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The Sundowners

posted 18 years ago by overkill6913
6 replies | jump to latest

What did you all think of my grandfather's movie???

[–] rrstroud 18 years ago

Who was your grandfather?

I really enjoyed this, and the other film made by the same folks around the same time--'High Lonesome' (this one more, tho).

Best line (from Robert Preston as Kid Wichita): 'From Amarillo to Gee Whit, nobody never proved a thing on me--'cept twice...'

I saw n episode of (I think) 'Gunsmoke' that, years later, lifted the Jack Elam-Cathy Downs subplot almost intact and dropped it into an episode (that wound up being cut into a TVM abomination called 'The Meanest Men in the West'--stitched-together TV episodes that incl. Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin!)

By the by, who was your grandfather?

vaya con dios...

'We all dream of being a child again - even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all...'

[–] marylizautos 9 years ago

this movie surprises me on many levels, no plot info on it, I had never heard of it, and this thread is very old and at the moment the only 1 listed..but, it has great actors and kept my interest although I have to say I really don't feel like I get it..there is the touch of ESP the family seems to share about the future..there is the matter of the rock, Wichita seems to have such an issue with that I imagine for somebody more intelligent than me carries some symbolic feature..I just had a hard time figuring who was good and who was bad..but with Chill Wills, with Jack Elam, with both Robert Preston and Sterling and with john drew Barrymore's introduction as an 18 year old younger brother, there was not a surfeit in talent..I just felt I was missing something and felt dumb that I was in a 1950 western..

[–] Wuchak (8104) 6 years ago

The reoccurring rock reference seemed like a joke, as if Kid Wichita amusingly saw himself as God, which is contrasted by a humble statement he made elsewhere, something like "Everyone dies sooner or later." In other words, he fully knew he wasn't God and that he was on his way to death just like everyone else.

I just had a hard time figuring who was good and who was bad

That's why I love this movie: It's realistic with the characters having shades of grey rather than being wholly black or white. But the main protagonist, Tom Cloud, definitely represented wisdom and goodness, although not completely, as he foolishly developed an increasingly romantic relationship with another man's wife; and even kisses her at one point. Sheriff Elmer Gall and his heavies, however, were definitely shady. His father, John Gall, wasn't corrupt and didn't know what his son was doing, although he might have suspected and turned a blind eye.

Kid Wichita, however, was somewhere between black and white, mainly due to his dubious past and the leery way Tom regarded his coming back and hanging around. Wichita kept amusingly saying: "From Amarillo to Gee Whit, nobody never proved a thing on me -- 'cept twice," which means he committed at least two crimes in the past and obviously more.

In the movie, though, I didn't see Wichita do anything wrong. All he did was help his overly cautious brother rid the county of a rustling ring, which included the sheriff & his three cronies. There are several references to Wichita murdering Sheriff Elmer Gall but, actually, he caught Elmer scheming with his cronies and didn't shoot the sheriff until he went for his gun. That's not murder; it's self-defense. Same thing with Earl later.

Honestly, I was all for Wichita cleaning up the county of the corrupt sheriff & his rustling trash. Maybe Wichita deserved to die for his past sins, but not for anything he did in this movie.

[–] PeterBlues (790) 4 years ago

gunsmoke was something else, used to air in the same era as the twilight zone, right? i used to watch gunsmoke everyday as it aired in the afternoons when i was a kid, then there were the gunsmoke movies made decades later, i can't believe gunsmoke ran from the 1950s till the mid 1990s (the movies), the series started off as radio theatre starring william conrad. the town in this movie looks like in "blazing saddles" where they push on the walls and it all falls apart, the dialogue with attempted wit and comedy is a miss, even though this is in colour it looks fairly cheap, at least on the version i got the picture was quite blurry to the point where you hardly saw their faces (also it had the shortest plot description i've ever seen), and it's weird how the scene changes looks like that of a tv movie, also usually i recognise actors from this era cause i love movies from this time but the only one i recognise in this cast is jack elam (notice about the only one wearing a suit), and this is one of the most deserted old movie boards i've seen, favorite bit is the tense scene about 40 minutes in where he (elam) gets taunted, he often played western villains then later in his career often got casted in cool weird roles, some of the best westerns made are from the 1960s though, on the positive side this has a reasonable running time, and look at what incredible beautiful and neat opening animation this movie has, that was quite a unique bit, kid wichita's nickname sounded funny. i think this movie has like one woman in the cast. for real.

🤠 🐎 🌵 🏜

in your dark room,
feminine secrets shine through,
a venus being got me in her spell,
a formula i cant shake,
in your warm comfortable planet,
moves with unexplainable strange tactics,
plays with sweetness to ecstatic,
with my country bumpkin soul,
till im lost in venus control.

[–] liscarkat (16515) 4 years ago

Glad to hear she is a real woman.