The Badlanders (1958)

Truly Dreadful Film

Fantastic!

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Here we have Alan Ladd as "The Dutchman", educated criminal who wants to steal a pile of gold. With help from fellow ex-con Ernest Bornine, and others, they succeed. There are many perils along the way.There are fights, the Sheriff, the parole board, and the bad guys trying to steal the gold including a deputy. Neihimah Persoff is the dynamite guy, as they have to go into an abandoned shaft and blast the gold out at the same time as the regular mine next to this shaft. The blast is at 4PM.They must be on daylight savings time as they get a lot done after the blast and when the movie ends, it is still not sun down. The last parts of the film are where most of the action is after the opening fight in prison. Overall, the film is pretty satisfying with a couple of good looking women to keep our heros busy and one who helps save them in the end.

Copyright 1958. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at sixty neighborhoods: 3 September 1958. U.K. release: 14 December 1958. Australian release: 4 December 1958. 7,477 feet. 83 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Alan Ladd plays a Dutchman (!) who wants to rob a mine in Prescott, Arizona. He hires Ernest Borgnine as his gunslinger. But Ernest falls in love with an attractive Mexican girl, Katy Jurado.COMMENT: Well below what you would expect of a Daves western, especially as it was made so close to "Three Ten to Yuma" and "The Last Wagon". Daves claims that when he was making the movie, neither he nor any of the players or technicians were aware that the script was a re-hash of "Asphalt Jungle" with a number of extremely odd changes, including an astonishing finish in which the Sam Jaffe character rides off into the sunset with the Marilyn Monroe character. It's hard to completely credit Daves' claim, because he seems to have done his best in certain scenes to out-Huston Huston. The extraordinary opening, for instance, featuring a fight among six convicts who are chained together, and the shot of Borgnine, an embittered prisoner, stumbling out of the opaque blackness of solitary into the blinding daylight. Of course, Alan Ladd also exerted some influence on the movie, insisting on the hiring of the noted film noir cameraman, John Seitz, who has certainly contrived some striking effects. Nonetheless, despite some fine slices of action, including the mine robbery and the climactic (but infuriatingly brief) gunfight, this is a patchy film.

Opening in Yuma prison this western gets off to a gritty start as we see a prisoner being flogged; he isn't one of our protagonists though; they are Peter 'The Dutchman' Van Hoek, a mining engineer framed for a robbery at the mine he worked in and John 'Mac' McBain, the conned out of the land the mine was built on. They are not friends though and Mac wants nothing to do with The Dutchman when he gets out of prison.Once out The Dutchman goes back to the mine via a disused shaft and goes to a disused section; here he heads straight to a large gold seam that he had discovered before but hadn't told the manager as he didn't trust him to reward him as promised. He takes a sample and goes to a rival mine owner and proposes that he will deliver the gold ore for smelting for $100,000; he estimates it is worth over twice that so both would be getting a good deal. To do it he must get help; Mac and an explosives expert... they must also time it perfectly so that they blast at the exact moment the miners in the active part of the mine blast so nobody notices the explosion.This western is essentially a classic heist movie the only difference is that rather than robbing a bank they are robbing ore from a mine. Alan Ladd and the recently deceased Ernest Borgnine do fine jobs as The Dutchman and Mac respectively. As with most westerns there is some female interest for the protagonists; Katy Jurado plays a Mexican woman who is rescued by Mac when set upon by thugs; this helps establish that his character is a good man at heart. The scenes in the mine are suitably claustrophobic and the outdoor scenes take full advantage of the Arizona landscape with stunning scenery and lots of towering cacti. The villains are suitably conniving making it satisfying when their plans are thwarted in the middle of a Mexican carnival. I'd certainly recommend this for fans of the western genre; especially if they are looking for something a little different.

I saw The Badlanders when it first came out in 1958 in theaters. It was my first acquaintance with both Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine. Then as now it's a good action packed western. But that's all it is.I didn't know at the time that this same plot had been done so much better by John Huston in The Asphalt Jungle. All the subtlety and character development that Huston had was sacrificed for action. Delmar Daves is a pretty good director of westerns and action is what they got here.Mind you The Badlanders is a good film for the Saturday afternoon trade, but it was done so much better before.Alan Ladd is Peter Van Hoek, mining engineer who has a heist in mind of his former employers. He's the Sam Jaffe of this version. He's looking for confederates and he enlists a former cell-mate from Yuma prison who is played by Ernest Borgnine. Sterling Hayden in the first version.Ladd was on the downward side of his career. The Badlanders is a perfect example of the kind of films he was doing after Shane, routine action flicks which could easily have been done as the plot of any number of television westerns that were sprouting all over the place at that time.Ernest Borgnine was still on the crest of his career from his Oscar winning performance in Marty three years before. He even got his then wife Katy Jurado in this film as his love interest.Nice cast that's familiar to western lovers round out the film. But everyone here has done better.