Summer Westerns on DVD

by Pat Holmes

his summer's dismal Western fantasy Wild Wild West didn't do justice to either its Western or fantasy elements, so as that misbegotten project hightails it for the video store you might want to do the same, to round up your own wild bunch of favorites.

Perhaps the most welcome of recent arrivals is director Richard Brooks's 1966 The Professionals, just released on DVD from Columbia/Tri-Star Home Video, featuring letterboxed and full-frame versions on opposite sides of the disc. A hit when originally released, the film has since been somewhat overshadowed by another Western that covered similar territory in more explosive fashion, Sam Peckinpah's 1969 The Wild Bunch.. Peckinpah's film may have transcended genre conventions with more convulsive force, but Brooks's is still a ripping yarn that deserves to be rediscovered and reconsidered as a kind of transition between more traditional Westerns and the revisionism pioneered by Peckinpah and Leone.

Revisiting The Professionals or seeing it for the first time, one is likely to be surprised by the way in which it anticipates both narrative and thematic elements of The Wild Bunch. The Mexican Revolution provides the backdrop for both films, but instead of Peckinpah's outlaw gang, Brooks follows a quartet of mercenaries— explosives expert Burt Lancaster, weapons man and strategist Lee Marvin, wrangler Robert Ryan, and ace tracker and scout Woody Strode—hired by American tycoon Ralph Bellamy to return his wife, Claudia Cardinale, who has been kidnapped by Mexican bandito and former Villa regular Jack Palance, who is described by Bellamy as "the bloodiest cutthroat in Mexico." But things are not as they seem, and the characters are all in for some surprises before the job is done. And the job is done, just not the way anyone planned.

ancaster and Marvin once rode with Palance in support of Pancho Villa, for a cause; now they're riding against him for money. Brooks's professionals, like Peckinpah's wild bunch, are trapped in changing times. Lancaster remarks to Marvin, as a kind of epitaph for their former idealism, "Maybe there's only one revolution: the good guys against the bad guys. The question is, who are the good guys?" In this particular case, it is the quartet's professionalism that answers the question and provides a spirited balance to the pervading mood of disillusionment and cynicism. Brooks, an ex-newsman with a muckraking spirit, could sometimes get carried away with editorializing (especially in later films that tended toward the pedantic), but in The Professionals the philosophical and narrative threads are expertly and vigorously interwoven. In another scene that is echoed by Peckinpah, Lancaster suggests breaking their deal with Bellamy in favor of a treasure hunt, saying his word to the millionaire "ain't worth a plug nickel." To which Marvin replies "You gave your word to me." (By the way, it was Marvin who brought the original script of The Wild Bunch to Peckinpah's attention, only to opt out of the project later in favor of, ulp!, Paint Your Wagon.)

Tightly constructed, solidly acted, filled with brisk action and sardonic, often self-mocking humor, with a memorably exuberant score by Maurice Jarre, The Professionals is beautifully served by the striking DVD transfer (a vast improvement over a previous widescreen laserdisc), which preserves not only the widescreen imagery of master cinematographer Conrad Hall, but also the symphony of earth tones Hall creates from the rugged locations and what might seem to be a limited color palette. An example of the kind of craftsmanship that has become an endangered species in Hollywood, The Professionals is a grandly satisfying example of the quality promised by its title.

Almost two decades after Brooks's film, with the Western landscape altered dramatically, director Lawrence Kasdan saddled up his own Magnificent Seven-Minus-Three of Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, and Danny Glover to bring justice to Silverado,, a new widescreen version of which has just been released by Columbia/Tri-Star Home Video.

By 1985, revisionism was the name of the game in what few Westerns were being made, but Kasdan wasn't playing. He was playful, however, bringing the same breezy but sincere appreciation to Western traditions he had brought to his film noir update Body Heat, approaching the conventions as if they were freshly minted and infusing them with an irresistible enthusiasm. Drawing on the sense of promise that defined the epics of classicists like Ford, as well as the camaraderie of Hawks and the breakneck spirit of derring-do from early serials and series such as The Three Mesquiteers, Kasdan and his brother/co-writer Mark offer traditionally sweeping gestures with a contemporary but never winkingly self-referential edge, suggesting the influence of Star Wars while reminding us that Star Wars was really a Western itself, with light sabers instead of six-guns.

Though the film's midsection suffers, as an enjoyable "Making Of" documentary on the DVD confirms, from cutting done to bring the film in at a contractually required 135 minutes (thus giving short shrift to characters played by Rosanna Arquette and Jeff Goldblum), there are a posse of pleasures to offset the problem, including the relationship between Kline and Linda Hunt as a pint-sized, gallon- hearted saloon keeper, the expansive yet casual villainy of Brian Dennehy as Silverado's corrupt sheriff, the surprising touch of John Cleese as the sheriff of a neighboring town, the goofy buoyancy of Costner (who comes closer to Steve McQueen here than he did when he really tried in The Bodyguard), the rousing score by Bruce Broughton, and the handsome cinematography of John Bailey (which seems just the tiniest bit cramped, though not damagingly so, by the letterboxing here). Kasdan rides the high country with high spirits, giving it a pleasing slap-leather crackle rather than a nostalgic haze.

or a wild wild Western romp as dizzying as a bronc ride, try producer David O. Selznick's florid opus Duel in the Sun, just released on tape and DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment. Dubbed "Lust In The Dust" upon its release in 1946, this attempt by Selznick to outdo his blockbuster Gone With The Wind is wonderfully, often luridly overwrought as it tells the story of halfbreed spitfire Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones, then Mrs. Selznick), whose attempts to become "a good girl" cut in all their Technicolor glory to the divided heart of the Cain and Abel kinship of the good and bad sons (Joseph Cotten and Gregory Peck, respectively) of ruthless land baron Lionel Barrymore and his kind wife Lilian Gish. Also on hand are Butterfly McQueen in a virtual reprise of her Gone With The Wind role, and Walter Huston as the "sin killer" who tries to bring Pearl to the Lord while obviously barely suppressing a less-than-pure hankering for her.

Director King Vidor, a giant of silent films and an inventive visual stylist, gave it his usual dynamism, but was eventually fired when he balked at Selznick's increasing demands to push Jones's erotic allure to the limit. Selznick went through a series of short-term replacements (including himself for a couple of scenes) before the film was completed, but the result is still consistent in its deliriously overreaching way, with its often glorious epic scope, its juicily ripe colors (the also surprisingly consistent work of three different cinematographers, vibrantly displayed on the DVD transfer) and its full-blown emotions. Never did a Western lay more rightful claim to the term "horse opera," especially when Jones and Peck make movie history in their justly famous lead-slinging orgasm finale. From the opening title in blood-red against a blinding yellow sky, Duel In The Sun is hot blooded, rip-roaring fun.

by Pat Holmes

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