Blood on the Moon

Robert Mitchum shows up in a western ranch town with written orders hiring him to work on a family's farm. While Tom Tully and Walter Brennan are fine with Bob's presence, Barbara Bel Geddes isn't happy, which clearly shows there's something wrong with her. If Robert Mitchum showed up on your ranch, would you complain? There's a bit of a love triangle between Barbara, Bob, and Robert Preston, and as the movie progresses, it seems like there's a deeper rift than just romance. Families are fighting families, friends are double-crossing each other, and poor Bob is caught in the middle. And since the girl his character is written to fall in love with is a royal pain-chewing him out in front of an audience and shooting at him point-blank range-how is he supposed to have any fun? Well, he has about as much fun as the audience does while watching it, which is, sadly, not much. Unless you're crazy about Robert Preston and want to see him in his pre-The Music Man days, you don't have to rent this one.

Robert Mitchum wanders into the middle of a feud between two sides in the old west. All he wants to do is visit with an old friend (Robert Preston), but keeps getting pushed to enter the action--though he has no idea who is in the right and who is not. Instead, he just tries to be a decent person and stay out--but unfortunately, no one else will allow this. As for Preston, he wants Mitchum to join with him in beating Tom Tully and his friends. But, the more Mitchum digs, the more Preston seems to be in the wrong...and just plain evil. Obviously, the years have changed Preston for the worst (a role he often played during this era). Eventually, Mitchum realizes he must stand up to his old friend and do what is right. In general, this is a very good and adult sort of western. Robert Mitchum was very nice in the lead--very understated and not the macho hero you might usually find in such films. The script and direction are also quite good. About the only thing I didn't like in the film was Barbara Bel Geddes' character. At first, she's insanely hot-headed and pretty annoying. Later, she's level-headed and head over heels in love with Mitchum! It's like she's playing a Jekyll and Hyde sort of character--and always at such extremes.

One of the best Westerns is unfortunately little known outside Film-Noir devotees and Robert Mitchum Fans. It is a darkly lit antithesis to most familiar Westerns of broad sun drenched landscapes and other clichés of the Genre. A brooding Character Study that anticipated the Mann/Boetticher personal Films of the 1950's. This is one of the very few Westerns that can be placed in the Film-Noir Category without dissent. From the conflicted and sensitive Anti-Hero to the moody, gloomy shadows that drape almost every Scene, to the brutal and very violent brawl that takes place in a dingy Commissary, to the changing attitudes of the Players, this is definitely a Noir without apology. The fine Acting, Cinematography, and Direction makes this stand out as a thoughtful, complex situation of Range Wars and Social alignments. A unique Movie that is mounted in a claustrophobic frame that goes against the grain of its setting. A sharply focused, but mysterious environment with Drifters and Cowgirls equally important to the Story.

This film serves as a companion piece to another Robert Mitchum Western of the same period, 'Rachel and the Stranger'. Both feature an isolated drifter brought into contact with the extremes of nature and civilisation figured in the home. Both use the tropes of the western to frame a romance, pushing the 'outdoor' nature of the genre towards the domestic, so that the action climax is less a traditional expelling of a threatening enemy from without than a displacement of tensions within. 'Blood' is a heady Freudian brew, with Robert Preston as Mitchum's double, an embodiment of those negative aspects within himself that led him astray and that have to be expelled before he is 'fit' for 'civilised' society. This theme is given extra resonance by its post-war context. 'Blood' is darker, less comic than 'Rachel'; its cluttered, glowering, often impenetrable mise-en-scence seems more fitting to film noir than the bright expanses of the Western. Mitchum, never the Duke, plays an extension of his noir persona as he literally 'drifts' into situations reluctantly, where his lack of decisiveness proves lethal. True to form, there is a femme fatale. Initially Barbara Bel Geddes is set up for the role - every frontiersman's nightmare: an independent, trigger-happy, trousers-wearing harpy. Her introductory scene with Mitchum as she shoots at him has a rare comic, Hawksian feel, as he returns phallic fire, leaving her suggestively spreadeagled, at his mercy. But she is no threat, revealed to be a dedicated home-bird; her purpose is to bring Mitchum into the domestic fold, appropriately wearing a dress. Still, there is something alternately empowering and emasculating about the siege scene, where bel Geddes, dressed as a man, fights off the opportunistic villain, while Mitchum lies helpless, passive, vulnerable, wounded in bed. As I say, you won't find too many scenes like that with the Duke. The real femme fatale is the real home-breaker, the sister whose sexual activity is socially disruptive, betraying her father and family to a shyster lover. Her androgyny is less open than bel Geddes', it is a disguise - there is a 'Fantomas'-like frisson to her nocturnal rock-hurling scene down a dark alley. If there's one theme discernible in Robert Wise's oeuvre, it is misogyny, such as informed his great noir 'Born to kill'. Misogyny is the real subject of this film too: the title, suggestive of sunset (decline), or the vision of a wounded or dying man, also has an unmistakably gynaecological flavour, one pregnant with horror and distaste, the blood of dying men linked with the betrayal of sexually active women. The landscape, with its jarring mixture of the naturally picturesque and the over-elaborately artificial is gendered and trustworthy, a space that could trap a man - when Mitchum and bel Geddes camp in a heavily gendered forest, he tries to master her through sexual domination, but eventually gives into her; in the climactic scene, when this 'good' guy strikes with terrifying Max Cady-like violence in a forest, his reward is domesticity, sharing his lover's arms with his prospective father-in-law. And so an almost radical critique of American capitalism and its genocidal treatment of the Indians (the plot concerns food given to a reservation) becomes another demonising of the female in the 'golden' age of film noir.

I can see why reviewers often refer to this movie as a Film Noir western. It comes from the same era and has the same tone of the films of that genre. It certainly is different from many of the other westerns of that era. I have grown over the years in my appreciation of the films of Robert Wise. His name might be not be often taught in film schools but his resume is very strong. This movie included. A big plus for "Blood on the Moon" is Robert Preston as the villain. Preston is always a lot of fun to watch.

The novels of Luke Short paint a dark picture of the old west and Hollywood has made good use of them in making some really good westerns. Blood On The Moon is one of the best screen adaptations of one of his stories. A quick cursory glance of the films made from his stories, Ramrod, Ambush, Station West, Vengeance Valley, Coroner Creek all of them are pretty dark, almost noir like stories set in the old west. Blood On The Moon has Robert Mitchum as a cowboy sent for by his friend Robert Preston to be part of scheme to grab the herd of cattle baron Tom Tully. Not that Preston wants to do a little honest rustling, no his is a complicated plan involving getting the small ranchers and homesteaders riled up against Tully and getting a small range war started. He's even seduced one of Tully's daughters, Phyllis Thaxter, into betraying her father with promises of love and undying affection. All of this is a bit too much for Mitchum for whom it is alluded was quite the hellraiser in earlier times, but now is just sick of it all. Tully's other daughter Barbara Bel Geddes is checking him out if he would only break with Preston. When discussing this film in his book about Robert Mitchum, Lee Server makes the point that this film was far from what RKO planned for its star. Originally Mitchum was to be the white hat cowboy hero and successor as its B picture western star when Tim Holt went off to World War II. Little did they dream at RKO back in 1944 when Mitchum made his first with top billing, Nevada that he would be in this kind of western and do it so successfully. Preston had finished with his contract at Paramount and was now freelancing. We now know him primarily for The Music Man, but in his early film days he played many a villain and this one is a study in malevolence. His superficial charm even carries menace with it. Blood On The Moon enters that list of really top notch westerns that were originally authored by Luke Short. Try not to miss it when broadcast.

The VHS video of this movie is a colorised version of the original thanks to Ted Turner. I refuse to watch it in colour, so I turn off the colour attributes of my TV and enjoy this movie in Black and White. Without the distraction of colour, one gets to enjoy a great story line, some wonderful performances by Robert Mitchum and Barbara Bel Geddes, and one of Robert Wise's directorial gems.

The movie is similar to the earlier Pursued, which is also starring Mitchum, but somewhat on the lighter side. The movie suffers a little from an uninspired end, but Mitchum's spectacular fall-out monologue in the saloon alone makes this movie worth watching (plus the good story, good acting, and spectacular scenery...).

Blood On the Moon is a moody western drama from the late forties, adapted from a Luke Short story, and directed by Robert Wise. Robert Mitchum plays an itinerant copwpuncher who arrives in a ranching community in which he discovers an old friend of his, played by Robert Preston, also resides, and who turns out to be in the cattle rustling business. Since the locals are suspicious of him in the first place, Mitchum seems unsure as to which side he's on. This is a well-acted film but somewhat of a downer. A good deal of the action takes place at night or in darkened rooms. It's very noir in tone, though technically a western. Mitchum's laconic, somewhat enigmatic personality helps it along, as does Preston's amiable-seeming bad guy. Barbara Bel Geddes gives a good performance as the love interest; and such capable players as Charles McGraw, Tom Tully and Walter Brennan are on hand to spice things up. While the movie is quite accomplished in what it sets out to do, it strikes me as somewhat of an experiment that doesn't quite come off. The western is at its best a rousing genre, full of action and movement. This one has precious little of either.

The concept of the "noir western" is unthinkable without Robert Mitchum. Mitchum, who started his career as a heavy in B westerns and went on to be hailed as the "soul of film noir" for his world-weary cynicism and cool, doomed aura, defined the hybrid genre in 1947 with PURSUED, then followed with BLOOD ON THE MOON. The plot is essential noir: a man down on his luck is summoned by an old partner and cut in on a big deal; when he finds out that the deal is crooked and his friend is an irredeemable louse, he has to decide whether to accept his slide into corruption or fight to maintain his honor. The scheme just happens to involve cheating a man out of his cattle herd instead of some urban racket. The cinematography is literal noir; at least half the scenes take place at night, in a murk that rather obviously symbolizes the difficulty of seeing anyone's true nature. None of the western clichés are here: there are no rowdy dance-halls or rip-snorting brawls or comical drunks, no steely sheriffs or white-hatted good guys. The mood is somber, tense and ambiguous, but the film does satisfy the requirements for a western: there are cattle stampedes, a savage fight, a gun battle and beautiful sweeping landscapes, including stunning scenes in a snow-bound pass, the white drifts sliced by the tracks of men and horses. All of the performances are restrained and natural. Barbara Bel Geddes and Phyllis Thaxter, as the daughters of the cattle baron targeted by the scheme, both avoid the glossy glamour that so often makes actresses look out of place in westerns. Bel Geddes is appealingly fresh, and does a good job with a character who starts out as a hostile spitfire in pants (she and Mitchum "meet cute" by shooting at each other) and then morphs into a gentle healer in a dress. Robert Preston is perfect as Riling, a smirking cad with an oily face and a plaid jacket; his former partner Jim Garry (Mitchum) sums him up with the classic line, "I've seen dogs that wouldn't claim you for a son." Walter Brennan adds seasoning as usual, this time poignant rather than comic. Mitchum makes a beautiful cowboy with his long hair and elegantly rugged attire, at once authentic (on seeing Mitch in costume Walter Brennan reportedly declared, "That is the goddamnedest realest cowboy I've ever seen!") and romantic. In one scene he confronts a gunman on a wide, dusty street and walks towards him—that's all he has to do, just walk towards him and the guy knows he's outclassed. (Mitchum's panther walk is one of the glories of cinema—I would love to watch a whole movie of nothing but Mitchum walking.) I don't think Jim Garry smiles once (though he comes close in a gentle scene where the heroine, tending to his injured hand, asks about his fight with Riling, and he answers, "It was a pleasure.") He conveys a profound inchoate sadness, but as always he uses dry humor to keep emotion at bay. He's contained, laconic, defended. Not merely stoic, he's strangely passive, willing to let things go; his strength is tinged with melancholy because he can "take it," but he also feels it. Lee Marvin (Mitchum's one-time co-star) said it well: "The beauty of that man. He's so still. He's moving. And yet he's not moving." Mitchum is mesmerizing because you sense so much going on behind the cool, impassive facade. It's partly his film-style acting, which happens under the surface, not on the surface. But under-acting can't fully account for his mystery. There's something fundamentally inaccessible, unknowable about Mitchum's characters, and this is what makes them so real. You never feel they are underwritten or inconsistent; instead you feel he's a whole and complex person who can never be fully explained. Despite his much publicized contempt for most of his work, Mitchum brings this tremendous gift to the slightest and shallowest of movies. BLOOD ON THE MOON, however, is worthy of him.