Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This obscure 1965 Cold War thriller was a real discovery. It’s the first film to be directed by James B Harris who at that time was best known for coproducing some early Kubrick films.  But not 'Dr Strangelove', which apparently Harris felt shouldn’t be a black comedy, so this film is his attempt to cover the same ground but in serious fashion. In fact he goes to the other extreme and gives this story a documentary feel in which there’s very little by way of conventional drama, just an insidious sense of escalating danger. That documentary feel is established right from the start when we see Sydney Poitier and Martin Balsam being lowered from a helicopter onto the deck of the USS Bedford.  It’s a real helicopter and a real ship so never mind that stunt doubles are used. Poitier plays a journalist whilst Balsam is the ship’s doctor.  Neither is made to feel especially welcome by Captain Finlander (Richard Widmark).  In the case of Poitier though it thankfully has noth...

It seems as though great Gregory Peck Westerns are like buses - you wait ages for one, then two come along at once.  After recently watching a neglected classic, 'The Gunfighter', I was pleasantly surprised at how good this 1948 obscurity, directed by William Wellman, is. Peck plays Stretch, the leader of a gang of bank robbers soon after the end of the Civil War.  To escape the US Army after a robbery they are forced to cross some salt flats in Death Valley.  Barely surviving this ordeal the film proper starts when they reach a ghost town, Yellow Sky, which was once the base for gold prospecting.  The only inhabitants are a young girl, Mike (played by Anne Baxter) and her grandfather, who have hung around after everyone else has left.  It transpires that they've got oodles of gold stashed away in one of the mine shafts, which has collapsed. A deal is reached between Stretch and Grandpa to split the gold 50/50.  There's plenty to go around so that everyone ...