MovieChat Forums > Jubal (1956) Discussion > Who is worse..Pinky, Mae, or Jake

Who is worse..Pinky, Mae, or Jake


It is easy to see Rod Steiger as the bad guy..but, Man there were 2 other bad people in this film..Mae sounds like she could be capable of anything when she admits to Jubal she has thought of killing her husband of 16 months..Mistake or not, Shep was quite a man..maybe not very refined..but Mae seems like the kind of woman who used marriage not for love but for position..and was not going to be happy no matter who she married..and, what about Jake from the religious group..with his arranged marriage to a woman who did not care for him..his attitude towards Jubal when they 1st met..and his Judas like behavior in telling the mob where Jubal was hidden..3 people who came together in 1 setting and all suffered in the end..

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SPOILERS

I think Pinky was the worst of those three, but they were all despicable people, willing to see Jubal murdered to get what they wanted. I would add a fourth bad guy - McCoy, the Bar 8 rider played by Jack Elam, who convinced all the other eyewitnesses in the bar that the clearly innocent Jubal was guilty of murder only because Shep was justified in trying to kill him out of jealousy because Shep was a community leader. In other words, if you kill someone they like, you're guilty even if you acted in self-defense. I think McCoy also did this because Jubal was a newcomer who had shown previously that he wasn't going to participate in the established gang mentality that tried to run off the Christian wagon train. To people like McCoy and Pinky and their followers, truth and justice don't matter. Only blind allegiance to the status quo is important. This kind of corruption that lets people in power get away with murder and lynchings is the worst of all evils.

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The thing about this film is that most of the people, besides Pinky, are not all good or all bad. Mae was far from good, but she did arouse sympathy for having to endure the rough manners of Shep. And even Jubal was not all in the right. He didn't deal with Mae firmly enough. His way was too ambivalent. And his not returning to the others that night opened the way for Pinky to make the accusation he did.

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the world needs bad people.

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