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ON DANGEROUS GROUND (Dir: Nicholas Ray, 1951).
A stellar cast including Robert Ryan, Ida Lupino and Ward Bond feature in Nicholas Ray’s tough and surprisingly violent film noir-ish thriller.
On Dangerous Ground is kind of a movie of two halves. The first sees sadistic cop Ryan clash with the lowlife of New York’s mean streets. However, after one display of brutality too many he is sent out of town to a rural, snow-covered isolated small town to track down the killer of a young girl, having to deal with the girl’s vengeful father and the killer’s blind sister.
The beautiful, contrasty monochrome photography in the second half is a definite plus, and the relationship that develops between Ryan and Lupino is unexpectedly tender.
A fairly overlooked title among Ray’s work, On Dangerous Ground is an enjoyably gritty hardboiled 50’s crime flick.
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THE KING AND FOUR QUEENS (Dir: Raoul Walsh, 1956)
With a title referencing star Clark Gable’s reputation as The King of Hollywood, The King and Four Queens is an offbeat western from legendary director Raoul Walsh.
Clark Gable stars as smooth talking drifter Dan Kehoe who rides into the ramshackle, lawless town of Wagon Mound with the intention of relieving Ma McDade (Jo Van Fleet) and her four widowed daughter-in-laws (Eleanor Parker, Jean Willes, Barbara Nichols & Sara Slade) of $100,000 worth of stolen gold. Romancing each of the ladies in order to learn the whereabouts of the stash, it become apparent that the queens are using him as much as he is using them.
Read the full review on my blog JINGLE BONES MOVIE TIME. Link below.
