Evans, Gene

Louis L'Amour's The Sacketts

Louis L'Amour's easy voice with its gentle rhythm sets the tone and pace of the film in a spoken introduction to this loping, rambling three-hour-plus TV-movie adaptation of his novels The Daybreakers and Sackett. Sam Elliot stars as the elder Sackett, a nomad hunting and trapping in the mountains who happens upon an ancient treasure. Tom Selleck and Jeff Osterhage are his younger siblings, forced to leave home to avoid a Hatfield and McCoy situation. As the Sackett brothers wind their way across the Midwest prairies and mountains we join them on cattle drives and gold hunts, in gunfights and fistfights, and in a climactic showdown as they find their place in the world. This 1979 film rambles and meanders like a lazy river winding through a beautiful landscape of peaks and plains and forests, punctuated by the occasional gunfight and enlivened by a story that celebrates both the open range and the taming of the towns. Elliot looks almost young but flashes his savage eyes behind a thick black beard, while Selleck's easygoing manner is backed up with a stony-faced determination. The excellent cast includes a veritable who's who of Western character actors: Glenn Ford, Ben Johnson, Gilbert Roland, Gene Evans, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, Mercedes McCambridge, and Pat Buttram. Followed in 1982 by The Shadow Riders, which reunited the three stars and even a few members of the supporting cast in a tale of three different brothers. --Sean Axmaker

Louis L'Amour's epic Western saga of brothers who blazed a name across the untamed post-Civil War New Mexico frontier.Running Time: 198 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. UPC: 012569721807 Manufacturer No: 72180

Operation Petticoat

Blake Edwards's delightful 1959 comedy stars Cary Grant as a World War II submarine captain whose preference for a by-the-book command reluctantly yields to certain realities. Chief among those is that Grant's first officer (Tony Curtis, who impersonated Grant that same year in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot), a shameless hustler, is better than the navy at delivering whatever supplies the ship and crew need to keep going. But when Curtis sneaks a handful of Philippine refugees and several gorgeous nurses onto the all-male sub, the skipper not only has to cool down his crew but deal with an unexpected feminine influence on ship protocol. The film is a great deal of fun, sprinkled with the director's trademark sight gags (including one of Edwards's best, involving a torpedo and jeep), and graced with his unmistakable lilt. Grant is in great form, his comic brilliance almost impossibly effortless. --Tom Keogh

Fixed Bayonets

Not your typical star-studded or star-spangled war film, cult-fave director Samuel Fuller's Fixed Bayonets is a viscerally thrilling Korean War drama of one platoon's trial, and one corporal's baptism, under fire. Morale is high but the ammo is low for an American division hunkered down in the mountains of Korea. Certain massacre awaits if they retreat. To give "15,000 men a break," 48 "of our toughest combat men" are selected to stay behind and trick the "commies" into thinking the entire division is in place while the others escape safely across a river. Fixed Bayonets is raw and brutal in the best Fuller tradition. The backgrounds are obvious fakes, and the platoon members sport the usual war movie nicknames like Whitey, Rock, Jonesy, and "Mr. Belvedere" (he's the resident know-it-all). But all else has the authentic ring of reportage, as in a powerful scene when the men cluster together to rub their feet to ward off frostbite. Richard Basehart stars as Denno, who can "take an order, but can't give one" until his three superiors are knocked off one by one, leaving him in command. This rueful exchange--"They told me this was going to be a police action." "Why didn't they send the cops?"--is as close as Fuller gets to geopolitics. For war-movie buffs, he does deliver pounding and tense action sequences. In one harrowing scene, a medic must navigate a minefield to try and rescue a wounded sergeant and retrieve the only map to the field.. But he is resolutely unsentimental and more interested in the ravaged, human face of war. These are faces you will not soon forget (one of them, reportedly, belongs to James Dean, but this film is so gripping, one is hard-pressed to make the effort to try to spot him). --Donald Liebenson

The story of a platoon during the Korean War. One by one Corporal Denno's superiors are killed until it comes to the point where he must try to take command responsiblity.System Requirements:Run Time: 92 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 024543432838 Manufacturer No: 2243283

The Shadow Riders

When the Western slipped into theatrical oblivion in the late 1970s, many of the best examples of the genre began appearing as made-for-television films. After the success of The Sacketts, from the Louis L'Amour novel, producers quickly reunited stars Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott in another fine adaptation of a L'Amour book, The Shadow Riders. As brothers Mac and Dal Traven, sporting blue and gray uniforms, respectively, they wind their way home at the close of the Civil War to discover a band of confederate rebels have ravaged their town and kidnapped their sisters and brother and Dal's feisty sweetheart (Katharine Ross). With the help of their outlaw uncle (Western stalwart Ben Johnson), whom they must break out of prison, they track the guerrillas to the Gulf Coast and down into Mexico for a final, fatal showdown. Veteran director Andrew McLaglen sets this TV movie on a loping pace and a jovial tone, defined largely by Selleck's easygoing performance and the jocular comic relief of rascally Johnson. Elliott provides the intensity, at times positively ferocious under his heavy brows and burning, sunken eyes. The mood is occasionally too comic, but McLaglen delivers the goods in a series of gritty action sequences, proving that old Western directors don't die, they just drift on over to the small screen. Western icons R.G. Armstrong and Harry Carey Jr. and 1950s leading lady Jane Greer also appear in key roles. --Sean Axmaker

The Civil War is over and the Traven brothers are going home. But what Mac (Tom Selleck, Quigley Down Under) and Dal (Sam Elliott, Tombstone) find upon their arrival is a town ravaged by Confederate rebels who've refused to surrender. Swearing to fight the Yankees to the bitter end, the guerillas have kidnapped the Travens' younger sisters - as well as Dal's sweetheart, Kate (Katharine Ross, Shenandoah) - and plan to sell them to a brothel in Mexico to raise money for guns and bullets. Determined to rescue their loved ones, Mac and Dal bust their Uncle Black Jack (Oscar(r) winner Ben Johnson, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, The Last Picture Show, 1971) out of prison and head south of the border, where they aim to finish a war they thought had already ended.

The War Wagon

John Wayne and Kirk Douglas make a delightful duo in this comedic Western in which Wayne seeks revenge on a ruthless mine owner (Bruce Cabot) who had him framed and sent to prison. Upon his release, Wayne recruits Douglas in a scheme to raid and rob one of Cabot's gold-laden wagons, despite the fact that Douglas had been offered good money to kill Wayne. He joins Wayne instead (the potential profits being much greater), and they set out to ambush the War Wagon, so named because it's heavily armored, mounted with a Gatling gun, and guarded by a dozen gunmen on horses. Costarring Keenan Wynn and Howard Keel as a wise-cracking Indian, The War Wagon was a Western precursor to the action buddy films of the 1980s and '90s, serving up plenty of exciting action and constant comic relief. The interplay between Wayne and Douglas is sharp and sarcastic, and their motley crew of accomplices provides yet another source of character-driven humor. Not one of the greatest Westerns ever made, but certainly one of the most lightly entertaining. --Jeff Shannon

Support Your Local Gunfighter/Support Your Local Sheriff

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid may be the most beautiful and ambitious film that Sam Peckinpah ever made. The time is 1881. Powerful interests want New Mexico tamed for their brand of progress, and Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is commissioned to rid the territory of his old gunfighting comrades. He serves fair notice to William Bonney--Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson)--and his Fort Sumter cronies, but it's not in their nature, or his, to go quietly. Peckinpah's theme, more than ever, is the closing of the frontier and the nature of the loss that that entails. But this time his vision takes him beyond genre convention, beyond history and legend, to the bleeding heart of myth--and surely of himself.

This is one strange and original movie. In 1973 most American reviewers responded by panning it and deriding its director, whom they saw as having betrayed the promise of Ride the High Country, been swept up in his own cult of violence, and become incoherent as a storyteller. Coherence wasn't helped by MGM's cutting at least a quarter-of-an-hour out of the finished film and removing a bitter, retrospective prelude. Subsequent releases have restored a lot of material, and now there's more widespread appreciation of the depth and power of Peckinpah's achievement.

The cast, teeming with fine character actors, is extraordinary, making the gallery of frontier denizens vivid and resonant. Coburn's Garrett, a man who comes to loathe himself for his mission yet cannot abandon it, is the high-water mark of the actor's career. L.Q. Jones, Luke Askew, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Elam, and Richard Bright create indelible moments, and Slim Pickens becomes the center of an unforgettably moving scene. The presence of Kristofferson (just starting out as an actor) and Bob Dylan (whose enigmatic role is nearly wordless) nudges us toward recognizing Old West outlawry as an early form of rock stardom--flesh-and-blood gods for a primitive society to feed on. --Richard T. Jameson

Walking Tall

Weirdly marketed as a right-wing screed upon its initial release in 1973, Walking Tall is really a tragic, shockingly violent post-noir film based on various legends surrounding real-life Southern sheriff Buford Pusser. Joe Don Baker (The Natural) gives a powerful performance as Pusser, who took on determined forces of crime and corruption in his town at great personal expense. Directed with an intentionally crude force by Phil Karlson (Kansas City Confidential), one of the toughest filmmakers of the 1950s, the film's grimness does not let up, but in the end it is more likely to break hearts than turn stomachs. --Tom Keogh

Based on true events in the life of Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser who "removes" corruption in his county with a four-foot-long wooden club. When the criminals attack his family Buford shoots a whorehouse manager in the head and runs hillbilly gangsters over with his car. System Requirements:Run Time: 124 minutes Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY UPC: 097360609745

Support Your Local Sheriff

While hardly the first Western spoof to ride out of Hollywood, Support Your Local Sheriff is easily one of the best. James Garner plays the confident, cool-headed cowboy who strolls into a wild gold rush town on the way to Australia and takes the job as sheriff. Like a parody of My Darling Clementine by way of Rio Bravo, he arrests the hotheaded but hopelessly confused son (Bruce Dern) of a ruthless ranching magnate (Walter Brennan). Stuck with a half-built jail (where he keeps his prisoner penned up with pure psychology and a few spatters of red paint), a rummy sidekick (google-eyed Jack Elam in one of his first comic turns), and a disaster-prone tomboy (Joan Hackett), he takes on a succession of gunfighters with increasing exasperation. "Sure is a childish way for a grown man to make a living," he laments before chasing one gunman out of Dodge by pelting him with rocks. Directed with laconic ease by veteran Western director Burt Kennedy, it's a clever spoof of familiar conventions in a lighthearted vein, more understated and affectionate than Mel Brooks's outrageous farce Blazing Saddles. It inspired a slew of imitators, including a decade of silly Disney Westerns that sank the genre in slapstick shenanigans, and was followed in 1971 by Kennedy's pseudosequel Support Your Local Gunfighter, which reteamed Garner and Elam in a more mercenary story of con artists and gunslingers. --Sean Axmaker

Armed with a wry sense of humor and a straight-shooting sidearm, James Garner (Maverick, My Fellow Americans) fights for peace, justice and fun in this outrageous, irreverent and "very funny" (Los Angeles Times) farce co-starring Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan, Harry Morgan and Jack Elam. Support Your Local Sheriff is "sheer entertainment from start to finish" (Boxoffice)! On his way to Australia, frontier opportunist Jason McCullough (Garner) stumbles into a small gold-rush town and decides to earn a little extra pocket money by accepting a temporary assignment as its sheriff. Happily applying himself to his new position, McCullough manages to turn the town derelict (Elam) into his deputy, outsmart the dreaded Danby clan (led by Brennan in a hilarious comic performance), and fend off the lusty advances of the mayor's daughter (Hackett) all without breaking a sweat or dirtying his shiny black boots!

Nevada Smith

The Max Sand backstory in Harold Robbins's trashy The Carpetbaggers (an enjoyable wallow onscreen in 1964) made for a solid Western vehicle for Steve McQueen at his peak. Nevada Smith is a revenge movie, but closer in spirit to The Bravados than a Death Wish-style exercise in nihilism. Young Max, offspring of a white father and Indian mother, sets out to avenge their slaughter by three villains. His odyssey includes spiritual re-parenting at several stages, most notably by canny gun dealer Jonas Cord (a swell character part for Brian Keith). The supporting cast will have you saying, "He's in it, too!" at regular intervals (from costars Karl Malden and Arthur Kennedy down to such incidental interlopers as L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin). Since director Henry Hathaway and cameraman Lucien Ballard couldn't frame a bad shot if their lives depended on it, it's a relief that this movie is finally available in a widescreen format. --Richard T. Jameson