Star in the Dust

After an awfully slow opening 30 minutes, 'Star in the Dust' does eventually turn into a decent western flick from 1956.

I really didn't enjoy that beginning chunk, which is severely meandering as it's filled with set-up and uninteresting characters. Thankfully things gradually improve, how much I'm not fully sure, to lead into an eventful, at least, finale.

I don't have much to note with the cast. John Agar stands out as you'd expect, while future Disney mainstay Harry Morgan is also involved. Clint Eastwood has a minor showing, a few words but nothing more.

Lastly, one thing I must note: there's a crazy piece of stuntwork towards the conclusion - I was genuinely shocked to see it. Bravo to whomever did it!

For a Western movie this was very boring and had very little going on. There is no real plot and only a couple of muddled and drama-free sub-plots.

The movie is about some hit-man in a cell who is awaiting hanging for the killing of some cattleboys. The sheriff wants a peaceful hanging (!) without having to prove that he's as good a Sheriff as his father was. And a couple of other minor characters serve no purpose other than to complicate matters for petty reasons.

There are a few silly fight scenes that remind of the A-Team with the wooden furniture falling apart very easily. And, as always, there are embarrassingly fake fights in which there is no penetration seen or any

shown. Were there any R-rated movies in the 50's? But the most annoying thing about this movie is the songs but the 'singing narrator' who only ever uses the same tune but uses marginally different words each time. Ugh! If this is on TV on a Sunday afternoon…miss it. Go out for a walk, even if it's raining.

This seems to be yet another telling of the Tom Horn saga. In this incarnation, Sam Hall(Horn?)waits in jail and torments the sheriff, as various citizen groups attempt to break him out, for various, and obvious reasons. The minstrel, wandering, singing, and updating the plot for the viewers, becomes very annoying. Features an interesting, if not great cast, but the plot drags.

Star in the Dust is directed by Charles Haas and adapted to screenplay by Oscar Brodney from the novel "Law Man" written by Lee Leighton. It stars John Agar, Mamie Van Doren, Coleen Gray, Richard Boone, Leif Erickson, Harry Morgan, Randy Stuart and James Gleason. Music is by Frank Skinner (Joseph Gershenson supervising) and Technicolor cinematography is by John L. Russell Jr.

We are in the town of Gunlock and Sheriff Bill Jorden (Agar) is set to hang hired killer Sam Hall (Boone) at sunset. Only he finds himself in the middle of the Ranchers and Farmers because one lot want to help Hall escape, and the other want to lynch him post haste. With the exception of his two trusty deputies, Sheriff Jorden - already having to carry around the weight of not being as good as his dad was at the job - can't trust anyone and has it all to do to ensure things are done legal like.

It begins with a shot of a Sheriff's badge in the dust, and sure enough from that moment on the feeling of watching a poor High Noon/Rio Bravo knock off is hard to shake. Pic is erring towards psychological smarts with a half decent screenplay put forward by Brodney, and the cast can't be called for being poor since most are good enough when given enough screen time to work with. Though it has to be said that Agar is just a touch too wooden, overplaying his weary lawman act and it grows tiresome entering the last third of film.

Pacing is deadly slow, and as a number of characters are introduced along the way, there's barely any action to cling onto as a point of dramatic worth. There's a decent fist fight on show, and a wickedly enjoyable girl scrap, which even involves any weapons that are handy! A brilliant piece of stunt work in the finale is to be highly applauded, but other than that we are sort of plodding through to the end. Biggest crime comes in under using Boone as the villain, he's on in it for short moments at a time, and he's hardly given a biting script to spout.

The guitar based musical score is quite dreadful and irritatingly it's practically non stop when the story moves out of the jailhouse. I understand why the usually reliable Skinner was going for sombre tones in the play, but it's a dirge, and when the narrative perks up a notch, the guitar shifts into something that sounds like it belongs in animation Batman instead of a psychological Western. Bonus is the colour photography, lovely lenses from Russell and the TCM print is gorgeous. But again there's an irk, for the story rarely ventures out of the town so we are denied and sparkling Technicolor landscapes.

It does have fans, and it really isn't a bad Western as such, it's just not a good one either. It goes through the motions and wastes a good cast and potential for character dynamism. 5/10

Footnote: Clint Eastwood is in the mix for a walk on part, keep a look out for him.

This wasn't bad at all, apart from the fact that the sheriff must have been naively optimistic in thinking that he, a deputy and an old-timer could prevail against two different factions each consisting of a score or so men; in the event, he leaves it far too late when it comes to asking for outside help. And I thought both factions were somewhat overheated about the situation.

There's a touch of "High Noon" about the film, in that the action takes place in a short time-span, with a clock occasionally showing what hour it is. In both films the sheriff doesn't have much support when it comes to conscientiously doing his duty.The suspense mounts through both films, though John Agar doesn't match Gary Cooper when it comes to re-acting to it.

I see from other comments that I'm not alone in finding the repetitive ballad-singer an irritation; I almost cheered when he dashed for cover during a shoot-out; what a pity he didn't get in the way of a bullet.

The best fight is between two women, one of whom ends up with blood on her, which is more than can be said for the men who get shot; they just clutch at unmarked shirts. And when someone gets knocked on the head it's out of camera shot, which I thought was a convention that had been done away with some years before the film was made.

Trivia fans may like to note that this is the second Western in which Delmonico's famous restaurant is mentioned in some Agar dialogue; Harry Carey jnr taunts him about eating there in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon".