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One thing Westerns tend to have that other genres usually don't are scenes of characters ruminating in the wilderness, seemingly shooting the breeze with topics not directly related to the plot but which can have fascinating thematic resonance. In 1954's Garden of Evil, two of the male characters spend so much time pontificating about their one female travelling companion it inevitably reveals more about them than it does about her. Sometimes the dialogue just feels odd and overwrought and I'm not sure some of the strange results were intended. But Henry Hathaway directs some wonderful vistas in Cinemascope and every line seems more significant when delivered the film's three great stars; Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, and Richard Widmark.



Cooper and Widmark play a couple of would-be prospectors named Hooker and Fiske. They end up stranded in a small Mexican town in a bar where a gorgeous young Rita Moreno is serenading the patrons.



Then Susan Hayward walks in as Leah Fuller, offering two thousand dollars for any man who'll come help her rescue her husband who's trapped in a collapsed mine shaft. Her husband's played by Hugh Marlowe in one of his many roles as the reasonably credible rival to the main male love interest, as he does in Night and the City and Way of a Gaucho. But there's some ambiguity in this film as to just who the main male love interest is.



Hooker and Fiske are both immediately suspicious of the high price Leah is willing the pay but she won't explain, saying something about how no price is too high for a human life. Finally the two men agree to accompany her along with two other men--Luke (Cameron Mitchell) and Vicente (Victor Manuel Mendoza). Kudos to the film for actually employing Hispanic actors as Mexicans and for the extensive use of Spanish--Cooper and Hayward both come off as fluent.



Luke is kind of a hothead and he's the first one to show intentions towards Leah. He tries to assault her one night when the group is camped out and Leah sneaks away to wreck the latest marker Vicente has left so he can find his way back to the mine at a future date. Luke corners her by a river and abruptly starts talking about how he's not doing this for the money, exuding nervous energy before grabbing her.



She gets away from him and goes back to the camp where the film's central scene occurs. It's not the climax of the plot but it seems to be the thematic nexus where the issues the story had been building to come the closest to crystallising and afterwards are digested by the context of future events and decisions. It's clear to Hooker what had happened from the look on Luke's face and the scream he heard from Leah. A fight ensues with a slightly mysterious conclusion. Hooker simultaneously attributes Luke's actions to being a killer and of being only a foolish young man. It's a very grey area that Cooper's gravitas compels the viewer to ponder--Luke is a dangerous guy but they do need all the help they can get. It's also unclear how much Luke's actions are due to a truly malicious nature or are due to him being a foolish young man who's been forced by circumstance to lead a life of violence.



Less clear is why Hooker tells Leah that she bears some blame. It's hard to see the logic even through the lens of 1950s patriarchy and her reply, "What do you think you're saying?" given in an indignant tone, delivered in a way by Hayward that's every bit equal to Cooper's gravitas, is far easier to identify with as a viewer than Hooker's unexplained logic. But it fits in with all the time Hooker and Fiske have spent talking about Leah instead of talking to her while they travelled.



Fiske seems an oddly superfluous character a lot of the time. I almost felt like there was some kind of contractual obligation for Richard Widmark to be included in the film. Mainly he seemed like he was functioning as a motivation for the otherwise taciturn Hooker to speak up--though Hooker never reveals much about himself. But the persistence of Fiske in offering opinions about women, with chestnuts like, "Don't believe anything a woman says but believe everything she sings," starts to feel strange, especially since Leah really doesn't do anything for much of the film except lead the men to her trapped husband.



Then, after things settle down following the fight with Luke, Fiske and Hooker have a really obtuse exchange that I can't for the life of me interpret as anything but Fiske coming on to Hooker.

FISKE: You see how it is? Now she's got you fighting for her honour. She's got you going unarmed against a gun in the hand of a man she turned into an idiot.

HOOKER: A boy.

FISKE: It was very heroic. I admired you enormously. I'm sure she did too. Some day, like Salome, she'll have you bringing her the head of that Vicente in a frying pan.

HOOKER: Or yours.

FISKE: No, no, not mine, Hooker. Mine belongs to you. And you know what they say.

HOOKER: What do they say?

FISKE: Two heads are better than one.



Did I hear that right? Did Fiske just offer to give head to Hooker? That might explain also why Fiske talks about women so much if his homosexuality is repressed.

But all the characters spend some time trashing each other--except Leah who continues to be blamed far more than she deserves. The title of the film, Garden of Evil, evokes the Garden of Eden so maybe Leah leading them to the gold mine is meant to be like Eve leading Adam to the apple. In the latter half of the film, she takes some pretty harsh accusations of manipulation out of greed but she acquits herself pretty well. For all the recriminations and self-interest that seems to be in the dialogue, though, it becomes a story about self-sacrifice and the anti-social behaviour on display seems to be the flip side of deep guilt. Susan Hayward's tenacious performance is crucial as she becomes a kind of wall against which the illusions of bitterness from the men crash and fall back from.



The movie has some great location shots and some of the best matte shots I've ever seen. And it has a good score from Bernard Herrmann.

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An experienced, world weary bounty hunter, a dumb kid, a ruthless, beautiful woman, and a killer ride together out to the desert, and for the most part their motives are unclear. 1966's The Shooting clearly has answers to its mysteries and a careful viewing of the film after something is revealed in the climax show its makers knew these answers all along. At the same time, the film is far less concerned with answers than in presenting its characters divested of things that might help the audience sort them, that might give the audience an excuse to stop studying them. So the movie because a well shot, atmospheric contemplation of killing, love, loyalty, men and women, and how these things are translated into archetypes.



Willett Gashade (Warren Oates) rides into a little mining camp on a horse and with a pack mule. His gun holster is empty, something never explained. He finds the grave of his friend and his other friend, a young man named Coley (Will Hutchins), scared out of his wits. A gunshot from nowhere had killed their mutual friend and now Coley doesn't know what do with himself and is liable to panic and shoot someone. Willett does what he does most of the film--he assumes moral authority, confiscating Coley's gun and telling Coley he'll be depending on Willett from now on.



Willett certainly seems the one most worthy of being trusted with authority--though, when I say "seems" that's going to make you immediately wonder if it's true. It may or might not be but Willett clearly cares more about the horses who become exhausted than the unnamed woman (Millie Perkins) who hires Willett to take her to a place called Kingsley. She doesn't seem to care about horses or people very much, irritably dismissing any suggestion Willett makes that might slow them down, and it's not long before Willett concludes she's looking to kill someone.



But despite seeming like she very much wants to handle this killing herself, she's employed a hired gun named Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson) who, despite coming off like he has the world in the palm of his hand, clearly knows little more about the situation than Willett.



"The Woman", as she's credited, doesn't look remotely like she belongs in the 19th century, her hair, clothing, and makeup placing her in a 1960s fantasy version of the west, which is appropriate as this film feels like it's about an interpretation of legends. One could look at her as representing womankind and her presence in the world of mythologised masculinity an inherent disruption. There's a world where everything was understood and had rules--Billy and Willett clearly don't like each other but each clearly knows what to expect from the other. Willett continually warns Coley against falling in love with the Woman. The language Willett uses to talk Coley out of it involves dismissing the value and meaning of physical beauty and the perils of womankind in general. One could read this as his misogyny but the Woman and Billy clearly are dangerous and Coley may well be better off keeping clear of them. The film avoids declaring Coley's innocence or Willett's pessimism the correct response to the situation.



The Woman's insistence on riding the horses to death and her unwavering fixation on her goal manifest in an irritability that doesn't quite make sense for most of the film and reads like the typical, misogynist constructions in 1960s films, like the nagging wives of cop films, but the end of the film also destabilises that presumption.



But the differences between Willett and the Woman can be seen in another way. Most of Willett's concerns are practical--he wants to make sure they have provisions and the Woman seems foolish when she pushes her supplies off her exhausted horse even though Willett tells her it won't keep the horse going any longer, it'll just mean she doesn't have food. But is she being foolish, or has she just found something more important than living? Is such a goal foolish? And why is Willett still going along on this quest?



Every role is well cast. Warren Oates as Willett exudes weary western wisdom, Jack Nicholson of course easily pulls off ornery psychopath, Will Hutchins seems green as hell, and Millie Perkins always keeps her performance somewhere between villainous and steely. The desert looks pale and sterile, the horses look believably ragged.

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