Lust for Gold (1949)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

We all have a childhood memory of watching a film and retaining a certain line of dialog or particular scene. If you are lucky, you will discover that scene or particular speech in an adulthood and finally have a title to add to the memory.That is the case for me with "Lust For Gold", an adult western with certain elements of film noir, much like " Pursued" and "The Furies". I happened upon this several years ago and just about choked when the scene from my childhood came back. My brother and I had been watching this some rainy afternoon and we both laughed at the scene where Glenn Ford happens to leave a shop with two baskets of cookies. He gives them to a little boy who happened to be close to my age with truly comical results. For years afterwords until our adolescence came to an end, we would remind each other of the line.The story surrounds a rich gold mine and the mystery surrounding an alleged curse. Starting in the present day with Ford's grandson William Prince trying to find it, then flashes back 60 years to Ford's discovery of it and how it ruined his life.Along the way, he falls for the secretly scheming Idea Lupino, a married woman who pretends to be in love with him to get her hands on the bulk of the hidden claim. Sort of like a period version of " Double Indemnity", it ends up with the two playing cat and mouse with each other which leads to an ironic conclusion.A very intelligent opening narration by William Prince sets the intrigue in motion and there is a fine cast of character actors in support, among them Paul Ford, Hayden Roarke and Edgar Buchanan. A great bit by an old lady claiming in 1949 to Prince leads to a funny sequence with Ford from years ago where the obnoxious little old lady becomes an obnoxious little girl. This is smart in every way, making it a sleeper of a western film noir that is hard to resist.

Lust for Gold is directed by S. Sylvan Simon and adapted for the screen by Richard English & Ted Sherdeman from the novel Thunder God's Gold written by Barry Storm. It stars Ida Lupino, Glenn Ford, Gig Young and William Prince. Music is by George Duning and cinematography by Archie Stout.Superstition Mountains, home to the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine, and home to many deaths because of it...Is it a mythical legend or is it fact? What we do know is that the story of The Lost Dutchman Gold Mind, apparently located somewhere in the Superstition Mountains, East of Phoenix, Arizona, is one hell of a story and makes for an entertaining and interestingly structured Western flavoured movie. Hell! The film even has a tricky little back story that saw author Barry Storm, who was portrayed in the film by William Prince, sue the makers for misrepresentation of his character. Even citing Communism as being what he claimed were some underhand tactics. Further reading on this subject can be found on the internet and it's most interesting stuff. Also noteworthy is that director S. Sylvan Simon (I Love Trouble) was originally only producing the movie, direction was to be by George Marshall (Destry Rides Again/How The West Was Won), but the two of them clashed considerably so Simon took on directing duties as well.What should be said from the outset is that first time viewers would be well advised to read up on the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine first. This will help considerably to enjoy the film more. This is because the picture covers three different time periods in history, with the beginning and end taking place in present day (1949 that is), and the centre bulk of the story set in 1880 as Dutchy Waltz (Ford) finds the gold and promptly finds hassle (the whole town) and treachery (Lupino's sultry femme fatale Julia Thomas) comes as part of the deal. The third point in history comes by way of an explanation as to the Apache Indian origins of the gold. None of it is confusing, but the flow of the film is inevitably stop-start, and with Prince's character (Barry Storm is related to Dutchy Waltz) providing a one note narration, film isn't as "great" as it should be.However, there is a lot of "great" things "in" Lust for Gold. Cast are mostly ace, with Lupino a dominating presence and Ford doing a nice line as, well, a sympathetic bastard! In secondary support you get a roll call of actors who have earned their spurs in the Western genre. Edgar Buchanan (Devil's Doorway), Will Geer (Broken Arrow), Arthur Hunnicut (The Big Sky) and Jay Silverheels (The Lone Ranger TV series and films). As fun and intriguing as the story is, and it is both, the best thing about the film is undoubtedly the location shooting by Archie Stout (Fort Apache). Originally shot in Sepia tones, the DVD release of the film is in crisp black and white (the Region 2 DVD offers a quality print), where the Superrstition Mountains make for an imposing presence throughout the tale, the beauty and hazards of the rock formations are expertly realised by Stout's photography.Although one can imagine Marshall would have stitched the story together better, and possibly got more mileage out of Gig Young's hapless husband character, Simon doesn't scrimp on the action sequences. There's plenty of fisticuffs within, plus a pulse raising Apache attack sequence. He also proves competent at honing a sweaty stand-off section, where the thirst becomes unbearable under the burning sun. This is a precursor to a genuinely eye opening turn of events before we zip back to the present day. It's then when you most likely will feel like I did, bitten by a yearning to get back to the old West in the company of gold hungry varmints and duplicitous females. 7.5/10

I rather enjoyed the description of the Superstition Mountain area of Arizona in the film's opening narrative as 'Satan's Private Art Gallery'. The picture itself seemed to offer a preview of hell's future citizens with it's gripping story of the Lost Dutchman Mine, discovered by Jacob Walz in the 1880's at the end of a Sharp's rifle and a host of dead bodies. Though I don't know how much of the story's background is true historically, the legend of the Mexican Peralta brothers is displayed in a noirish flashback within a flashback. In it, the Apache Indians led by Cochise look like the most realistic tribe of Native American Indians I've ever seen portrayed in cinema, including I suppose "Dances With Wolves".The cast is respectable and well suited for their roles, all appearing in the movie's main flashback story. Prospector Walz is portrayed by Glenn Ford, while Ida Lupino impresses as the gold digging (no pun intended) wife of Gig Young's character, in hiding from a murder rap back in Wisconsin. The locals of Florence Junction get a howl out of Pete's (Young) remark to Walz at the barber shop - "You can have my place", Walz not yet realizing what the town gossipers have been guffawing about.In all of these period pieces I get a kick out of reminders of an earlier, simpler time - how about the sign in Julia's (Lupino) bakery shop - 10 cents a dozen for doughnuts!Besides the main characters, it's also cool to see Will Geer, Paul Ford and Jay Silverheels in supporting roles, with a feisty Edgar Buchanan shuffling cards in his hat looking for that elusive ace of spades. Stay sharp and you also might recognize Billy Gray as the 'cookie boy'. As for Lupino, it seems I only ever see her playing roles with a dark side, as she did in team ups with my favorite actor Humphrey Bogart - 1940's "They Drive By Night" and 1941's "High Sierra". In fact, with the mountainous terrain at the center of this picture, that might have been a good name for this flick as well.With it's gold fever theme, colorful cast of characters, and greed at every turn, this is a worthwhile follow up to the better known "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", released a year prior in 1948. Not as strong as 'Sierra', it's still pretty much a sleeper hit for fans of this unique genre, a mix of Western and gritty film noir.

I haven't seen this film in a long time and it seems to be a relatively unknown film but this is worth looking for. This is the story of the lost Peralta mine in Arizona's Superstition Mountains near Pheonix better known in legend as The Lost Dutchman's Mine. The film begins in the present day of the film's release of 1949 and we discover there have been several murders recently related to the unknown whereabouts of the mine. The film goes back in time to 1880 and tells the story of the German-born prospector John Walz erroneously called The Dutchman. Between 1880 and his claims to have discovered the mine that had been known by the native Arizona Indians long before, and up to 1949 some 20 murders have been associated with the mine. This film takes some liberties from the story of Walz who didn't come to the area until he was 58 years old and by the time of the film's setting in the 1880's he was in his 70's. Glen Ford stars as Walz in this unusual film noir/western. Ida Lupino is Julian and Gig Young is Pete. In the excellent supporting cast are Edgar Buchanan, Will Gere, Jay Silverheels, Arthur Hunnicut, Paul Ford and William Prince as Barry Storm who wrote the book Thunder God's Gold from which this film is adapted from. S. Sylvan Simon was a versatile director best known for comedies he directed for such comics as Red Skelton and Abbot & Costello but also a film noir director of such films as Grand Central Station, I Love Trouble and Washington Melodrama. Archie Stout who would win an Oscar along with Winton C. Hoch for their photography in The Quiet Man is this film's cinematographer. Ida Lupino would tap Stout to be the cinematographer of her directorial debut in Never Fear, the first of three films they would do together. I would give this an 8.5 out of 10.