Forty Guns
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Movie Reviews of Forty Guns
Movie Review: SAMUEL FULLER, OPUS 11
Summary: 5 Stars
***** 1957. Written, produced and directed by Samuel Fuller. Griff Bonnell and his two brothers arrive in Cochise county, a land ruled by Jessica Drummond and the forty gunmen who work for her. This brilliant movie is one of the high points of Samuel Fuller's filmography. Certain scenes with their explicit sadism announce the wave of the spaghetti westerns, scenes like the arrival of the twister or Wes Bonnell's funeral are even already part of Movie History. If you own a multizone DVD player, you should buy at Amazon.fr the zone 2 collector edition of FORTY GUNS. Three film historians, in very informative featurettes, will manage to convince you that every shots of FORTY GUNS teem with original ideas. Masterpiece.Movie Review: Wildly Neurotic Western
Summary: 5 Stars
Sam Fullers FORTY GUNS is nothing less than a neurotic and a psychologically perplexing and complex story that is truly beyond any measure of rational or conventional storytelling. The more I see it, them more bizarre it looks. Even though he made this at a major studio it is unlike his MERRILL'S MARAUDERS or HOUSE OF BMBOO also made for major studios. It has that definite Fuller look and feel. This is really a fascinating look at emotions gone booth recklessly uncontrolled and painfully restrained beyond the point of reason.
Movie Review: "High Ridin' Woman with a whip..."
Summary: 4 Stars
Hell and High Water was one of 20th Century Fox's earliest experiments with CinemaScope, widescreen movies that were Hollywood's attempt to lure people away from their TV sets and back into the theatres by giving them something they couldn't get staying home. Sam Fuller did such a good job with this format that he used it again on Forty Guns, a hard-hitting western as only he could make.
Right from the opening scene, Fuller presents an impressive, expansive vista: a wide open plain with a lone horse and carriage. There is a sudden, jarring cut to a close-up of many horse hooves thundering across the plain. It is 40 men on horseback being led by landowner Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck), clad all in black. They head straight for the men and their carriage only to go flying past them, surrounding them on all sides with no intention of slowing down. And then they're gone. Welcome to a Sam Fuller western.
Fuller uses every opportunity to show off the widescreen format while employing extensive use of close-ups and one of the longest tracking shots ever done at Fox's studio at that time. Forty Guns is one of the most dynamic westerns ever made and this is due to Fuller's infectious energy as reflected in his pulpy prose and kinetic camerawork. It's not enough to say that they don't make westerns like this anymore - they just don't make movies like this anymore.
Movie Review: A Strange Western; Watch It In Widescreen
Summary: 4 Stars
If you've never seen this film, I think you'll find it a bit different from most classic westerns. It's really more of a film noir, I thought, and I liked that angle. I say "film noir" because of feel. This western had stark black-and-white photography with tons of shadows and it had a dramatic scene near the end that was very noir-ish. I was very impressed with the ending, and that's all I will say as to not spoil it for others.
The DVD has the option of fullscreen or widescreen. Please consider the latter, because that is how it was presented: in "cinemascope," and you'll want to see photographer Joseph Birac's work in all its glory. This looks great!.
All the characters are pretty interesting. Barbara Stanwyck fans will be disappointed at her screen time. She is getting headlines here on this page, but she is not the leading character. To repeat, this is an odd story. I mean, how often does one see a tornado in the middle of a western movie? Some of the lines in here were quite profound, too, and some were uttered really stupidly. It's a curiosity piece, that's for sure.....but definitely worth watching if good photography and odd characters interest you.
Movie Review: Samuel Fuller's Weird Western
Summary: 4 Stars
You gotta love Samuel Fuller. Almost all his movies have some sort of dominatrix business going on and this one is no exception. Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman who rides a white horse, packs a whip, and usually travels at top speed at the head of a posse of 40 cowboys, also moving at a gallop. The scene where they are all seated at a meal in her house looked like a demented Snow White and the seven dwarves. I think they all had their hats on, even, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that right.
Some of the other reviewers mention that Stanwyck did her own stunts in this movie--I wondered about that. In one of the first scenes where she is galloping and the camera is following her, I couldn't imagine how they found a stunt double who looked that much like her...guess they didn't.
Some of the weirdness was just plain laughable to me, like the guy who walks around with a guitar singing about the "High Riding Woman with a Whip." Too funny!