Warlock

At the end of the 1950s, Westerns shot in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope were becoming less and less popular in theaters. By that point, American audiences had decided that sweeping tales of justice with gun-toting cowboys had become rote and required new blood. That's interesting, considering Edward Dmytryk's "Warlock" was anything but your conventional Western. Rather than focus in on the boilerplate antics you'd expect from the genre, the film rests its laurels on something confounding: Judging a lawless western town as a kind of microcosm for American society in the early 1880s. While the genre tropes remain, like the brave gunslinger ready to dole out his own brand of justice, this adaptation of Oakley Hill's novel finds remarkable depth in studying a cast of characters that are neither completely good nor completely bad.

In the fictional town of Warlock, a small Utah mining town, outlaw Abe McQuown (Tom Drake) and his band of cowboys drive the sheriff out of town. The void is soon filled by Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda), a former gunslinger for hire that offers protection to the inhabitants of Warlock for a monthly wage that's almost ten times higher than a normal sheriff's pay. Naturally, the townsfolk agree, and Clay sets on a path to drive McQuown and co. out of town. Things don't go down as planned as old flames and buried secrets upend Clay's search for justice or something that resembles justice.

To talk about Dmytryk's power as a director is to bring up other filmmakers who were also adept at bending these well-worn moral tropes to their will to make something new. I'd liken Dmytryk to Sam Peckinpah not in shot choice, but in content. "Warlock" doesn't shy away from the fact that living in this era is untenable for a person trying to do some good in the world. They just have to be the one to act the fastest when danger gets close. And like Budd Boetticher, Dmytryk can boil down Western tropes to their essence and takes great pleasure in watching them struggle to find footing in a world that's changing faster than any one person can.

Plus, "Warlock" is shot by Joseph MacDonald of "My Darling Clementine" fame, so you know sprawling western landscapes have never looked better than how you see them here. There's even a romantic subplot between Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn that the narrative spends a fair amount of time on. That itself is worthy of a recommendation.

This new Blu-ray from Twilight Time rightfully brings a forgotten gem up for reappraisal. Not only that, but the audio and video presentations are stellar. In the Blu-ray label's quest to bring original, eccentric and excellently crafted classics to a home audience, they continue to excel for exactly the reason that "Warlock" does -- every new release gives historical context and suggest another avenue film history could have gone in if other projects were attributed the same notoriety as those often talked and written about. Special features include:

� Booklet essay by Julie Kirgo
� Isolated Music Track
� Original Theatrical Trailer
� Fox Movietone Newsreel

"Warlock"
Twilight Time Blu-ray
$29.95
https://www.twilighttimemovies.com/warlock-blu-ray/