The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) -- another film so awful that it's utterly, undeniably fascinating. It's packaged as a western, but underneath the arid mountainous scenery and the garish Technicolor, it's a film noir. What's it about? Well, a gang of crooks have been muscling in on the Elder ranch. Not an unusual circumstance, but in this case the heart of the matter, it seems, is that the four sons of frequently praised Katie Elder, proprietor of the ranch, have neglected their mother. They should have visited more often, or written, or at least called. The brothers are, in birth order, swaggering John Wayne, a gunman; sniggering Dean Martin, a gambler; colorless bland Earl Holliman, a failed businessman, and sophomoric Michael Anderson, whom the older brothers want to send to college, but whom they should rather send to high school to fulfill the prerequisites for Acting 101. It's all a mighty predictable -- a string of cliches -- and, just as expected, after the climactic gunfight the Elders get their land back from cheating Morgan Hastings and his gang of no-goodniks. The dialogue throughout is embarrassingly wooden; no, not wooden, harder than that, ceramic; no, not ceramic, titanium.
I blame it all on Henry Hathaway, the director, who had some good westerns and also a series of films noirs (The House on 92nd Street, The Dark Corner, Kiss of Death, Call Northside 777) to his credit. How could he have perpetrated this film? And someone, I don't know who, has to take responsibility for the ugliest, unfunniest, uncomic bit of grotesque "comic relief" ever perpetrated, in which Dean Martin auctions off his make-believe glass eye to a passel of local yokels. But I also think that some of the blame attaches to the producer, Hal Wallis. This is a film utterly without a female presence except for Martha Hyer, who wanders into a couple of scenes without point or purpose. I couldn't figure out what the heck she was doing in the film until I read that she was married at the time to Wallis and that her career was on the fritz. I'm positive that Wallis told the screen writer, "Put in something for Martha." Well, he did, but it just made the whole mess a little messier, and if possible, a little less coherent.
The Sons of Katie Elder stoked my indignation. What a waste of resources!
But hey, there's a good three minute scene of a hundred or more horses being herded by the brothers, and there's George Kennedy as a gunslinger and Dennis Hopper as a neurotic youngster who gets killed by his own father. It's something, but, sorry, not enough to dilute the indignation.
Addendum November 16. I've just watched another western, Big Jake (1971), in which John Wayne parodies an earlier John Wayne. Just as awful as Katie Elder. Maybe less intelligible. You can infer a lot from the poster.
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I seem to recall that George Kennedy does the best acting in "Katie Elder." When he is pretending to be dead, Wayne keeps shooting at him while the camera focuses on Kennedy's eyes, wide open and very expressive. He also utters the film's funniest line when he says to the kid who has just insulted him, "Don't you have the grace to let a man have his illusions?" Or something like that.
Posted by: Don Z. Block | August 28, 2020 at 04:27 AM