High Lonesome

Novelist Alan Le May directed this, his first and last effort. Perhaps if he had solid production designers, as Mike Nichols did for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) and "The Graduate" (1967), he might have continued, but the acting isn't much either. Chill Wills is okay in one of his longest parts and it is a pleasure to see beautiful Kristine Miller in a rare appearance, but John Drew Barrymore appears to be a committed student of silent movies, offering a range of extreme facial expressions that a better director might have told him to tone down. This oater is 81 largely wasted minutes.