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| Charles Marquis Warren: The Black Whip (US 1956). Sally Morrow (Angie Dickinson) halts the rapist by gunpoint. She is about to kill him. |
Die schwarze Peitsche / Le Fouet noir / Musta ruoska / Den svarta piskan.
US © 1956 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. PC: Regal Films, Inc. P: Robert Stabler.
D: Charles Marquis Warren. SC+story: Orville H. Hampton. Cin: Joseph F. Biroc – b&w – RegalScope 2,35:1. Set dresser: G. W. Berntsen / G. W. Bernsten. Makeup: Jack Dusick. Hair: Pat Whiffing / Patti Whiffing. SFX: Louis DeWitt, Jack Rabin. M: Raoul Kraushaar. S: Lloyd D. Wiler. ED: Fred W. Berger. Script supervisor: Richard Chaffee.
Avec: Hugh Marlowe (Lorn Crawford), Coleen Gray (Jeannie), Adele Mara (Ruthie Dawson), Angie Dickinson (Sally Morrow), Richard Gilden (Dewey Crawford), Paul Richards (John Murdock), John Pickard (Sheriff Persons), Dorothy Schuyler (Delilah Ware), Charles H. Gray (Chick Hainline), Sheb Wooley (Bill Lassater), Strother Martin (Thorny), Harry Landers (Fiddler), Patrick O'Moore (Governor), William Hamel (Constable), Duane Grey / Duane Thorsen (Deputy Floyd), Rush Williams (Jailer Garner), Howard Culver (Dr. Gillette), Sid Curtis (Bartender), Rick Arnold (Black Leg), Robert Garvey (Black Leg), Bill Ward (Black Leg).
Loc: – Corriganville, Ray Corrigan Ranch, Simi Valley. – Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth. – According to Wikipedia, sets from Gunsmoke were used.
Filming dates: early Aug--early Sep 1956.
AFI: 6968 ft>78 min. – Wikipedia: 78 min. – IMDb & Cin. fr.: 81 min.
US premiere: Dec 1956.
Banned in Finland in 1957.
...
La Cinémathèque française : Fenêtre sur les collections : Le RegalScope.
Séance présentée par Noémie Jean.
DCP from La Cinémathèque française, étalonnage en 2023, VOSTF, double sous-titres français / allemand.
La Cinémathèque française, Salle Jean Epstein, vendredi 17 mar 2023 – 20h15
"April 1867--The war ends.. but leaves behind it derelicts, plunderers, looters and crazed killers that hound the frontier... haunting the night in violent vengeance." (Written prologue)
La Cinémathèque française: "Suspectées d'avoir aidé le chef du gang des Blacklegs à s'évader de prison, quatre entraîneuses de saloon trouvent abri dans une auberge. Les Blacklegs s'y réfugient à leur tour et sèment la terreur."
AA: ABOUT THE DOUBLE BILL:
Beyond the Western Canon. La Cinémathèque française brought us two late 1950s B Westerns, The Black Whip and Ambush at Cimarron Pass, under the banner Le RegalScope. The second golden age of Western movies was nearing its end. A Westerns were transforming into super-Westerns, post-Westerns, meta-Westerns and Euro-Westerns. In low budget westerns like the ones screened tonight, timeless strengths and traditional virtues were sufficient. The films were not necessarily dumb nor naive. Both tonight's films are set in the Western's favoured timeframe – right after the Civil War – and both bring a sense of ache and wisdom to the treatment. Everybody is gun mad after the collective trauma.
Both were produced by Regal Films but financed, copyrighted and released by Twentieth Century-Fox to satisfy B-movie needs in their double bills. Their production belongs to the context of Robert L. Lippert, a "King of the Bs", who financed, produced or masterminded 300 films in 1945–1969, including the first films directed by Samuel Fuller and early genre films by Monte Hellman. The golden age of B westerns was also coming to an end because of the phenomenal supply of television Westerns. To compete with television, the enterprising Lippert sought distinction, for example by filming in scope. The technology was CinemaScope, but because Twentieth Century-Fox wanted to protect its elite trademark, they had to be labelled RegalScope and shot in black and white.
ABOUT THE BLACK WHIP:
While the Civil War in Ambush in Cimarron Pass is a subtext, The Black Whip is an explicit Civil War western all over just like The Raid, dealing with bandits who refuse to accept that the war is over.
The Black Legs band is an offshoot of Quantrill's Raiders, like Jesse James's gang. The leader is John Murdock (Paul Richards), notorious for his black whip.
A masked woman helps the killer Chick Hainline (Charles H. Gray) to escape from prison. It is clear that the woman must be one of four saloon hostesses, but it is impossible to tell which one, and they are all banished.
When a wagon wheel is broken, the friendly Dewey Crawford (Richard Gilden in his first credited feature film role) of the nearby White Star Inn and stage relay station offers the women refuge. But his brother Lorn (Hugh Marlowe) objects and asks the women to leave because he knows that the Black Legs will follow them.
The trauma burning inside is the Lawrence Massacre in Kansas, the most notorious atrocity of Quantrill's Raiders. Jeannie (Coleen Gray) reveals that her family was murdered in it. Lorn, anguished and conflicted, finally confesses that he was the Confederate liaison with Quantrill but withdrew disillusioned from the cause after the massacre.
Charles Marquis Warren was a Hollywood veteran, having started in the early 1930s. Although devoted to motion pictures, he was persuaded by CBS to launch as director and producer Gunsmoke for television, already a sensation as a pathbreaking radio series. It was the second adult tv Western series and grew into the longest-running tv Western series. In 1959 at CBS Warren got involved as producer and director with Rawhide, the sixth longest running American tv Western series.
The distinction of Gunsmoke was evoking true West in terms of brutal realism, as distinct from kiddie stuff. In The Black Whip, the evocation of brutality is unflinching. Warren has talent in dealing with violence, both in scenes of the black whip – and sexual violence and harassment when the Black Legs are let loose on the women.
The mise-en-scène is dynamic, the staging of the action energetic. Like Ambush in Cimarron Pass, The Black Whip is not star-driven, not focused on a main protagonist. The cast grows into a memorable ensemble, each participant is meaningful. After the opening flight of the fugitives, the rest of the film is mostly set inside the White Star Inn.
Hugh Marlowe, a veteran of many classic films, often as a second lead, gets a rare leading role. His Lorn Crawford is a sum of his contradictions, a torn figure seeking redemption.
Warren's account of the saloon women is sympathetic and without hypocrisy. Jeannie (Coleen Gray, the cinema's original Elektra the Electric Woman in Nightmare Alley) stands up against the Black Legs. Sally Morrow (Angie Dickinson, here still a brunette) averts a rape attempt by any means necessary. Ruthie Dawson reveals that she was the one who set Chick Hainline free. The reason: he is her brother. She is played by the veteran Adele Mara, about to embark on a successful television career. Cast with these well-known actresses is Dorothy Schuyler as Delilah Ware, whose two credited theatrical feature films were both directed by Warren.
Strother Martin as the buckboard driver is already memorable in one of his earliest Western parts.
Paul Richards, familiar from Gunsmoke, is monstrously fearsome as the deranged, sadistic John Murdock, who enjoys slashing the kindly Dewey with his cattle whip, permanently disfiguring the youngster's features. Dewey, who may not have seen women very often, is in thrall of the female visitors and acts like a gentleman in protecting them. He casts a longing look when the buckboard leaves the inn on its way back to town. Only Jeannie stays at the inn with Lorn.
The dialogue is brisk and laconic with philosophical comments such as:
– Are you on the run?
– Everyone is.
– Loneliness is 95% fear.
Jeannie seems to read Lorn's mind and guide him from his anxiety. Their shared trauma is leading to mutual conclusions.
Shot by one of America's great cinematographers, Joseph F. Biroc, whose career started in 1918 and who shot masterpieces such as Swing Time and It's a Wonderful Life. He shot the first 3D movie Bwana Devil and was Robert Aldrich's favourite DP from World for Ransom till All the Marbles. He shot Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow and Forty Guns, but also Blazing Saddles and Airplane II: The Sequel. Biroc shared an Academy Award for The Towering Inferno. From the early 1950s till the late 1980s he was also prolific in television.
The 2023 DCP screened was unrestored, a straight digital scan from a used screening print, joins and all. Well done, conveying Biroc's cinematographic flair impressively.
SYNOPSIS BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:
SYNOPSIS BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:
AFI Catalog online: " One dark night in the town of Millsville, shortly after the end of the Civil War, a caped and hooded woman carrying a gun steals into the local jail and orders Garner, the jailer, to release convicted killer Chick Hainline. After knocking Garner unconscious, Hainline rides off, and the next morning, Garner regains consciousness and tells Sheriff Mark Persons that he believes the hooded woman works at the local saloon.
Hoping that Garner can identify Hainline's accomplice, the sheriff accompanies him to the saloon, where he questions saloon girls Delilah, Jeannie, Sally and Ruthie. When Garner fails to recognize his assailant, Persons cautions that Hainline was a "Blackleg" killer, one of the last of Quantrill's vicious Confederate guerrillas.
Fearing that Hainline may bring his gang to town to join his accomplice, Persons orders the women to leave Millsville, and escorts them to a buckboard driven by Thorny, a county employee. Once in the buckboard, the women begin to quarrel, each accusing the other of the crime. Their bickering is cut short when the wagon loses a wheel and they are forced to stop along the road.
As Thorny examines the damaged wheel, Dewey Crawford, the proprietor of the White Star Inn and stage relay station, rides up and offers them refuge at his inn while their wheel is repaired. When they arrive, however, Lorn Crawford, Dewey's brother and business partner, objects to their presence because he has heard of their complicity in the escape of one of the Blacklegs.
After the women retire to their rooms, Dewey asks Lorn if he was involved with the Blacklegs during the war and remarks that he often yells out in his sleep about a "man with a whip." After dinner, Jeannie wonders why Lorn is acting so furtively. When she begs Lorn to let them stay, he refuses, and she accuses him of being hard and unfeeling.
Later, when Lorn explains to Jeannie that he fears Hainline may be following the women and might bring the Blacklegs with him, Jeannie tells him that Quantrill's guerrillas murdered her parents during the massacre in Lawrence, Kansas. Their buckboard repaired, the women climb aboard and are about to depart when a man with a whip rides up, lashes Thorny around his neck and orders them to stay.
John Murdock, the man wielding the whip and the leader of the Blacklegs, is then joined by the rest of his gang. That night, the drunken outlaws begin to molest the women. When one corners Sally in her room, she reaches for his gun, and in the ensuing struggle, the outlaw is shot and killed.
Murdock is about to exact revenge on Sally when Lorn enters the room and challenges him. Amused, Murdock sneers that Lorn is a "tin soldier who deserted because he couldn't stand the sight of blood."
The next day, Hainline arrives at the inn and thanks Ruthie for freeing him. When the women regard Ruthie with contempt, she explains that Hainline is her brother. Hainline informs Murdock that their target, the newly appointed governor of Kentucky, who is also the man who killed Quantrill, will be arriving at the inn on the noon stage.
The gang plans to kidnap the governor and then murder him after collecting the ransom. When Jeannie accuses the outlaws of murdering her parents, Murdock grabs her and Dewey threatens to kill him. Tossing Dewey a gun, Murdock challenges him to a duel and then viciously lashes the weapon from his hand and flogs him with his whip.
The next morning, Jeannie asks Lorn why he refuses to fight back, prompting him to recount his earlier life as a Confederate officer sent to work as a liaison with the guerrilla Quantrill. Lorn confides that Quantrill's brutish tactics, exemplified by the Lawrence massacre, soured him on the Confederacy and caused him to question what truly is worth fighting for.
When Lorn agrees to help Murdock in return for the safety of Dewey and the women, Jeannie chastises him and then admits that she has fallen in love with him. As the governor's stage approaches, Murdock tells Lorn to escort the governor into the station house. Upon greeting the governor, however, Lorn warns him of Murdock's plans and instructs his driver to flee as fast as possible.
After the outlaws stop the stage by shooting the driver, Murdock claims that he is sending several unarmed men to negotiate a truce. After concealing their guns, Murdock's men step out of the house and then pull out their weapons. Just then, Persons and his posse arrive, open fire and gun down the outlaws.
When Lorn asks Persons to escort the governor to safety, the governor refuses to leave without first freeing Dewey and the women, and insists on accompanying Lorn into the relay station.
Lorn then agrees to meet with Murdock if he sends out the rest of his men. After Murdock's men step outside, the governor and Lorn enter the station house and Murdock lashes them with his whip. In a fury, Lorn pulls the whip from Murdock's hand and then thrashes him with it. After Persons arrests Murdock and his gang, the women begin their trek back to town, but Jeannie remains behind with Lorn. " AFI Catalog online
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