Chuck Hayward Movies

Having saved Ben Cartwright's life during a prison riot, convict Griff King (played by new Bonanza regular Tim Matheson) is released into Ben's custody. In hiring Griff as a Ponderosa ranchhand, Ben faces the challenge of convincing the former prisoner to forsake his deep and abiding grudge against the rest of the world. Others in the cast include Ronny Cox as Lucas and Charles Dierkop as Shorty. Written by Jack B. Sowards, "New Man" originally aired on October 10, 1972. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Ford's last western film, Cheyenne Autumn was allegedly produced to compensate for the hundreds of Native Americans who had bitten the dust in Ford's earlier films (that was the director's story, anyway). Set in 1887, the film recounts the defiant migration of 300 Cheyennes from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming. They have done this at the behest of chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland), peaceful souls who have been driven to desperate measures because the US government has ignored their pleas for food and shelter. Since the Cheyennes' trek is in defiance of their treaty, Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark), who agrees with the Indians in principle, reluctantly leads his troops in pursuit of the tribe. While there was never any intention to shed blood, the white press finds it politically expedient to distort the Cheyennes' action into a declaration of war. Thanks to the cruelties of such chauvinistic whites as Captain Oscar Wessels (Karl Malden), the Cheyennes are forced to defend themselves--and whenever Indians take arms against whites in the 1880s, it's usually misrepresented as a massacre. Only the intervention of US secretary of the interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) prevents the hostilities from erupting into wholesale bloodshed. Based on a novel by Mari Sandoz, Cheyenne Autumn is a cinematic elegy--not only for the beleaguered Cheyennes, but for John Ford's fifty years in pictures. It is weakest when arbitrarily throwing in a wearisome romance between Richard Widmark and pacifistic schoolmarm Carroll Baker, who out of sympathy for the Indians has joined them in their 1500-mile westward journey. When the Warner Bros. people decided that the film ran too long, they chopped out the wholly unnecessary but very funny episode involving a poker-obsessed Wyatt Earp (James Stewart). Contrary to popular belief, this episode was included in the earliest non-roadshow prints of Cheyenne Autumn; the scene was excised only when the film went into its second and third runs in 1966 (it has since been restored). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Republic Pictures' notion of an "epic", Fair Wind to Java manages to pack in enough entertainment value to send the adventure fans home happy. Tough South Seas skipper Fred MacMurray goes hunting for pearls on a forbidden Javanese island. Native girl Vera Ralston (never mind her Czech accent) falls in love with MacMurray and defies local laws to help him. She is punished by the island rulers, compelling MacMurray to spirit both Vera and the pearls off the island. As they make a last desperate attempt to escape, a lava-spewing volcano threatens to destroy the island. While the shipboard scenes in Fair Wind to Java are as shoddy as a high school production of Pirates of Penzance, the climactic volcanic eruption is masterfully staged by miniature experts Howard Lydecker and Theodore Lydecker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cult hero Samuel Fuller wrote and directed this visually inventive western, which didn't fare well with American audiences but earned a potent reputation with European cineastes. Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) is a despotic landowner who, with a posse of hired guns, has made herself the law of Cochise County, Arizona, with the weak-willed sheriff Ned Logan (Dean Jagger) knuckling under to her demands. One day, Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan), a one-time gunfighter turned United States Marshall, arrives with his brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix) to restore democratic law and order to Cochise County. Griff soon tangles with Drummond's brother Brockie (John Ericson), though Jessica is attracted to the new lawman, and Griff finds love with female gunsmith Louvenia Spangler (Eve Brent). Griff and Louvenia marry, but on their wedding day, Brockie murders Wes, and Griff, who takes pride in the fact that he has never fired his gun since becoming a marshal, must now break his vow of non-violence. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Robert Aldrich (The Longest Yard) re-unites with Burt Reynolds for this hard-edged neo-noir. Lieutenant Phil Gaines (Reynolds) is a cynical Los Angeles police detective amorously involved with an icewater-veined Parisian call girl, Nicole Britton (Catherine Deneuve). On the job, he begins to investigate the shady death of a teenage girl that appears to lead straight to Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert), an attorney with a frightening number of connections. The problem is, Nicole herself has a direct connection to the case - Leo is one of her clients. Meanwhile, Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson), the victim's father, decides to undertake a grassroots investigation of his own - little realizing that his seemingly murdered daughter was in up to her neck with prostitution, porno movie acting, and dancing as a stripper, facts which suggest that she may have offed herself. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Gwen Bristow, Jubilee Trail is a sprawling, all-star western from the Republic Studio mills. Despite is vaunted budget, the plot is strictly B-picture material. Ambitious California landowner Charles Hale (Ray Middleton) hopes to add to his riches by marrying off his brother Oliver (John Russell) to a wealthy Spanish family. But when Oliver weds a gal named Garnet (Joan Leslie) instead, Charles vows revenge against the new bride. Later, Oliver is killed, leaving Garnet to raise their baby alone. Charles intends to claim the baby for himself, but Garnet, who has subsequently fallen in love with John Ives (Forrest Tucker), isn't about to let that happen. Top-billed Vera Ralston plays saloon-hall chirp Florinda, a Woman With a Past who is peripherally involved in the plot proper, while Richard Webb, TV's "Captain Midnight", fills the obligatory "disgruntled suitor" role. The film is stolen hands down by Pat O'Brien as a drunken doctor who serves as last-minute problem-solver. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dick Richards directed this French Foreign Legion adventure that's at once parodies and pays tribute to the venerable Hollywood epics that preceded it. Gene Hackman stars as Major William Sherman Foster, a soldier who has been kicked out of West Point but has managed to obtain command of a group of Legionnaires after the end of World War I. His troops have been ordered to accompany an archeological expedition traveling to Morocco headed by Francois Marneau (Max von Sydow). Foster's motley band includes an on-the-lam cat burglar named Marco Segrain (Terence Hill), an ex-guardsman from the deposed Russian monarchy named Ivan (Jack O'Halloran), an adventure-seeking aristocrat named Fred Hastings (Paul Sherman), and an alluring beauty named Simone Picard (Catherine Deneuve). As the band makes their way to Morocco, they cross paths with the fervid and bloodthirsty Arab leader El Krim (Ian Holm), who vows to unite his people to expel foreigners from their land. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Jeff Chandler stars as American brigadier-general Merrill, commanding a regiment in Burma during World War II. Surrounded on all sides by the Japanese, Merrill's Marauders nonetheless accomplish their objective-only to be ordered into another mission with barely a chance to breathe. Again and again this happens, and again and again the Marauders remain fiercely loyal to the dauntless Merrill. This "war doesn't take vacations" theme is a common one running through the combat films of director Samuel Fuller; only the censorship strictures of 1962 prohibit Fuller from fully illustrating the sheer Hell that was the Pacific War. Adapted by Fuller and producer Milton Sperling from a novel by Charlton Ogburn Jr., Merrill's Marauders represented Jeff Chandler's last film work. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This routine, relatively low-budget horror film with a few well-known actors (Peter Graves, Keenan Wynn) unfolds a tale that has echoes in George Orwell's 1984 or in various sci-fi movies. The premise: Americans have not realized that their government is in cahoots with certain industrial and medical giants to clone the citizens and thereby create a society that is easily controlled. Richard, one of the clones (Tim Donnelly) slowly comes to believe that the normal human society is much better than the cloned version and starts a rebellion against the powerful forces in control. What happens after that is about as hard to believe as what has happened before. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

John Wayne, in the last of his Civil War characterizations, portrays Cord McNally, a Union Army colonel who loses a gold shipment in a Confederate raid, during which a devoted young officer is also killed. After the end of the war, McNally bears no ill-will toward the leaders of the raid, Pierre Cordona (Jorge Rivero) and Tuscarora Phillips (Christopher Mitchum), who were acting as soldiers, but he still wants the two unknown men on the Union side who they say sold them the information about the gold shipments. A year later, McNally crosses paths with one of the men, now a deputy from Rio Lobo, who is about to take Shasta Delaney (Jennifer O'Neill), a seemingly innocent young woman, out of a neighboring town at gunpoint. A shootout ensues, in which McNally's man and three other Rio Lobo deputies are killed, with help from Cordona -- this makes McNally very interested in what's going on in Rio Lobo, and he decides to go there with Cordona and Shasta. They find a whole community under siege from their own sheriff, a sadistic ex-outlaw named Hendricks (Mike Henry). What follows is a series of confrontations and revelations that are alternately suspenseful, sadistic -- with maimings worthy of a spaghetti western and characters even getting blown to bits -- and even occasionally comical. But the pieces all tie together very neatly, despite a convoluted plot that's sort of Rio Bravo (made 11 years earlier, also starring Wayne and directed by Hawks, and scripted by Leigh Brackett) turned sideways and readjusted to a more cynical era. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Several film historians, notably the late William K. Everson, have noted the striking resemblances between Run of the Arrow and the 1990 Oscar-winner Dances with Wolves. Rod Steiger stars as O'Meara, an Irish-brogued Confederate soldier with an intense dislike for Yankees. Unable to accept the South's defeat, O'Meara heads westward after the Civil War, to start life anew amongst the Sioux Indians. Surving a ritual rite of passage called the Run of the Arrow, O'Meara is accepted into the tribe, and shortly afterward marries Sioux woman Yellow Moccasin (played by Spanish actress Sarita Montiel, whose voice was dubbed by Angie Dickinson). The true test of O'Meara's fidelity to the Sioux comes when his adopted people come into conflict with a Cavalry troop, headed by Northerner Captain Clark (Brian Keith). The cast includes such western "regulars" as Charles Bronson, Olive Carey (the widow of Harry Carey) and Colonel Tom McCoy (a recognized Indian-lore expert). Produced by RKO Radio, Run of the Arrow was released by Universal-International. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The spectacular hordes of Cossack horsemen flying across the steppes to do battle with first one enemy and then another are the highlights of this otherwise thinly scripted costume drama set in the 16th century in the Ukraine. After the Cossack leader Taras Bulba (Yul Brynner) makes a pact with the Poles to join forces against the Turks and drive them from the European steppes, victory brings betrayal as the Poles then turn on their ally and force the Cossacks into the hills. From there, Taras Bulba decides that one of his sons, Andrei (Tony Curtis), will be sent to Polish schools to better learn the nature of their enemy. While away from home and hearth, the adult Andrei falls in love with a Polish noblewoman, Natalia (Christine Kaufmann, who would become the second Mrs. Curtis). As time progresses, the tensions between father and son, loyalty and love, ethnic identity and assimilation steadily increase until they end in tragedy. Taras Bulba was nominated for a 1963 Academy Award for "Best Music", scored by Franz Waxman. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In The Big Country Gregory Peck plays a seafaring man who heads west to marry Carroll Baker, the daughter of rancher Charles Bickford. Bickford is currently embroiled in a water-rights feud with covetous Burl Ives, so both he and his daughter are hoping that Peck can take care of himself. But Peck, who doesn't belief in fisticuffs, appears to be a coward, especially when challenged by Bickford's cocksure foreman Charlton Heston. The far-from-cowardly Peck decides to distance himself from the machismo overload at the Bickford spread, settling for a romance with headstrong schoolmarm Jean Simmons, whose water-rich lands are being fought over by the two warring ranchers. When Jean is kidnapped by Ives' no-good son Chuck Connors, Peck decides to take action. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide