The Plunderers (1960)

Excellent adaptation.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The Plunderers is directed by Joseph Pevney and written by Bob Barbash. It stars Jeff Chandler, John Saxon, Dolores Hart, Marsha Hunt and Jay C. Flippen. Music is by Leonard Rosenman and cinematography by Eugene Polito.Trail City, and 4 delinquent cowboys ride into town with attitude and carefree abandon. The Trail City residents - spineless, all except one man. One man who considers himself only half a man on account of his disability. That man is Civil War veteran Captain Sam...War didn't just destroy his arm.The few critical appraisals and reviews that exist for The Plunderers are keen to associate the picture with other notable pictures released previously, which in this instance is something of a curse when they happen to be well revered classics. Yet this is no knock off, it has its own identity. The four young delinquents here are not dashing dandy types, the makers make every effort to put their failings as human beings up at the front of the portrayals. These are young men, out of their depth, even spineless, but of course the town doesn't know this as they are too busy cowering in the shadows.The messages are obvious in the play, but Pevney doesn't use his sledgehammer to enforce those parts of the narrative. It's perhaps no surprise how things pan out with Chandler's embittered war veteran, as he wrestles with both his conscience and his disability, but Pevney has a good knack for slow burning the atmosphere to bring rewards for film's finale. Chandler, in his last Western, is suitably broody, Hunt and Hart are beauties to behold, while of the bad boys it's Saxon as a diabolical Mexican - with scary eyebrows - and the only one who is old enough to shave, who strikes the highest villain chords.Elsewhere there's a great musical score provided by double Academy Award Winner Rosenman, very much akin to something that the moody Twilight Zone episodes would use. It also at times has the feel of the score Alan Silvestri would rustle up for Predator some 27 years later. Polito's photography is crisp, where in conjunction with Pevney's camera angles and lighting techniques keeps the claustrophobia factor high in this one location setting.Crackerjack! A dandy of a black and white Oater waiting to be discovered by more Western fans. It's a keeper for sure. 8/10

"Away All Boats" director Joseph Pevney's "The Plunders" looks like a cross-between of "Bad Day at Black Rock" and "The Wild One." Basically, leading man Jeff Chandler is cast as Sam Christy, a former Civil War officer who has lost the use of his left arm. The loss of that limb--he still retains the entire arm--serves as a metaphor for his loss of courage. Like the one-armed Spencer Tracy hero in "Bad Day at Black Rock," Sam is sullen and filled with self-pity. He lives alone on a ranch with nobody to take care of him and his relationship with a hotel owner has gone sour. Four young cowpokes ride into the meager town of Trail City. They resemble the juvenile delinquent characters on motorcycles in "The Wild One." In fact, the opening narration sounds like the cautionary words in the Marlon Brando epic because the narrator contends that it could happen to any town. These punchers are fresh out of Dodge City where they blew their wad in no time and don't have two-bits between them. Tired and ornery, they see Trail City as a place to square accounts for the raw treatment that they received in Dodge City. They start out by refusing to pay for a bottle of whiskey at the local saloon and the town sheriff hauls them into the hoosegow. They spent the night in jail and agree to leave peaceably until they get out. Initially, they take $73 worth of clothes from a mercantile store and follow that up by getting a free room in the hotel. Nobody has enough courage to curb their wanton urges and the local sheriff buckles under pressure. Finally, they shoot the poor man down in the street, collect all the firearms in town and settle back into the saloon. By now everybody in town is quaking in their boots at the sight of the vandals. Mike Baron (James Westerfield of "The Sons of Katie Elder") refuses to serve them in his saloon and William 'Mule' Thompson (Roger Torrey of "The Nun and the Sergeant")batters him into submission. Afterward, Sam Christy bucks heads with them and the biggest of the four roughs him up. Sam exits town and decides to have nothing to do with the quartet of hellions. Eventually, the young daughter of the local storekeeper, Ellie Walters(Dolores Hart of "King Creole")prompts Sam to take another chance at the foursome. Sam rallies the rest of the townspeople and they stand together and whip the hellions. Sam takes on the Goliath-like Mule in a knife fight and Ellie turns a six-gun on the romantically inclined Hispanic gang member, Rondo (John Saxon of "Enter the Dragon") when he pulls a knife on Sam. In a showdown on the street, Sam guns down Jeb Lucas Tyler (Golden Globe nominated actor Ray Stricklyn of "The Return of Dracula")as the rowdy twenty-year old charges down the street blasting away with two guns. Sam convinces the rest of the townspeople to let the last one, Davy (Dee Pollock of "Kelly's Heroes") ride out with the memory of the event to haunt him forever.Clearly, "The Plunders" is a morality yarn that pits old against young, weak against strong, and cowardly against brave. Joseph Pevney's taut, bottled-up direction and Bob Barbash's tip-lipped, intelligent script make this 93-minute pressure-cooker thriller worth watching, even though it's pretty predictable. Meaning, you know that Sam Christy is going to lick these young, immature hellions. Mind you, "The Plunders" isn't top-drawer entertainment, but it qualifies as above-average thanks to uniformly fine performances and contemplative pacing. Saxon looks like he is giving a warm-up act for his treacherous bandit in the 1966 western "The Appaloosa." Saxon has a moment before he dies at the hands of Dolores Hart when he talks about the prejudice that he has experienced as a Hispanic at the hands of whites. As usual, Chandler plays a stern, taciturn man who has to have his cage rattled before he shows his true colors. The only flaw in his performance occurs during a fight at his ranch with one of the plunders. Dolores Hart is around for good looks and everything appears appropriately dusty.

Juvenile delinquency was a very hot topic in the late fifties and early sixties. The new scourge of civilization, rock and roll, had transformed the younger generation into rebels who wanted to cast off the repressive rules by which they were expected to conduct themselves. The burgeoning post-war economy was removing the fear that had formed so much of the older generation's embracement of responsibility and the ever-quickening pace of materialistic progress was making any prospect of boredom anathema to the young.This certainly didn't go unnoticed by the establishment who were understandably alarmed by what appeared to be a rise in youthful disrespect and hedonism and the war of the generations was taken fairly seriously for a while. Hollywood quickly realized that this was a very sexy and saleable topic for entertaining the masses and began churning out dramas of rebellious youth by the boatload. By 1960 (the year this film was released) these rebellious youth movies were becoming pretty repetitive as far as contemporary settings went, so it was a darned good idea to take the issue and transfer it to a different time - the old west.It worked rather well, I think. Westerns tend to be fairly simple story lines for the most part anyway, so bringing an aspect of modern juvenile delinquency into the western was novel enough to spice up both tired genres a little. I watched it on the late show when I was on a baby-sitting gig and it made my night. Held my interest all the way and I enjoyed repeated viewings of it over the next couple of years.It's well acted by all. John Saxon has a great time playing the quietest but most dangerous gang member and Jeff Chandler gets to be a bad-tempered hero. As a small and relatively simple movie with a social message geared to the time of its release it's not really an 8 now, but I think it deserves a little better rating than it has here so I've given an extra point or two to help raise the average and I don't think that's the wrong thing to do at all. It's a decent piece of entertainment.

Four young hoodlums ride into a tiny town of 50 and the terror begins. The townsfolk are too old to really fight back and their only hope is for a man(Jeff Chandler)with only one useful arm to take them on. Predictable, but interesting. Chandler is supported by: John Saxon, Dolores Hart, J.C. Flippen, Marsha Hunt and Ray Stricklyn.NOTE: Hart gave Elvis his first screen kiss in LOVING YOU(1957). She starred with him again in KING CREOLE(1958). Hart entered a convent in Connecticut in 1963.