THE SINGER NOT THE SONG

 

Publicity picture depicting Dirk Bogarde as Mexican bandit Anacleto in The Singer Not The Song (© Roy Baker/Rank Organisation/Rank Film Distributors/Warner Bros – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The late British actor Sir Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999) was well known for his sometimes idiosyncratic choices of film roles. However, one of the most iconic of his on-screen appearances must surely be as the complex character that he plays in the British film under review here, which I watched for the very first time only recently – The Singer Not The Song.

For many years, I knew of this Western-genre movie only by virtue of its sumptuous, romantic theme music (click here to listen to it), composed by British film and TV composer Philip Green, which has been recorded by countless orchestras and instrumentalists down through the decades. (Incidentally, this theme should not be confused with an entirely different musical composition with the same title – namely, a song recorded by the Rolling Stones.) Surprisingly, however, bearing in mind how very suited it is to be converted into a passionate love ballad, as far as I am aware no lyrics have ever been written for it (even though this has occurred with memorable themes from many other movies following their respective cinematic releases – everything from Gone With The Wind and Limelight to The Deer Hunter and The Glass Mountain). Anyway, after chancing upon its DVD not so long ago, I purchased it straight away, deciding that it was high time I watched the film itself.

Directed and produced by Roy Baker, with a screenplay by Nigel Balchin, and originally released by Rank in 1961, The Singer Not The Song is based upon Audrey Erskine Lindop's eponymous 1953 novel (I'll explain the intriguing title of the novel and movie later), and is set in a small Mexican backwater village named Quantana (but actually filmed at Alhaurin de la Torre, in Andalusia, Spain).

Quantana has long been ruled with a merciless grip of iron and fear by a ruthless but highly intelligent Mexican bandit named Anacleto Comachi (played by Bogarde) and his gang of equally lawless compatriots. They have ridden rough-shod (metaphorically and literally!) over a succession of Catholic priests sent there by Rome in a futile attempt to bring order and godliness to this anarchic, godforsaken place – until, that is, Father Michael Keogh (John Mills) arrives in Quantana as the Church's latest representative. (Mills took on the role after Richard Burton had turned it down.)

For Father Michael not only elicits Anacleto's enmity (no surprise there) but also (and to everyone's surprise) gains his grudging, reluctant respect. This is due to the priest's friendly, honest charm, as well as to the evident sincerity of his passion in spreading God's word and his personal unswerving, unconditional devotion to God.

And so, like a pair of chess Grandmasters, Anacleto and Father Michael each plan with great care, thought, and strategy their successive moves toward, and against, one another as the days, weeks, and months pass by, accompanied by the villagers' ever-increasing love for Quantana's very likeable, humble man of the cloth, so dissimilar from those who had previously been sent here, and who had always failed to gain popularity or respect.

Ultimately, however, Anacleto pushes Father Michael too far, cleverly backing the priest into a seemingly inescapable moral corner so that he with his gang would once more reign supreme in Quantana. However, Anacleto never foresees that in blind rage and desperation Father Michael will betray both his religious belief and his word in order to defeat his arch enemy once and for all, and in the presence of the entire village as witnesses in the church congregation. As a result of Anacleto's fatal miscalculation, the villagers rise up as one against their erstwhile oppressor and his brutal sidekicks, with Quantana's hitherto-ineffectual police captain and subordinates sufficiently emboldened to drive them out of town for good. But they don't go quietly...

Movie characters like Anacleto were never given a happy ending back in the days when The Singer Not The Song was made. So it should come neither as a surprise nor as a spoiler to learn that almost at the very end of the film he is fatally shot. However, immediately afterwards an action happens that did surprise me, very much, because I never saw it coming at all, and which I'll therefore leave you to discover for yourself if you watch this movie. All that I will say is that when Father Michael rushes over to him, Anacleto's final words are none other than "The singer, not the song".

Time now, therefore, for the explanation that I promised earlier concerning the meaning of these enigmatic but key words.

Throughout the movie, the atheistic Anacleto has variously mocked and been mystified by Father Michael's unwavering religious faith, refusing to accept the validity of religion but respecting the sincerity and passion with which the priest practices it – and it is via this memorable five-word phrase that Anacleto very succinctly yet eloquently expresses his dichotomous viewpoint to Father Michael. Namely, what he respects is the singer (Father Michael), not the song (religion). So now you know.

The Singer Not The Song is a fascinating movie that makes absolutely compelling viewing, pitting the wits of two formidable, diametric adversaries in a thoroughly engrossing, captivating manner that never dulls or becomes stale. And Bogarde in particular is sensational – succeeding supremely in conveying both the intelligence in Anacleto's mind and the darkness in his soul, transforming instantaneously from Jekyll into Hyde with nothing more than the slightest curling of his upper lip, a deferential, serene smile becoming a diabolical, sardonic sneer in so effortless but effective a manner that even the awesome Billy Idol himself, one of my all-time rock heroes and long renowned for his own lip-curling prowess in whiplash smiles, would have difficulty in matching it!

Consequently, it is nothing if not tragic that despite deserving to have gained lasting acclaim and cinematic fame, The Singer Not The Song is chiefly remembered today only for its beautiful theme music (albeit deservedly so), and – bizarrely – for a somewhat curious, albeit incidental, aspect but which, ironically, attracted far more attention and fueled far more conjecture from film critics at the time of the movie's release than the movie itself did. Namely, why Bogarde had famously insisted upon wearing in character as Anacleto such an unreasonably tight, unrealistically shiny pair of leather trousers!

If you'd like to pay a brief visit to Quantana, be sure to click here to view a short Talking Pictures trailer for The Singer Not The Song on YouTube; and click here to listen to a lush rendition of this movie's rich, evocative theme music as performed by Manuel and the Music of the Mountains (the best version of it that I have ever heard).

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

DOWN IN THE VALLEY

 

Publicity poster for Down in the Valley (© David Jacobson/THINKFilm/Element Films/Summit Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I recently watched a movie described as a neo-Western, a somewhat unusual choice for me as I am not normally a fan of Westerns, neo- or otherwise. But as it starred Edward Norton, a favourite actor of mine ever since I first saw him many years ago in one of my all-time favourite movies, Fight Club, I thought that I'd give it a go, and I'm very pleased that I did, because it proved to be unexpectedly compelling.

Directed and also written by David Jacobson, with Edward Norton as one of its producers and editors as well as its lead star, Down in the Valley was released by Summit Entertainment in 2005, and centres upon Harlan Fairfax Curruthers, an ostensibly affable if delusional 30-something James Dean lookalike drifter played by Norton.

We are introduced to Harlan when he has a chance encounter one day while working as a petrol-pump (gas-station) attendant in the San Fernando valley region of Los Angeles with late-teenager Tobe (short for October), played by Evan Rachel Wood. She is in a car with some female friends, and they stop at the station en route to their beach destination in order to fill up with fuel. Tobe and Harlan start chatting, and before we know it he has impulsively quit his job, in order to join them in their car as they drive to the beach. Here Tobe and Harlan spend the day playfully frolicking together in the sea, before going back to Harlan's sparse apartment for some rather more serious frolics.

When Tobe returns her own home, however, she is met by her enraged, overbearing father Wade (David Morse), who smashes the door of her bedroom in fury when she refuses to tell him what she has been doing that day, while her timid younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin, the real-life younger brother of Macauley) looks on nervously. Nevertheless, Tobe and Harlan subsequently meet up and go out together on several occasions, but when Harlan turns up at her home, Wade is decidedly unimpressed by him, and tells him so in no uncertain terms, with his pistol pointed directly at Harlan's brow during one particularly fraught, challenging altercation.

Harlan seemingly takes it all in his stride, however, maintaining an affable, genial façade, and in both his cowboy attire and his matching mode of speech, not to mention his highly-tuned sharpshooting abilities, portrays himself to Tobe as a former ranch-hand, accustomed to working with horses in the great outdoors. He even takes her for a ride on a beautiful white horse upon land belonging to someone he claims to be an old friend named Charlie – until a furious 'Charlie' (Bruce Dern) appears on the scene, claims not to be named Charlie and never to have seen Harlan before, and threatens to have him arrested for stealing his horse, even though, to be fair, Harlan had already returned it.

After interviewing everyone back at the station, the police decide not to take matters further, but the first seeds of doubt regarding Harlan's authenticity have been sown in Tobe's mind – as well they might, because throughout the movie the viewer, unlike Tobe, has been privy to Harlan's effortless ability to lie, and his unhealthy obsession with a cowpoke lifestyle that he has clearly never experienced in real life, only inside the confines of his own unbalanced mind.

Finally, however, when Tobe learns that one afternoon, when Harlan had come round to her home and found her gone, he had taken Lonnie out instead and taught the young boy how to shoot a pistol, she  has to accept the truth, that her much older boyfriend is also much more dangerous than she could ever have anticipated. But her realization comes almost too late – during a heated argument resulting from Harlan earnestly begging her to leave home and come away with him, bringing Lonnie too if he'd like to join them, Tobe loses her temper, and Harlan's hair-trigger grasp upon reality finally snaps, as he responds to Tobe's perceived aggression in the time-honored pistol-toting cowboy tradition…

Thinking that he has killed her, Harlan flees and even shoots himself glancingly in order to hide the blood that had spurted on him from Tobe's gunshot wound and to lie to Lonnie that Wade had encountered them together and had shot both of them. Because Harlan has always been kind to Lonnie (in stark contrast to how Wade habitually treats him), when he asks Lonnie to flee with him, the boy agrees, and after stealing the white horse from 'Charlie', they ride off together into the hills. But Wade, the police,, and 'Charlie' are all in swift pursuit, Wade having found Tobe and taken her to the hospital in time for her life to be saved, the police having exposed Harlan in their records as a charlatan criminal named Martin, and 'Charlie' having lost his prized horse once again to him.

I won't say how this sad saga ends, though I think that you can probably guess, especially as almost every cowboy-related movie has a climactic shoot-out, and the very last scene, featuring Tobe, Lonnie, and (after a fashion) Harlan, is especially poignant. Indeed, I found the whole movie unexpectedly affecting, and Norton's performance as Harlan especially so – no-one could have portrayed this complex, charismatic character more effectively. But therein lies what, at least for me, was the central, core issue that I had with Down in the Valley.

By rights, Harlan should have come across as the bad guy, the duplicitous, delusional, pathological psycho, with Wade as the good guy, the honourable father protecting his daughter and young son at all costs from this unhinged drifter's inimical influence. In reality, however, their roles are reversed. For until he is pushed too far by the highly combustible combination of Wade's raw hostility and Tobe's inability and/or reluctance to commit fully to him, Harlan is easy going, laid back, and invariably gentle both to Tobe and to Lonnie (who eventually comes to idolize him). Wade, conversely, is not just domineering to the point of coming across as a total control freak, he is also physically brutal, cowing Lonnie in particular to such an extent that the boy is virtually monosyllabic throughout – except, that is, when, tellingly, he is in Harlan's company, where he relaxes and learns to laugh and enjoy his life, away from hyper-volatile Wade.

Consequently, even though as a viewer I was indeed privy to the secret, delusional side of Harlan's character, I couldn't help but root for this rather sad, lonely guy who seems so out of kilter with the world around him, rather than for the decidedly unsympathetic, bullish character of Wade. Indeed, I cannot help but wonder whether, if Harlan had not been hassled and hustled so much by Wade, the lethal facet of his sham cowboy persona would have ever been unleashed. Perhaps he and Tobe, and possibly with Lonnie in tow too, would have lived happily ever after, after all – who can say?

Described by one reviewer as Norton's best film since Fight Club, Down in the Valley is one of those deep-rooted, thought-provoking movies that stays with you long after its closing credits have rolled, and I can certainly recommend it to anyone interested in viewing something off the beaten track, in every sense.

Moreover, if you'd like a taster of what to expect from Down in the Valley, be sure to click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

NEAR DARK

 

Bill Paxton in one of his most iconic roles, as the psychotic, leather biker-clad vampire Severen from the cult vampire/Western crossover movie Near Dark (© Kathryn Bigelow/F-M Entertainment/De Laurentiis Entertainment Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 9 April 2021, I watched for the first time in many years the cult Western-themed vampire movie Near Dark, after purchasing its 2-disc special edition DVD featuring an entire disc-worth of extras as well as the movie disc itself, and I'm glad to say that it lived up to my memories of it as being an excellent addition to the cinematic vampire genre.

Near Dark centres upon a midwestern small-town farming youth named Caleb (played by Adrian Pasdar) who meets up with a seemingly young female drifter called Mae (Jenny Wright) one evening and swiftly gets bitten, literally, by the love bug. However, Mae's neck bite causes much more than a hickey – for it turns him into a vampire, just like she is. And when the first rays of the dawning sun appear, Caleb's skin begins to smoke and burn (just like Mae's does, as he later discovers).

Just in time, however, along comes an unexpected rescue, or, to be more precise, an uninvited abduction, in the forbidding form of a sun-shielded travelling van containing Mae and her fanged compatriots. These consist of a small but highly aggressive and wholly lawless travelling vampire clan headed by their powerful amoral leader Jesse (Lance Henriksen), whom Mae succeeds in convincing not to kill Caleb but instead to give him a week in which prove his worth to them and thence become a member of their immortal, itinerant union of the undead.

Needless to say, however, the vampire clan's savage, bloodthirsty behaviour and their aimless, nomadic lifestyle do not accord well with Caleb. This soon results in friction arising (especially between Caleb and psychotic biker-clad vampire Severen – Bill Paxton in a tour-de-force performance), and ultimately worse, much worse, for all of them.

 

The official soundtrack album from Near Dark, featuring music by Tangerine Dream (© Kathryn Bigelow/F-M Entertainment/De Laurentiis Entertainment Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Originally planned as a typical Western movie but with the vampire contingent added when financial backing was not forthcoming for a conventional treatment (although, curiously, they are never actually referred to as vampires anywhere in it), Near Dark was Kathryn 'The Hurt Locker' Bigelow's solo directorial debut (she also co-wrote it, with Eric Red). It was released by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group on 2 October 1987, just a few weeks after The Lost Boys, in fact, which is my all-time favourite serious (i.e. non-c0medy) vampire movie.

Speaking of which: a few days earlier I'd had a chat on Facebook about who was the cooler movie vampire - David (played by Kiefer Sutherland) from The Lost Boys or Jesse from Near Dark. I chose David over Jesse, and rewatching Near Dark has only reinforced my view, as in my eyes Jesse comes across as too old and world-weary to be cool.

In fact, imho the coolest vampire by far in Near Dark is Severen, but he loses out to David by being too much of a psycho and gore-fest relisher. Even so, his portrayal by Paxton is a truly rivetting one, with Severen effortlessly stealing every scene that he appears in. I'm not sure about his dancing skills though...

Be sure to check out the official Near Dark trailer accessible here on YouTube for some of this very original, distinctive vampire movie's many highlights.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Severen shows off his terpsichorean talents – or lack of them! – in Near Dark (click image if GIF file does not run automatically) (© Kathryn Bigelow/F-M Entertainment/De Laurentiis Entertainment Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

THE MONROES - FINALLY FINDING THE FOREST DEVIL

Publicity photograph for The Monroes (© Milt Rosen/Qualis Productions/20^th Century Fox-Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

It's always a great feeling when the lost is found, when a mystery is solved – and especially so when the lost had been lost, and the mystery concerning it unresolved, for over 40 years.

Right from a very early age, I had always been fascinated by mysterious and mythological creatures, making my eventual cryptozoological career little short of inevitable. And so it was that a certain episode of a Western show that my family and I viewed one Sunday afternoon on British television during the mid-1960s, when I was around six years old, engaged my attention to a far greater degree than might otherwise have been expected, given the fact that, normally, the Western genre held little if any interest for me.

The episode in question concerned the stalking of a family living alone in the American wilds a century or so previously, by a mystifying but greatly-feared beast of such rapacious, belligerent, yet elusive nature that it was referred to superstitiously by the local Native American people as a devil (a name that, as far as I could recall, also featured in the title of this episode). They also called it by another, more exotic-sounding name, and, as in all the best suspense movies, the creature itself was never seen, until the very end. Instead, the viewer had to be content with savage growls, rustles in the undergrowth, and off-screen activity.

Finally, the 'devil' was lured close enough to be shot, and at the denouement it was revealed to be an unexpectedly large specimen of a creature not generally encountered in those parts. But what exactly was that creature? Only at the end was its English name finally given, and it proved to be a species that, as a young child, I had never heard of before – the wolverine.

Known scientifically as Gulo gulo, native to northern North America and also to northern Europe and northernmost Asia, the wolverine or glutton is the largest living terrestrial member of the mustelid family, growing to the size of a small bear. Moreover, it is infamously ferocious, powerful, intelligent, and tenacious, making it one of the most feared species of mammal throughout its range. Little wonder, then, that in the episode it had been referred to by the native people as a devil.

This particular programme had a strong impact on me, as I had been enthralled waiting to discover what the mystery beast in it was, and I can remember watching it avidly a second time a couple of years or so later when the series in which it appeared was repeated on television (even though I now knew the creature's identity beforehand), but after that, nothing. As far as I am aware, neither the entire series nor this particular episode from it was ever broadcast on British television again. But what was the series?

The years passed by, and despite remembering the wolverine episode in great detail, I never could recall the name of the series itself, and whenever memories of the episode periodically came to mind I always promised myself that I'd pursue this intriguing little mystery, but somehow I never did. Eventually, even the wolverine episode faded in my recollection until it became little more than a hazy, half-forgotten dream. And although I would often flick through books on vintage television, I never obtained any clues as to its series' identity.

 

A wolverine (public domain)

Just like its subject, however, the wolverine episode was nothing if not tenacious, and about 8 years ago it came to mind yet again – but now, armed with the vast research power of the internet, I decided that the time had come to track down this cryptozoological tele-phantom once and for all. I began my search on YouTube, in the hope that the episode, or at least an excerpt or two from it, had been posted there. I knew that I could still remember enough details to be able to recognise it, should it be there. But despite using a variety of key words – 'Western', 'television', 'wolverine', 'devil', '1960s' – nothing promising came up.

So I turned my attention to Google, and used the same key words in its search engine. After a time, I thought I'd discovered it, but it was a false lead. Google had turned up an episode from 1963 called 'The Wolverine' in a Canadian TV series entitled The Forest Rangers, in which a ferocious wolverine turns up in Indian River (the fictional location where this series was set), killing all the livestock there. This plotline certainly compared closely with the programme that I had seen, and the creature was even referred to in it by the same exotic name that I now recalled from 'my' episode – carcajou, an Ojibway name. But when I researched The Forest Rangers series, I discovered that its rangers-focused storylines didn't accord at all with those of the series that I had viewed all those years ago. Exit The Forest Rangers.

Happily, however, my continued Googling did finally achieve the long-awaited success that I had been hoping for, because there, at last, on my computer screen, was the answer. The series, created by Milt Rosen and first broadcast in 1966, was entitled The Monroes, which was produced by Qualis in association with 20^th Century Fox-Television, and included Michael Anderson Jr and Barbara Hershey (playing the parent-substitute figures of big brother Clay and sister Kathy) among its stars. It centred around the story of five orphans (Clay, Kathy, twins Jefferson and Fenimore, and Amy, aged from 18 down to 6 years of age) trying to survive in 1876 as a family on the frontier in the area around what is now Grand Teton National Park near Jackson, Wyoming, after their father and mother had drowned.

Running for just a single season, 'The Monroes' consisted of 26 episodes – the fourth of which, entitled 'The Forest Devil', was the wolverine episode that had played such a key role in kindling my interest in cryptozoology as a youngster and had afterwards teased and tantalised my mind for over four decades.

And as if my solving this longstanding mystery from my childhood were not satisfying enough, I then discovered that the entire episode had actually been uploaded on YouTube (click here to view it). Needless to say, and for the first time since the mid-1960s, I duly sat back and watched 'The Forest Devil' – an experience made even more memorable this time by being able to view it in colour. For just like so many other families in Britain at that time, we'd only owned a black-and-white television during the 1960s, so until now I'd never seen this programme in colour.

Returning when an adult to a television show, a book, or even a location that had been so appealing as a child does not always live up to expectations, with the long-treasured memory of it sometimes proving to have been much more special than the reality. However, I'm happy to report that in the case of 'The Forest Devil', it was every bit as thrilling and enjoyable now, even in these jaded 21^st-Century times, as it had been for me back in the 1960s, when everything was still bright and fresh and new and exciting.

It also showed me that miracles, even if they are only very minor, personal ones, do indeed still happen in this mundane old world of ours. And that is something else well worth treasuring.

To view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

 

Front cover of a Dell comic book of The Monroes (© Dell/Milt Rosen/Qualis Productions/20^th Century Fox-Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)