Monday, November 05, 2012

Movie review - "Escort West" (1958) **

Not-bad Western whose main problem is its over-aching familiarity. It was clearly written for an ageing acting star - in this case Victor Mature, as a former Confederate officer travelling with his daughter across Indian country. This role could easily have been played by Jeff Chandler, Fred MacMurray, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea... but anyway Mature is effective, in his sad eyed craggy way, and it's great to see him playing a dad.

And if the story is run of the mill it at least has inherent tension - they come across some survivors who include a kindly black (who of course gets along with Mature) and two sisters, one of whom is nice and the other who hates Confederates. There is some decent suspense, the black character gets a heroic death scene, you get the sense Mature is trying to angle a threesome with the sisters, the Yankee soldiers are nasty. It's in black and white with a clearly low budget but competently done.

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