Ewing Mitchell Movies

Behind the High Wall is a remake of the 1937 Jackie Cooper-Victor McLaglen film The Big Guy. Tom Tully plays prison warden Frank Carmichael, who is kidnapped during a jail break in which a policeman is killed. In an ensuing car crash, all the escapees are killed except young Johnny Hutchins (John Gavin). Though he knows that Hutchins had nothing to do with the cop's murder, Carmichael refuses to intervene when Johnny is condemned to death. It seems that the escaping convicts had been carrying $100,000 in stolen money with them, which Carmichael has hidden away for his own use. By eliminating Hutchins, the warden is also getting rid of the only potential witness to his own perfidy. Sylvia Sidney is pure venom as Carmichael's crippled, greedy wife, while Betty Lynn (who later played Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show) also registers well as Johnny's agonizing fiancee. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this deceptively titled and paced Western, Kirk Douglas shines in the hyper-macho role of Dempsey Rae, a good-natured drifter with a mysterious past up from Texas, a top hand with a gun, a horse, or a herd, who can even play the banjo and sing. He rides into a Wyoming town in a freight car, in the company of much younger drifter Jeff Jimson (William Campbell), who knows even less about the West than he does about life. Dempsey gets Jeff out of a few scrapes with the law, and both get hired by the foreman (Jay C. Flippen) of the Triangle Ranch. With 8,000 head, the Triangle is already the largest spread in the territory, but the new owner from back east, Miss Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain), arrives with plans to move in another 22,000 head onto the open range, threatening to squeeze out the smaller ranches completely. Meanwhile, the other ranchers plan on saving some of the grass for winter feed and fence it off with barbed wire. When Bowman discovers that she can't hold onto Dempsey as either a man or a foreman, she seduces Jeff -- who's too quick to become a man -- to run interference on him, and hires a crew of gunmen led by Steve Miles (Richard Boone) to tear down the wire. A range war is about to break out, and Dempsey, who wants no part of barbed wire and carries the scars to show why, plans on pulling out. But then Miles and his men overplay their hand, and Dempsey throws in with the smaller ranchers. The body count suddenly starts going against Miles, who digs in for a final fight, and now it's Jeff and Bowman who find themselves caught between two unstoppable forces that they've helped unleash. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Winning of the West was Gene Autry's first western vehicle for 1953. It was also one of Autry's better offerings, with the star cast as a territorial ranger with an uncharacteristically nasty streak. When a local newspaper publisher is slain by an outlaw gang, Gene hesitates to pull his gun because he recognizes his own brother (Richard Crane) as one of the outlaws. As a result, he is relieved of his duties and forced to fend for himself. After a series of hair-raising adventures, Autry is compelled to face his brother in a showdown. Somehow, a happy ending arises from all this, though it wouldn't be fair to tell how. Gene Autry is supported by his usual cohorts Smiley Burnette and Gail Davis; he also offers four musical numbers, of which "Find Me My Trusty .45" is the best. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Above and Beyond is the story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as told from the perspective of the man who flew the mission. Robert Taylor stars as Col. Paul Tibbetts, commander of the Enola Gay. Once selected for this extremely dangerous mission, Tibbetts must hand-pick a crew worthy of the task. He is also forced to keep his mission a closely guarded secret, even unto withholding all information from his loving and patient wife Lucey (Eleanor Parker). The film concentrates on the strain placed upon Tibbetts, his crew and their families in the crucial days before the "big drop". The bombing itself is handled with taste and decorum, though the horror and mixed emotions of the moment are brilliantly conveyed on the faces of Tibbetts and his men. Above and Beyond represents a rare noncomedy endeavor from the writer-director team of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paramount's immensely successful Pine-Thomas production unit once more struck box-office gold with The Last Outpost. Ronald Reagan stars as devil-may-care Confederate officer Vance Britton, who leads a band of guerillas on a series of sabotage raids. The Northern Army dispatches Vance's brother, Union officer Jeb Britton (Bruce Bennett), to put an end to Vance's activities. Both brothers are forced to work shoulder to shoulder when a Northern attempt to enlist the aid of the Apache tribe backfires, sparking an all-out Indian war. Rhonda Fleming, who seemed to spend her entire career in Technicolor adventure flicks, appears as the romantic bone of contention between the battling Brittons. Halfway down the cast list as Lieutenant Fenton is TV's future "Ward Cleaver," Hugh Beaumont. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though the most famous and controversial of the WWII "shell shock" documentaries, John Huston's Let There Be Light, was withheld from public view for nearly four decades, there were a few similar films made available for general distribution. One of these was Shades of Gray, produced under strict governmental supervision by the U.S. Army Pictorial Service. Because of the censorial hue and cry over the use of actual shell-shock victims in Let There Be Light, it was decided to use professional actors in Shades of Gray. The results are stiff and contrived, and not nearly as powerful as the images seen in the Huston film. In addition, the "solutions" offered by the film's psychiatrists seem to be pat and pedantic, as if all the mental problems fomented by the war could be resolved by a few carefully chosen words (it should be noted without further comment that the script was approved in advance by the Army's psychiatric technical advisers). Shades of Gray was directed by Joseph E. Henabery, whose film career extended all the way back to The Birth of a Nation (1915). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide