Sherry, Haney's sweetheart, while Lola Albright steals every scene she's in as the voluptuous May. Treasure of Ruby Hills was lensed by Allied Artists in the same locations later utilized by the studio's "Bowery Boys" opus Dig That Uranium. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Screenwriter Philip Dunne doubled as director on the elaborate filmed biography Prince of Players. Richard Burton stars as the eminent American tragedian Edwin Booth, whose life and career is thrown into turmoil after his younger brother John Wilkes Booth (John Derek) assassinates Abraham Lincoln. The film begins as the younger Edwin assists his alcoholic, ailing father Junius Brutus Booth (Raymond Massey) during a tour of the American hinterlands. When Junius dies just before a performance, Edwin goes on in his stead, thereby launching his own starring career. In danger of becoming as much of a drunk and carouser as his father, Edwin eventually pulls himself together, but his brother's act of violence turns the audience against the name of Booth. Almost booed offstage during a performance of Hamlet, Edwin stands his ground, finally earning the respect of his rowdy audience. Not exactly packed with fast action, Prince of Players will appeal most to lovers of theater in general and Shakespeare in particular. Highlight: Richard Burton and Eva LeGalleine performing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in the courtyard of a brothel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A man with a strangely misshapen face wanders out of the desert near a small town and falls to the ground dead. The county sheriff (Nestor Paiva) tentatively identifies the dead man as Eric Jacobs, a laboratory assistant to Professor Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), a research scientist living a few miles out in the desert. But there's something strange about Jacobs; his facial features and bodily extremities are distorted to a point where he's barely recognizable. The sheriff calls in Dr. Matt Hastings (John Agar), the local physician, who makes a diagnosis of acromegalia, a glandular disorder that affects the body's growth. He also tells the sheriff that it can't possibly be acromegalia, because symptoms as pronounced as those he sees in this case take years to develop, and the man was in perfect health just three months earlier. Hastings refuses to believe the professor's account of Jacobs' rapid deterioration, but the sheriff takes the word of the scientist. Back in his laboratory, Deemer continues his work, going over tests of a chemical on various animals, all of which are jumbo-sized, including guinea pigs the size of rabbits, baby mice the size of full-grown rats, and a tarantula three feet long. Suddenly, the professor is attacked by his assistant (Eddie Parker), whose face and hands are distorted in the same manner as Jacobs, and who injects the helpless scientist with the experimental chemical before collapsing dead. A fire starts during the attack and in the confusion, the tarantula's glass cage is broken and it escapes the burning laboratory, wandering out into the desert. Weeks go by, and a new assistant, Stephanie "Steve" Clayton (Mara Corday), arrives to begin work for the professor. When Hastings gives her a ride to Deemer's home, the scientist explains to the doctor that he's been working on a radioactive nutrient, that, if perfected, could feed the entire world's population. He also says that Eric Jacobs made the mistake of testing the chemical on himself and it caused the disease that killed him. Hastings and Steve begin a romance, unaware that wandering around the desert is the tarantula from Deemer's laboratory, now grown to the size of an automobile and getting bigger with each passing day. Soon livestock and then people begin disappearing, and the sheriff is at a loss to explain any of it, or the one clue left behind in each case: large pools of what seems to be some kind of venom next to the stripped skeletons of the victims. Hastings takes some of the material in for a test; meanwhile, Steve notices that Deemer is going through some bizarre changes. His mood has darkened and his features now appear to be changing, as the acromegalia, caused by the injection, manifests itself. Hastings learns that one of the professor's test animals was a tarantula, which was presumed destroyed. When he learns that the pools near the deaths are composed of spider venom -- equivalent to what it would take many thousands of spiders to generate -- he's certain that the tarantula from the laboratory survived. By this time, the title creature is bigger than a house and ravaging the countryside, killing everything in its path and knocking down power lines and telephone poles as it moves. Hastings arrives just in time to rescue Steve from the attacking creature, which destroys Deemer's house and kills the professor. The sheriff and the highway patrol are unable to slow the creature, now the size of a mountain and moving at 45 miles an hour, even with automatic rifle fire, as it follows the road through the desert toward the town. Even an attempt to blow it up with dynamite fails when the monster walking right through the blast. Finally, the creature is poised to attack the town, when jets scrambled from a nearby Air Force base (led by a young Clint Eastwood, barely recognizable behind an oxygen mask) swoop in. When rockets fail to divert the monster from its path, the jets roar in for a second pass and drop enough napalm to incinerate the creature. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The 3D melodrama Dangerous Mission starts off with a bang when innocent Piper Laurie inadvertently witnesses the murder of her gangster boss. Though she doesn't get a particularly good look at the killer, she knows she's dead meat if she remains in town. Thus, Laurie skeedaddles to Montana's Glacier National Park, where most of the film takes place. Following her westward are Victor Mature and Vincent Price. One of these men is a federal agent, bound and determined to bring Laurie back to the East to testify; the other is the murderer, who intends to silence our heroine for keeps. Laurie doesn't know which is which, but the audience does. A bit poky at times (thanks in part to the uninspired editing of Gene Palmer), Dangerous Mission roars into life during a mid-film forest fire and a climactic chase through the glacier fields. Featured in the cast are William Bendix as a Montana ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though Cannibal Attack is officially an entry in Columbia's "Jungle Jim" B-movie series, star Johnny Weissmuller is cast as "himself", rather than his usual Jungle Jim role. The plot finds Weissmuller investigating a series of cargo and cobalt thefts. The villains are a group of sinister foreign spies with Slavic accents, who are being aided and abetted by Luora (Judy Walsh), daughter of a cannibal princess. To expedite the bad guys' dirty work, tribal leader Rovak (Bruce Cowling) has his men disguise themselves as crocodiles. That's right, crocodiles. The rest of the picture is on an equal level of credibility. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The "regeneration" of blacklisted director Edward Dmytryk was expedited when he was hired by producer Stanley Kramer to helm the location-filmed melodrama The Sniper. In the interests of political expediency, Dmytrk was required to direct Adolphe Menjou, one of the most virulent Red-baiters of the HUAC hearings. Shorn of his trademarked mustache, and with his famous expensive wardrobe replaced by a humdrum business suit, Menjou turns in one of his best performances as a world-weary San Francisco detective assigned to track down a mad sniper. From the beginning, the audience knows that the criminal is psycho Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz), who is possessed of the notion that he must kill every beautiful brunette woman who crosses his path. Some audience sympathy is elicited by Miller's pathetic attempts to rid himself of his obsession, but this never gets in the way of the film's suspense. The excellent supporting cast includes Richard Kiley as a police psychiatrist, Marie Windsor as Miller's first victim, and Mabel Paige as the sniper's snoopy landlady. An unbilled Wally Cox shows up briefly. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sword of Monte Cristo picks up where the Dumas original leaves off. The titular sword is not only valuable in itself, but also provides clues to the whereabouts of the Count of Monte Cristo's missing fortune. The conniving chief minister of France (Berry Kroeger) will stop at nothing to gain possession of the sword. He is challenged by an officer (George Montgomery) loyal to emperor Louis Napoleon (David Bond). Aiding the officer is a beautiful countess (Paula Corday), whose true intentions are in doubt until the final scenes. Sword of Monte Cristo was produced independently by Edward Alperson and released by 20th Century-Fox. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charles Starrett once more plays the masked, do-gooding Durango Kid in Pecos River. While in mufti, however, Starrett is a government agent, posing as a bandit to expose a gang of mail thieves. He also takes time to teach Jack (later Jock) Mahoney, the hotheaded son of a murdered stagecoach driver, how to use his six-gun with accuracy and discretion. Mahoney also serves as Charles Starrett's stunt double in the climactic action sequence. Also on hand is Starrett's perennial sidekick Smiley Burnette, this time cast as an itinerant peddler. The feminine interest is provided by Delores Sidener, a Columbia starlet whose career apparently began and ended with Pecos River. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide