Warlock (1959)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Edward Dmytryk

Writers:

Oakley Hall (novel)
Robert Alan Aurthur (screenplay)

Release Date:

1 April 1959 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | Western

Plot:

The town of Warlock is plagued by a gang of thugs, leading the inhabitants to hire Clay Blaisdell, a famous gunman...

Plot Keywords:

Marshal | Sheriff | Outlaw Gang | Shave | Lynch Mob

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Richard Widmark	...	Johnny Gannon
Henry Fonda	...	Clay Blaisedell
Anthony Quinn	...	Tom Morgan
Dorothy Malone	...	Lily Dollar
Dolores Michaels	...	Jessie Marlow
Wallace Ford	...	Judge Holloway
Tom Drake	...	Abe McQuown
Richard Arlen	...	Bacon
DeForest Kelley	...	Curley Burne (as De Forest Kelley)
Regis Toomey	...	Skinner
Vaughn Taylor	...	Henry Richardson
Don Beddoe	...	Dr. Wagner
Whit Bissell	...	Petrix
Bartlett Robinson	...	Buck Slavin

Also Known As:

Shoot Out at Warlock (USA) (reissue title)

Runtime:

122 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (as De Luxe)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System) | 4-Track Stereo

Certification:

Germany:12 | UK:U | West Germany:16 (nf) | Norway:16 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (certificate #19195)

Filming Locations:

20th Century Fox Studios - 10201 Pico Blvd., Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

Film debut of Gary Lockwood.

Quotes:

Jessie Marlow: The men you posted are coming into town.
Clay Blaisedell: I thank you for warning me, but I've already heard.
Jessie Marlow: Why does it have to happen? Why do these things always have to end in bloodshed?
Clay Blaisedell: Ah, that's how things are, Miss Jessie. That's why I was hired... why you hired me.
Jessie Marlow: And so they'll come into town, and you'll shoot them all down dog-dead in the street, is that it?
Clay Blaisedell: Or them me.
Jessie Marlow: Or them you...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Pastewka: Das Praktikum (#2.8)" (2006)

Soundtrack:

Beautiful Dreamer

A pretty exciting law and order Star Western...

The Colt revolver was a tool and the more you study the men who used it at a high professional level the more it becomes obvious that they were also tools, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes (according to Western films) quite the opposite... Necessary tools, necessary men in a very compressed package of American history... They have their brief moment on the stage and then it's time to take their leave, preferably with their boots on, knowing, or not knowing that they've done the job that history actually required, but that history, in fact, won't thank them for it...

Fonda—a quiet dominant personality in Westerns—puts this over perfectly in Edward Dmytryk's 'Warlock,' unpretentious Western… Here Fonda is a professional hired gun brought in specially, and most temporarily, one always feels, to calm down a town plagued by cowboys, some of them with outlaw affiliations...

Every word he says ('I'm a simple man, handy with Colts'), every calculated ploy, shows that he's marvelously clear-eyed about his situation—that today he's wanted, that tomorrow he won't be—because he's an old professional and it's all happened before...

Spruce as spry as ever, Fonda is Clay Blaidsdell, a legendary gunfighter, the ideal professional gunman with great expectations... He is hired, temporarily, by the citizens of Warlock to clean up their town from the outlaws... The movie focuses on his rise when he succeeds in removing the bad guys in a spectacular confrontation, and his fall when he is forced to face his best friend in a showdown...

Fonda brings with him his hero-worshiping right hand and conscience, the ex-killer Tom Morgan (Quinn), who challenges his one-man rule, one vindictive old girlfriend and one loving new flame... When the pair defeats the San Pedro gang, one of its members, Johnny Gannon (Widmark), stays behind and volunteers to become Blaisdell's deputy...

As an uneasy peace settles onto Warlock, the relationship between Blaisdell and Morgan deteriorates when the marshal finds romance with a local girl, Jessie Marlow (Dolores Michaels). Gannon, meanwhile, becomes involved with Lily Dollar (Dorothy Malone), who at one time had been Morgan's mistress and now hates both Blaisdell and him for killing a man she had hoped to marry...

Blond for the only time in his career, Quinn – curious and different as the complex, clubfooted gambler-gunman whose relationship with Clay, leans rather strongly toward homosexuality – made Dmytryk's multi-plotted film somewhat daring for its time... Its complicated story line, working at various levels, and its shadowy psychological innuendos, turned off critics and audiences alike, and from several corners came concern that Dmytryk had carried the 'new convention' Western too far too fast... Nevertheless "Warlock" remains a typical law and order Star Western, well written, pretty exciting, and entirely in the classic mold...