Three Films Make A Post: Like a sudden, terrifying scream… Suspense shatters the Screen!

Foreign Intrigue (1956): Well, suspense certainly didn’t shatter my screen when watching Robert Mitchum’s European vacation as directed by Sheldon Reynolds, what with the total absence of suspense from the film. This certainly wants to be a Hitchcockian or Third Man style type of film, showing Mitchum travelling all over Europe to find out the secret of his deceased employer, but in practice, this is way too comfy an affair for that. Mitchum strolls through Europe amiably, kissing the girls and sometimes punching the guys, but Sheldon never manages to build up much actual suspense. From time to time, the director hits on an atmospheric shot or two, but the script is never bothering with making the mystery Mitchum chases actually interesting, leading to a slow and comfy kind of Eastman Colour chase. For certain moods, there’s something to be said for a leisurely amble, of course, just don’t expect much of an actual movie going in.

Mulan (2020): Of course, there’s slow and kinda likeably boring like that old Mitchum vehicle, and then there’s this remake of the Disney animation based on the Chinese tale as directed by Niki Caro. It’s slow, lacking in charm and visual imagination and does nothing better, or even just as well, as even a proper Chinese, Taiwanese or Hong Kong wuxia from the third line of that genre (let’s not even speak of the good ones), wasting Donnie Yen, Gong Li, Jet Li, and so on and so forth on things they could do in their sleep.

This is also a good example that simply throwing money at your blockbuster doesn’t necessarily make it watchable. Even in the highly commercial arena of the big loud film for international audiences, you need creative vision. If you don’t have that, you get a very loud version of what my brain does when my feet are falling asleep, or, as Disney called it, Mulan.

Congo (1995): Let’s not end this trilogy of films of dubious quality on a positive note this time around. Instead, let’s talk about Frank Marshall’s supposed love letter to the classic adventure movie and its serial siblings based on the insufferable Michael Crichton. It’s got a talking ape in it, and I’m half convinced it was also written by one (sorry to all talented writing gorillas out there). What it doesn’t have is dramatic tension, a script that’s more than a long string of nonsense, action sequences worth their name, or any enjoyment factor. I do appreciate that somebody involved in the production at some point (this is one of those films with a million script versions by dozens of writers, none of whom is in the credits, because US unions are weird about crediting the people doing the actual work) tried to update some classic adventure tropes, giving us Ernie Hudson as a tough and at least semi-competent leader, and Laura Linney getting to be a two-fisted adventurer.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film is still terrible, featuring mawkish sentimentality next to badly staged action sequences and dialogue I can only ascribe to a gorilla.

Blood on the Moon (1948)

A letter from his old friend Tate Riling (Robert Preston) asks luckless and pretty beaten cowboy Jim Garry (Robert Mitchum) to come to a never named Indian reservation far from his home to help Tate out with something he doesn’t specify, but that is clearly important.

That “something” turns out to be a con cooked up by Riling and a corrupt Indian Agent. Until now, the reservation’s meat has been provided from the cattle herd of John Lufton (Tom Tully), but the agent hasn’t accepted their newest deal and is throwing Lufton and his herd off the reservation. If they aren’t gone in a couple of days, the military’s coming in to confiscate the cattle. It would be quite a shame if Lufton couldn’t leave the reservation in time for some reason and had to sell his cattle off for cut-rates to someone. To keep Lufton on the reservation, Riling has riled up the local homesteaders whose lands Lufton’s herds will have to cross, cooking up his own pocket ranch war. Lufton’s pretty stubborn however (and really in the rights), but Riling’s too greedy not to hire gunmen to keep Lufton where he wants him.

Garry’s none too happy with the whole affair, but he has been beaten down by life so much he still agrees to help Riling out with his shady business. However, his conscience can’t be kept silent for long once people start losing their lives, and eventually, drawn by it and coaxed by Lufton’s tough daughter Amy (Barbara Bel Geddes) who sees the man he could be in him more than the one he is right now, he is going to change sides.

Stylistically and thematically, Robert Wise’s very fine RKO western Blood on the Moon is a film very close to the noir genre. Mitchum’s basically playing the kind of guy he was typically asked to play in noirs, just wearing a differently shaped hat, while being faced with a western version of a noir plot. Riling’s a figure more common in the noir than the western too, a sometimes charming sociopath who can’t see a conscience or any kind of personal ethos as anything but a weakness he can use but never actually comprehend. He’s also the film’s femme (well, homme) fatal(e), given his predatory relationship with Lufton’s other daughter, Carol (Phyllis Thaxter). That’s a nice twist on the formula, and not a completely surprising one in a film that puts a lot of effort into not letting its two female characters fall into clichés, but treats them as psychologically complex personalities just like the male characters. You could even argue that Amy’s the actual hero of the film, and if anyone would ever remake this one, I hope she’d very visibly be. I suspect co-writer Lillie Hayward will have had something to do with the film’s more fleshed-out female characters, though what I’ve read of the novels of Luke Short, on whose work this is based, does feature comparatively strong female characters for its time and genre.

Uncommon for a western – but of course very typical for a noir – much of the film takes place by night and in the dark, DP Nicholas Musuraca bathing the west in expressionist and often pretty damn claustrophobic shadows that turn the very familiar world of the quasi-mythological west unfamiliar again. It’s no wonder that Mitchum’s Jim Garry has his troubles seeing the light in these surroundings.

Of course, despite all these parallels, philosophically, Blood on the Moon isn’t a noir at all. It may have an honest and somewhat ruthless streak in its treatment of characters and their inner struggles, but where a noir hero more often than not will either die following his better nature or survive by forsaking it, this film follows the more hopeful rules of the western, where redemption can indeed be found without dying and where change for the better is a possibility a man can grasp and hold onto. Here, psychological struggles can be won and someone can indeed become a better person through it.

This could of course lead to an unpleasantly tacky kind of ending, or one of those classic movie happy ends that feel ridiculously tacked onto a film of quite a different spirit, but Wise, the writers and the cast play it as a perfectly logical consequence of what we’ve learned about these characters, turning the happy end into something that still fits the psychological depth of everyone involved.


While he’s at it, Wise also adds some cracking good scenes of western action to the mix, gives character actors like Tully and Walter Brennan their chances to shine besides fine performances by Mitchum and a very young yet note perfect Bel Geddes, turning this into as perfect a western as one can encounter, despite some of its elements being perfectly atypical of the genre.

In short: Midnight Ride (1990)

Whatever mildly diverting powers this competent yet boring The Hitcher variation has can be explained by an excellently over the top performance by Mark Hamill after Star Wars but before he found his true calling as a voice actor and instead spent his time stumbling from one lame low budget film to the next. If you have a script that has clearly no clue about mental illness, and isn’t clever enough to go the iconic serial killer route where you don’t actually talk about mental illness but about the embodied fears and anxieties of a society, the best that can happen to your panto villain is a performance like Hamill’s here, all sweating, wild grimacing and various types of over-active rambling. On the more negative side, Hamill’s overacting makes Michael Dudikoff’s bland asshole hero look even more bland; and clearly, nobody involved in the film seems to actually have realized that Dudikoff’s character’s reaction to his wife leaving him (stalking, cursing, and the threat of violence) makes him not the most sympathetic of characters, to say the least.

Why, a film with a few more brain cells to rub together might have even made something out of the difference between its two male characters only being one of degrees, and made the film the story of how Lara (Savina Gersak) has to fight for her life and her identity on two fronts. Instead, director Bob Bralver pretends there’s moral clarity about who of the male characters is the hero of the piece, doesn’t do much with Lara, and concentrates on blandly competent action scenes and a minor appearance by a particularly sleepy Robert Mitchum earning a bit of whiskey money.

It’s watchable as far as this sort of low budget affair goes, but there are just too many good opportunities that would have needed not money but just a bit of imagination wasted to make for an enjoyable film for me. But then, I never was involved in a car chase against my wife (which might be explained by the absence of driver’s licence, car, or wife in my life, or because I’m not that much of an ass).

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