Joan Crawford is a dancer left behind by the carnival she works for and tries to setup home in the last small town they had stopped in. Unfortunately sheriff Sydney Greenstreet runs this town with an iron hand and does not want her kind around. Like Sadie McKee, she finds herself a sugar daddy to marry, despite originally being in love with someone else early in the film. Unfortunately Joan is at least 10 years too old for this role and her hair and clothing make her look 10 additional years older. Despite being miscast in the specifics of the role, Crawford brings quite a bit of strength to her character and its great to see her and Greenstreet battle against each other.

This is the strongest performance by Joan Crawford I’ve seen thus far. After being offended by her snobbish employers, she runs off to the city with her musician boyfriend. When he abandons her, she manages to find herself an alcoholic sugar daddy to marry. The ending is a bit contrived and everything is wrapped up a bit too easily, but Joan makes it worth watching. Though all these ups and downs, Crawford brings a complete range and humanity to the Sadie character.

When I started this, I thought it was a TV movie, but then various language choices cast doubt in my mind. After watching the whole thing, I’m still not sure. Brad Pitt and Ricky Schroder are brothers who live in a trailer with their mother Carrie Snodgress. Whomever cast the family did a great job, since they look believably related. Brad is a straight A student hoping for a track scholarship to Stanford; Ricky is a delinquent just released from detention. There’s some thought that the roles should have been reversed, but I think it wouldn’t have mattered since Pitt obviously has the greater charm and star power. From beginning to end, it plays off like an afterschool special with extreme character changes and over the top villains that are only seen on TV.

Just barely over an hour long, this Western is a tight story of bounty hunter Randolph Scott slowly traveling to turn in his prey and the people they encounter on one stop along the way. It’s not until the third act that a connection between Scott and the killer he is escorting becomes apparent and the story really kicks it up a notch from that point to the end.  

Similar to War Hunt, this movie involves a Korean orphan joining up with an American soldier. Gene Evans’s Sergeant Zack is somewhere between Redford’s and Saxon’s characters in that film: cynical enough to negotiate for cigars to join a different unit’s mission but still human enough to connect with other people around him. Samuel Fuller creates a stark, unsentimental view of war, focusing simply on the unit as they prepare and fight in a singular battle from a Buddhist temple which no one but the survivors will remember.