Robin Short Movies

It's "Freud on the Frontier" time in the tension-filled western The Halliday Brand. Ward Bond plays Big Dan, the despotic head of the Halliday clan, while Joseph Cotten and Betsy Blair costar as Halliday's offspring Daniel and Martha. Intensely anti-Indian, Big Dan encourages a mob to lynch Jivaro (Christopher Dark), Martha's half-breed sweetheart. Despising his father's complicity in Jivaro's death, Daniel breaks off his relationship with the elder Halliday, casting his lot with Jivaro's father (Jay C. Flippen) and sister (Viveca Lindfors). The climactic showdown between father and son is superbly and innovatively handled by director Joseph H. Lewis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Samuel Fuller wrote and directed this lively drama based on the real-life adventures of James Addison Reavis, one of the most ambitious swindlers of the 19th Century. In 1871, Reavis (played by Vincent Price) began hatching an elaborate scheme to claim the Arizona territory (then three decades away from statehood) as his own. At the time, land grants established during Spanish rule of Arizona were still valid, and one rainy evening Reavis visited Pepito Peralta (Vladimir Sokoloff) and his daughter Sofia (Karen Kester) with some exciting news. While working as a real estate clerk, Reavis found documents which granted ownership of nearly the whole of the Arizona territory to one Miguel Peralta, who was named Baron of the new land by Spain's rulers, and as his heir Sofia will become Baroness when she reaches adulthood, giving her claim to the territory. After giving Pepito and Sofia money and hiring a governess (Beulah Bondi) to educate the girl in a manner befitting the Barony, Reavis sailed for Spain on business; unknown to the Peraltas, Reavis posed first as a monk and then as a gypsy in order to revise old land grant documents to conform with his story. Several years later, Reavis returned to Pepito and Sofia's home, and asked the young woman (now played by Ellen Drew) to marry him. Once wed, Reavis presented his carefully forged paperwork to the Arizona authorities which gave him and his bride royal claim to the land; however, not everyone believed Reavis's elaborate tale, and John Griff (Reed Hadley), an expert in falsified documents, was brought in to examine the evidence. The Baron of Arizona gave Vincent Price a rare leading role in a non-horror vehicle, and he cited it as one of his favorite performances on film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Ambush is a tight, well-paced western, expertly assembled by veteran director Sam Wood, whose last film this was. Robert Taylor stars as an Indian scout, sent to rescue a woman who is somewhere deep in Apache territory. The woman's sister, naturally, goes along for the ride: she is played by Arlene Dahl, then in her considerable prime. Outside of its feminine angle, Ambush is packed with action from first frame to last. Released to theatres at the tail end of 1949, the film was an unqualified success with holiday audiences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For some reason, whenever Universal used the word "Gal" in a film's title, Yvonne de Carlo usually headed the cast. In Gal Who Took the West, de Carlo plays Lillian Marlowe, an New York songstress who heads Thataway. She becomes the romantic bone of contention between the feuding O'Hara cousins, Grant (John Russell) and Lee (Scott Brady). The hostilities boil over into an all-out range war, and federal troops are summoned. Can Lillian succeed where other, better-armed negotiators have failed. The lighthearted nature of Gal Who Took the West is underlined by staging the film in flashback, as related by a pair of toothless old codgers (Clem Bevans and Houseley Stevenson). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Universal's 1946 The Dark Horse is not a remake of the 1932 Warner Bros. film of the same name, though both deal with a long shot political candidate. The 1946 film stars Phillip Terry as a war veteran, who is persuaded by machine politico Donald MacBride to run for alderman. Ann Savage plays the standard "Jean Arthur" role as the honest government functionary with whom the hero falls in love. Terry finds that disreputable politicians are using his war record to push through some shady legislation, so he renounces these hacks. He wins on the basis of his honesty, making one wish that things worked out this way in Real Life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide