Three Up, Three Down

Three new pictures prove that a western's a western, whether filmed in the Black Hills of South Dakota or amid the hot springs and boiling mud of New Zealand.

Chief Crazy Horse (Universal-International) pays a Technicolor installment on Hollywood's mountain of debt to the American Indian: after years of getting clobbered, the redskins this time win three battles in a row over the U.S. cavalry. What's more, the embattled Sioux are given Victor Mature as their peerless leader, but sad to say, when silhouetted against the sky in war paint and feathers, Mature looks more like an aggrieved turtle than an eagle of the plains.

Before he goes gunning for the whites, Big Chief Mature gets an unconscionable amount of nudging from heavenly voices which keep insisting that he is the legendary hero of his people. By the time he accepts his commission from the Great Spirit and wins a couple of cavalry skirmishes, there were apparently not enough extras left to stage Custer's last stand at the Little Bighorn. So, curiously, the picture dispenses with most of it. Suzan Ball flutters her eyelids as Mature's squaw, and Ray Danton, Keith Larsen and Robert Warwick are equally improbable as a trio of braves.

Land of Fury (J. Arthur Rank; Universal) is laid in New Zealand and has Maoris instead of Indians. Jack Hawkins acts the white settler in a manner wooden enough to qualify him as a Hollywood cowboy, while Glynis Johns is the ever-loving wife who forgives his playing games with a native enchantress named Laya Raki, even if the Maoris won't. Despite these novelties, the film very nearly talks itself to death before getting around to the big battle scene where all the adult whites are satisfactorily slaughtered. The film ends with a new boatload of settlers landing on the beach, complete with carpetbags and valises, and looking about them as if wondering which is the way to the desk clerk.

Run for Cover (Paramount) is Jimmy Cagney's 50th. movie, and he proves his durability in the very first reel by walking into a point-blank ambush and emerging with nothing more than a scraped forehead. Since the ambush was a mistake, the chastened townsfolk make Cagney their new sheriff, and he promotes his sidekick (John Derek), who was crippled by the posse, to be deputy. But Derek is the kind of fellow who nurses a grudge--first he helps Badman Ernest Borgnine to escape, then he betrays Cagney, shoots him in the back and leaves him to drown.

By this time Jimmy is beginning to think that Derek can't be trusted. After the Comanches massacre most of the badmen for him, Cagney tracks Derek and Borgnine to their lair, disposes of both (with some last-minute help from Derek, who has had still another change of heart), and returns to Viveca Lindfors and a happy ending.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.