The Last Challenge (1967)

I love this movie so much

the audience applauded

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I watched this film on TV on TCM recently after reading the short synopsis and seeing the cast list....Glenn Ford, Angie Dickinson, Jack Elam, Royal Dano and Gary Merrill. A good, reliable line-up. It was a 1967 film as well, sandwiched between The Professionals (1966) and The Wild Bunch (1969), not to mention Butch & Sundance and True Grit, both from the same era. It had to be good. It wasn't...it was awful! The tired plot (ageing gunfighter trying to escape his past with a new young pistolero wanting to prove himself) has been done many times before, and better, but I thought the stellar cast might bring something new to the film...wrong! Poor old Glenn Ford looked his usual world-weary self a bit too much in this film and Jack Elam played his regular character that he's played many times down the years, which is OK if the movie's a good one...if it's not, it doesn't work for me. The most ridiculous waste of talent was the part Royal Dano played, not just an Indian, but a drunken one that wouldn't have been out of place in Blazing Saddles. On top of all that, the film actually looked horrible...it had none of the sharp, colourful camera work that the others I mentioned had, in fact it looked like a 'B' movie to me. The best thing about this film was Angie Dickinson who looked great throughout it. For me, Shane in 1953, set the standard for future westerns, and Rio Bravo ('59) and The Magnificent Seven ('60) kept up this standard with 'grown-up' scripts, good casts and attractive locations. For me, The Last Challenge had none of these ingredients. The only other western I've given a negative review is The Unforgiven with Burt Lancaster (and again, a good cast)...bad, but not quite as bad as this one.

A prophetic title for it was to be Richard Thorpe's last movie;he enjoyed a long retirement for he passed away only 24 years later.He was perhaps tired like his hero,(Glenn Ford)a former gunfighter turned marshal.The ending of the movie is rather pessimistic,which was rare in westerns (there was always something to make up for the unhappy end).The subject is not new (a young lad wants to draw the fastest draw around),only the female character (Angie Dickinson) as the owner of the local saloon and the sheriff's lover stands out:the old Pistolero shows a tendency to react to events instead of initiating them;the prisoner in jail is a drunken Indian and he goes fishing ,leaving his goofy deputy clean the vomit.It seems that Lisa longs for a family life with children (her visit to the farm) but her part is too underwritten."Little house" fans will recognize Kevin -Dr Baker- Hagen as a card player.

The western showdown is as ritualistic as a bullfight which, in many respects, it resembles... The end is as quick, clean and emotionless as the dispatch of a brave fighting bull by the matador... The outcome is usually as predictable but the clash is a heightened moment of suspense that is as exciting as anything the cinema has ever produced...Richard Thorpe, a reliable director of all genre, and one of MGM's most prolific filmmaker since 1935 directed and produced 'The Last Challenge'/'The Pistolero of Red River.'Wanting a particular personal style, Thorpe never directed a great motion picture, but had a consistently acceptable batting average as a director of fine, unpretentious entertainment ranging from drama and polished adventure to comedy, musicals and westerns...With a beautiful body and a timeless loveliness of a face, Angie Dickinson looks great in her black gown... She again figures effectively as the young lady, in love, who wants to stop the shootout... The movie has a Marshal (Glenn Ford) with a reputation as a legendary wild gunfighter, heading for a showdown with a dangerous good-looking challenger Chad Everett...The John Sherry-Robert Emmett Ginna screenplay features Gary Merrill as a bushy-brow 'Five Card Stud' player, and Jack Elam as the hired killer with an evil leer...

Chad Everett is the young gunslinger who wants to prove himself faster than Marshal Glenn Ford, the fastest gun around. Marshal tries to convince gunslinger not to waste his life and be useful instead of dying at his hands while Angie Dickinson attempts to prevent the shoot-out.It is slow, is probably attempting to be evocative, but is basically just boring.