Movies I've Missed (Until Now): Law of the Lawless (1964)

I enjoyed that Audie Murphy movie enough last week that when Grit TV ran a Dale Robertson movie I hadn’t seen on Saturday night, I watched it, too. Adding to the appeal is that LAW OF THE LAWLESS (1964) was written by the old pulpster and paperbacker Steve Fisher, whose work I’ve always found to be entertaining and interesting.

Robertson plays a former gunfighter who’s become a circuit-riding judge. He arrives in a town in Kansas to conduct the murder trial of the local big shot’s son, who killed a man in a saloon shootout. Complicating matters is that this is Robertson’s former hometown, and the man on trial is an old friend of his. The defendant’s wealthy father, played by Barton MacLane, wants to get his son acquitted of the charge, of course, but he also has another agenda that prompts him to bring in hired gun Bruce Cabot, whose character just happens to have killed Robertson’s father years earlier. This script rivals a Walt Coburn yarn for angst-filled backstory!

Elsewhere in the top-notch cast, William Bendix plays the local sheriff, who is also the prosecutor and the pastor of the local church. Yvonne De Carlo is a saloon girl, Kent Taylor is the defense attorney, John Agar plays the defendant, and Lon Chaney Jr. is a hulking henchman. Don “Red” Barry shows up briefly, also as a henchman. Jody McCrea, fresh from his role as Deadhead in the beach movies, plays Agar’s victim in the shootout.

There’s a little action along the way, but for the most part, LAW OF THE LAWLESS is a pretty talky film. There’s a long courtroom scene reminiscent of Perry Mason. The ending is a bit of a twist, but while I can see what Fisher was trying to do, it was also a bit of a letdown to me and I’m not sure it really worked. The movie is solid entertainment up to that point, however.

This was the first Western produced by A.C. Lyles, who turned out a string of such medium-budget films featuring veteran actors. When I was a kid, those Lyles-produced Westerns were a staple at the drive-in theater a quarter of a mile up the road from where I grew up, especially on Merchant’s Night during the summers. Merchant’s Night was usually on Tuesday, and you could get in free with tickets given out by local businesses when you bought something. The first half of the double bill was usually an older Elvis picture or a beach movie, and the second half was usually a Western, often one produced by Lyles. Most weeks I walked to the theater and watched the movies from the benches down front, by the playground. This was before Daylight Savings Time was a thing in Texas, so the movies would start around 8:30 in the evening and were over around 12:30, at which time I would walk home. It seems crazy now that a 12-year-old would do such a thing and nobody ever thought twice about it, but it really was a different time back then. A better time in many ways. But there’s no going back, is there, and at this point, I’m not sure I’d want to. I’ll revisit that era in my mind, though, any time.