Red Mountain (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 16, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
William DieterleRelease Date(s)
1951 (September 24, 2024)Studio(s)
Paramount Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Red Mountain (1951) is a just-okay Alan Ladd Western. It starts out well, with Ladd playing a morally ambiguous character who might be a murderer, but soon Ladd and co-stars Lizabeth Scott and Arthur Kennedy become entangled in a tired—and highly fictional—account of Quantrill’s Raiders in the last days of the Civil War. The film was directed by William Dieterle, whose many classics include The Life of Emile Zola (1937), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), and Portrait of Jennie (1948). He was hardly known for his Westerns but was gray-listed at this time, and may have taken the assignment out of desperation. He shows little affinity for the genre, favoring lots of tight closeups of cowboy boots and horses’ hooves.
Lane Waldron (Kennedy), a southerner, is seen leaving a gold assayer’s office shortly before the assayer is found dead, shot at point-blank range. The local townsfolk (including a mustachioed Whit Bissell) assume Lane to be the murderer, organize a posse and prepare to lynch him when, at the last second, fellow southerner Brett Sherwood (Ladd), a stranger, rescues him.
Though grateful, Lane soon comes to believe it was Brett who shot the assayer, and Brett does little to convince him otherwise. They head for the hills where they meet up with Lane’s girl, Chris (Scott). Multiple times—too many times—Lane and Chris get the jump on Brett and vice versa, but eventually Lane badly breaks his leg in a fall. During all this we learn that Chris’s entire family was murdered in Lawrence, Kansas, by Quantrill’s Raiders, whom Brett, a skilled strategist, is en route to join. Quantrill (John Ireland) takes Chris and Lane prisoner, while Brett is quickly disillusioned by the “General’s” cutthroat tactics.
Though set in Colorado, it was actually shot in New Mexico, mostly around striking rock formations near Gallup that don’t resemble anything found in Colorado. Western movies occasionally built stories around Quantrill’s Raiders, a ragtag collection of notorious bushwhackers who murdered civilians with impunity. Almost never are they accurately portrayed in movies, this being no exception. The historical Quantrill spent the last weeks of the Civil War in Kentucky, not Colorado (or, for that matter, New Mexico) where he was ambushed by Union soldiers, shot in the back and paralyzed. Taken to a military prison hospital he died of his wounds two months later. Needless to say, nothing remotely like this happens in Red Mountain.
The film’s screenplay isn’t bad until Quantrill shows up, but at that point Quantrill is portrayed as he usually is in such films, an autocrat with delusions of grandeur. His followers mostly scum and outlaws, he inevitably takes a liking to the film’s hero, trusts him completely with no vetting, the hero becomes disillusioned and Quantrill never follows the hero’s advice anyway, etc. The dialogue given actor Ireland is particularly bad, though Ireland, at 36, was at least in the same ballpark age-wise as Quantrill, who was only 27 when he died. Some Westerns depict Quantrill as an old man.
The best thing about Red Mountain is enigmatic Brett, who may be a murderer or not, and whose motives regarding Quantrill or repeatedly saving Lane and Chris remain unclear for the most of the film. The script doesn’t resolve this in a satisfactory manner, while his vague romantic interest in Chris goes nowhere. The film is strangely inert, with too much time spent in the hideaway cave in talky, often meaningless scenes and action that seems to be going in circles, though the climatic shoot-out between two of the characters at the end is visually striking.
Also good in a small role is Jeff Corey as Sgt. Skee, the Raider assigned to guard prisoners Lane and Chris. Wily and lusting after Chris, he’s so contemptible one can almost smell him. A rising character star, this may have been fifth-billed Corey’s last released film before he was blacklisted, Corey not appearing in films again until 1963.
Kino’s Region “A” Blu-ray of Red Mountain is derived from a 2021 4K scan of “RGB Nitrate Original Negatives,” i.e., the original black-and-white separate camera negatives. The resultant 1.37:1 standard frame image is thus sharp with excellent, accurate Technicolor hues with no misalignment issues. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is fine, supported by optional English subtitles.
The lone extra is a new audio commentary track by film historian Samm Deighan, refreshing to hear a female voice commenting on the Western genre.
Though described in the packaging as “a glittering gem of a western,” Red Mountain is a decidedly less scintillating one, undone by its weak script and less than sure-footed direction, though it’s not terrible.
- Stuart Galbraith IV