Year Of The Western! #9 Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)

So coming down of the fun italian high of the The Hills Run Red, we come back to America for a film that I am sure was important to those that made it at the time it was made, but I don't know how well the statement holds up over the years.

Film #9 Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

Normally, I like to dig a little deeper into the starting plot of each of these films in order to better set up my thoughts and feelings on it. Not this time. I am going to use the description from imdb.com:

Three cowboys, mistaken for members of an outlaw gang, are relentlessly pursued by a posse. 

That's about it. Oh, and a homesteader with his wife and daughter are held kind of hostage for a bit.

Okay, there's a little more than that. The outlaw gang starts off the film by robbing a stagecoach and then the three cowboys happen to stumble across the outlaws shack, but the thieves aren't looking to start more trouble and the cowboys aren't looking to cause any, so there is an uneasy communion between them: the cowboys are fed and allowed to put their horses up the night, and they wordlessly agree to look the other way and will head out at dawn.

The posse shows up, assumes everyone is a thief, and lays siege it the shack. Two of the cowboys get away, one is shot. The outlaws either burn to death in their shack or end up getting hanged. The posse then goes looking for the two that got away. 

The two cowboys find a small family home and hold them hostage until they believe it safe to take the farmer's horses and then get out of the area. The posse locates them, shoots one of them, but they manage to escape. While fleeing, the shot one tells the other to leave him behind, knowing that he is about to die. He crawls off to be a distraction to the posse, while the lone cowboy rides off in the desert.

That's your movie. Sounds somewhat exciting and tense, right? Not at all. This is one of the longest 82 minute films I have ever seen. Scenes go on for a long time, showing the mundane life of the west. These are hard people living hard and dirty lives and one day looks just like the next. I can appreciate that from a thematic and intellectual standpoint, but as a film, I just don't think it works all that well.

After reading about the origins of the production (please see the wikipedia link above), I see how and why this film is the way it is. It was very low budget ($750,000) and they needed every minute of the old farmer whacking at a stump and washing his fact to get to a feature length run time. I also appreciate Roger Corman's thought process of convincing the director to make two westerns (this one being the second) instead of one as they were already going to be putting the pieces together to make the first, so why not use a lot of the same actors and locations for a second film? It's a great business decision but not the best artistic one.

I should note that Jack Nicholson is kind of the lead in this film, while also writing the script and co-producing it. I can see he tries to ground the dialogue in reality and that is a little different than the rest of the films I have watched so far, but it doesn't really elevate the film all that much. His character of Wes, one of the three wrongly accused cowboys, is kind of whiny and not at all heroic. 

Its an interesting choice considering that it goes against expectations, but that's about it.

That's really what this film is trying to do, go against expectation. No one is heroic. The posse, outside of hunting down bad guys, has no real character or identity. The outlaws themselves are pretty much flat (props to Harry Dean Stanton's character rocking a badass eye patch though), and the homesteaders are bland as well.

If he was an option in a video game, I would play as him.

I found out there is a term for this kind of sub genre, Acid Western. Even after reading the entry on Wikipedia, I don't know if I truly get it. It could also just be that this is what they consider to be an early version of it and that it crystallizes into a purer form later (El Topo, which I am trying not to read too much about right now as it is later on my list, seems to be big part of this discussion). It could also just be a matter of being alive at that time when it was challenging and interesting to see films being made that were bucking the system. This one was just not for me.

Check out the scene below. Normally I link to a favorite scene but I don't really have one but this is as close as I can show you to what I mean about not much going on. 

A family is held hostage and there is no real tension there. What could have been a good slow burn just fizzled. You may disagree, but I don't see it. 

I will give this film credit for when the outlaws get burned out of their shack, the camera lingers on the two that are wounded just lying inside. Its not stated, but you know they burn alive in there. Also, how matter of fact the other two were hanged. The way their feet swing and dangle with no score playing helps sell how bleak that moment really is.

Much like Shane, this film may have helped set the stage for other more thought provoking ideas to be made with the clothes of a western, so I will give it that. The uncertain future at the end for Wes felt appropriate and feels like Nicholson was trying to speak about what the second half of the 1960s may have felt like to him. I just don't know if that makes it a film worth revisiting. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Harry Dean Stanton was named Blind Dick. Nothing more to be said there. 
• Beautiful landscapes? Oddly enough, no. It probably was just the lower production quality and also the intent of the filmmakers but the scenery was just as bland and scrubby as the characters felt. There was a box canyon that had some interesting formations but that lost its appeal as I watched what felt like a five minute unbroken take of two men trying to traverse loose soil and rocks in cowboy boots. 
• Does a building catch fire? Yes. And it is boring.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? None, but Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton were nice surprises to see show up.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No. The score was bland as well. So here is an unrelated Marty Robbins song that was a number one hit the same year the film came out.

Rating:

I am going to give this 2 out of 5 tin stars. This film is more of an interesting concept than actual watchable film. If I wanted to see how dirty, hard, and boring life can be in the old west, I am sure I could find some interesting documentaries about the subject.