Garden of Evil (1954)

[titoli]

This has been lambasted mainly for the slow pace and the lack of action. This is partially true for the first half of the movie, which could have been speeded up or peeppered with more action or confrontations (while there's only one between Cooper and Mitchell)  but I think that the last third of the movie, when the fight with the Indian starts. is as gripping and tense as any best western out there and amply makes up for the first part. Cooper is huge, helped by the character (I noticed, for the first time, that Walter Matthau must have based much of his physical deportment on Cooper's), while Widmark draws a very pale figure and though a tension between him and Cooper is implicit, it never fully materializes and this is the main fault of the movie. Even the relationship of Susan Hayward with her husband is murky as to motivations and their conflict remains quite artificial. 
Still for many this movie's greatest merit might be having served the plot to a SW which I reviewed but whose title I can't  remember right now.  8\10.

[stanton]

Find a Place to Die, a mediocre SW by Giuliano Carnimeo, and a rather untypical one for him.

Garden of Evil is marred by the stiff sounding, artificial dialogues, which are quite pretentious albeit on a simple level.
So the great cast is a bit wasted.
And the final action scenes are badly done, in fact they are quite laughable. A professional like Hathaway should have done better.

The location photography is stunning.

[cigar joe]

This one has the Indians wearing Eastern woodland Mohawk style hair. Completely out of place in Mexico, WTF was Hathaway thinking, maybe they got the extras from Last of The Mohicans, lol,

Besides I believe I sort of reviewed this one before, lol:

http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=7125.msg108289#msg108289

[The Firecracker]

Find a Place to Die, a mediocre SW by Giuliano Carnimeo, and a rather untypical one for him.

He probably didn't direct it.
It doesn't have his usual flair.
Now what I want to know is, which came first?
Find A Place To Die or The Moment To Kill?
Both were released the same year and the latter has the usual Carnimeo offerings.

[stanton]

Moment to Kill : 4.8.68

Find a Place to Die : 21.9.68

That's very close. It could easily have been the first of the 2 which was shot. E.g.  Django was released before Johnny Oro, which was shot in 65.

And Find a P. t. D was probably partly directed by Hugo Fregonese, who also produced and co-wrote the screenplay. Yes, the film is quite different from all the other Carnimeo westerns. So it was anyway more or less Fregonese's baby.