"I COULD SCARCE BELIEVE THAT MY PA HAD BECOME AN OUTLAW..."
Zachary Hallock (Joel McCrae) and his young son Joshua (Jimmy Hunt) settle onto a small ranch in Colorado to begin life anew after Hallock becomes a widower. And as luck would have it, there's even the obligatory romantic interest (Barbara Hale) with a son of her own, who Zachary becomes fast friends with. But the new area is plagued by an outlaw gang of stagecoach robbers - so bad is this scourge that the town forms a vigilante mob to try to deal with them - and everyone is surprised that Hallock won't join up. However, Hallock's crop has failed and he's desperately short on money... so he seemingly joins up with the bandits and becomes an outlaw himself! This breaks little Joshua's heart, of course. But has his dad really gone bad, or does he have something else up his sleeve?
The Lone Hand is directed by George Sherman and written by Joseph Hoffman and Irving Ravetch. It stars Joel McCrea, Barbara Hale, Alex Nicol, Charles Drake, Jimmy Hunt and Jim Arness. A Technicolor production with cinematography by Maury Gertsman and music by Joseph Gershenson. A particular highlight is some daring stunt work, including the famous under the stagecoach drag (a Yakima Canutt signature move that was the inspiration for Indy going under the truck in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK). This stunt is performed during one of the hold-ups and the stunt players did a remarkable job. The film manages to keep the suspense up until the end. Having Hunt as the narrator is very clever because a child's imagination is large, and through his fear that something wrong has happened with his father, that imagination gets as large as the great outdoors which surrounds their farm. Alex Nicol is appropriately sinister as the head of the gang, with Frank Ferguson as the local banker who sells McCrea the farm and warns him of issues with the bandits. Because of the way this is presented, this is an extremely good Universal western, and even though McCrea and Hale are the stars, Hunt easily walks away with this. Definitely one of the best obscure westerns of the '50s.
REGION 0 - WILL PLAY WORLDWIDE
INTERACTIVE MENUS / SCENE SELECTION
1953 / Color / 4:3 Ratio / ENGLISH / 80 MIN
DVD ART WITH INSERT AS SHOWN.
A GREAT COLLECTOR'S ITEM - AND A GREAT GIFT FOR ANY FAN OF CLASSIC FILMS!
PLEASE NOTE: This MOD DVD is boxed exactly as pictured above, and is brand new and factory shrink-wrapped. All screenshots are taken directly from the DVD. All files used in the production of this DVD are licensed by Hollywood Scrapheap or are from Public Domain sources. | |