Five Bloody Graves (1969)

Fresh and Exciting

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Al Adamson is a notorious name in cult film circles as a man who made the movies of Ed Wood look good. His films are known for being amateurish, slapdash, and hard to enjoy, and having sat through some of his horror outings it's hard to disagree. However, FIVE BLOODY GRAVES, a rare entry in the western genre for the director, is a surprisingly entertaining little film.Of course, it's still amateurish in nature, with 'anything goes' style performances and a general hurried feel to the production. On the other hand, it's absolutely packed with action and violence; the storyline is pure Cowboys and Indians, with never any more depth to it than that. Rest assured that the expected shoot-outs, knife fights and horse riding scenes come thick and fast in this film.Adamson has amassed a wealth of has-been actors for his film, headlined by western star Robert Dix. Watch out for future cult director John 'Bud' Cardos as an Indian and John Carradine as a preacher. Unfortunately the version I watched was heavily cut for violence, but even so I found it better than many modern day attempts at the genre. Certainly no classic but it might just be the director's best film.

Five Bloody Graves (1970) * 1/2 (out of 4)Drive-in flick about lone gunman Ben Thompson (Robert Dix) who loses his wife and sets out on his own. He ends up battling evil Apaches and eventually comes across a wide range of characters and tries to protect them from the Indians who are looking for scalps. If you want a quality Western then it would be best to skip this thing and check out some John Ford films. This movie here is pretty bad on one hand but when you compare it to other films by director Adamson then you might realize that the man certainly did much worse. I think this film here is a tad bit better than some of the director's other work simply because he pretty much throws everything into this movie. We got the crazy gunfighter, countless crazed Indians, traveling prostitutes, a preacher (played by John Carradine) and countless other characters. None of the actors give what you would call a good performance but at the same time they all fit their roles nicely and are at least entertaining to watch. I thought Dix was mildly interesting in the role of the gunfighter and Scott Brady adds some fun as a rival. John "Bud" Carlos plays the main Indian and while he doesn't look the part he at least makes the role fun. Carradine was obviously picking up a paycheck but he's always fun to watch and especially if you're a fan of his work. No matter what trash a filmmaker would give him to read he'd at least give it his all and that's certainly true here. Adamson really doesn't know how to say no as we get just about everything you'd expect to see in a film like this. We get several knife fights that end in deaths. We get countless gunfights that end in deaths. We have a couple horse chases, a few naughty women, a voice-over from Death himself and of course we got the before mentioned Carradine so what else would you want? As with most Adamson films the major downfall is the horrid pacing, which grows old very quickly and at 90-minutes the thing is simply too long to really be enjoyed.

Five Bloody Graves is one of the few real drive-in westerns. It's directed by the much maligned Al Adamson, who made many colorful schlockers in his day. With it's nonstop violence and gory excess, this is no exception.In this the west is depicted as a vast wasteland of hate and savagery, populated by half mad characters including death himself. There isn't much plot except for numerous people wandering around the rugged Utah landscape trying to massacre one another. Being that this is narrated by the grim reaper, there's not much mystery as to where most of the characters wind up.Incidentally, John Carradine, Scott Brady, and Robert Dix were back together a year later in a better drive-in western, Cain's Cuttroats.As far as the detractors go, many of them were tricked by the deceiving advertising on the video box into thinking that this is a horror picture. Fans of B-westerns will most likely be more forgiving than the average viewer.

Al Adamson! Truly one of the Princes of schlock filming and a true heir to Edward D. Wood Jr.s Throne of cheese! Adamsons films have everything that makes the true crap movie so frightening: Illucid scripts, continuity errors of epic proportions, acting somewhere between barely OK to truly awful, former movie greats fallen into rough times, no budget whatsoever, cameos by the director himself (not in the Hitchcock manner, more in the Ed "Glenn or Glennda" Wood way)... you name it.Said that, this is one of his less crappy movies (we are talking about Adamson standards here though), mainly because of a really good director of photography (newly immigrated Vilmos Zsigmound, who later would shoot movies like Maverick and Assassins) and a gorgeous background scenery.But be not fooled! There is still plenty of badness provided, starting with the mind numbing narration by Death himself, reaction shots that don't match either the scene before or after (most often then not not even the time of day!), gratuitous violence of the disturbing kind etc. etc. etc.Watch out for appearances of B-movie legend John Carradine, the movies own screenwriter Robert Dix, 50s Western staple Victor Adamson and ubiquitous Scott Brady.To see Adamson at the peak (or rather bottom ) of his art, be sure not to miss the unbelievable "Dracula vs. Frankenstein", a movie that puts Plan 9 to shame! Highly recommended for fans of Adamson is also David Konow's great biography: Schlock-O-Rama: The Films of Al Adamson