The Worst Film Ever

Thanks for the memories!

People are voting emotionally.

i must have seen a different film!!

Producer: Lamar Trotti. (Thanks to U.S. Department of the Interior and its National Parks Service for permission to film in Death Valley National Monument.) Copyright 21 December 1948 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York release at the Roxy: 1 February 1949. U.S. release: December 1948. U.K. release: 27 June 1949. Australian release: 12 May 1949. 8,819 feet. 98 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Six outlaws plan to rob an old prospector. Setting: an Arizona ghost town.COMMENT: Superbly photographed against some awesome and unusually striking natural locales, this western starts off on a high plane of excitement with lots of hard riding and running inserts, horses galloping thrillingly close to the camera (thanks, "Wild Bill" Wellman) and a spectacular stunt fall. Once the atmospherically derelict town of Yellow Sky is reached, however, the pace starts to flag - despite the appealing presence of Anne Baxter and the efforts of the support players. Peck's delivery is too slow, a fault compounded by the fact that his scenes seem overloaded with dialogue. Some of these scenes merely slow up the plot and require drastic trimming. Fortunately, Peck is a rough man in a fight and shows off to advantage in a rugged rough-and-tumble with Russell in which Wellman used no doubles.The climax restores one's faith in the action western and has some nice twists of plot.Widmark, as usual, is menacing enough as the heavy. Although James Barton is a too-garrulous old prospector, the other characters are tautly written and expertly played. (In fact "MASH" fans will probably be disappointed that Morgan's part is not lengthier and more in the foreground.)Wellman's deliberately-judged direction and MacDonald's stark black-and-white photography illumine this fascinating if small-scale and somewhat derivative western.P.S. Trotti and Burnett were given an award from the Writers Guild of America for the "Best Written American Western of 1949".

"Yellow Sky" is an uneven black and White western that has the look and feel of a "film noire".A gang of outlaws headed by James "Stretch Dawson" and including gambler "Dude" (Richard Widmark), Bull Run (Robert Arthur), Lengthy (John Russell), Half Pint (Harry Morgan), Walrus (Charles Kemper) and Jed (Robert Adler), ride into a dusty town and rob the local bank. While fleeing the sheriff's posse, Jed is killed and the others head for the salt flats/desert.Against all odds, the group comes upon the ghost town, Yellow Sky. There they meet the feisty young "Mike" (a pistol packing Anne Baxter) and her Grampa (James Barton). Dude is the first to suspect that the pair are hiding something. He discovers a gold mine and with the others plans to steal the booty.Meanwhile the normally stern Stretch takes a liking to "Mike". He negotiates with Grampa to share the gold 50/50. However Dude and the others have no such plan to share the loot. Stretch too plans to double cross the old man. But when he sees Grampa talking with visiting Apaches and convincing them not to attack, he sees that the old timer plans to keep his part of the bargain and therefore he will keep his part.A showdown between Stretch and the others results in Dude and the others taking over. The others pin Stretch, "Mike" and Grampa in the old man's cabin.This film has all the trappings of a "Film Noire" complete with low light B &W photography, many nighttime scenes, a dark murky landscape and a sort of "femme fatale" in the person of the "Mike" character. The biggest problem I have with this story is the cop out Hollywood ending. The film should have ended with the climatic shoot-out.Gregory Peck is as always, the stern leader of men which makes the ending of the movie a little hard to swallow. Widmark, who was just starting out makes the perfect double crossing oily villain. Anne Baxter in tight jeans and carrying a six shooter...what else is there to say.

One of the great westerns of Gregory Peck in the 1940s when he also "Duel in the Sun" and "The Gunfighter" this almost in 1950. Three western exponents no doubt. "Duel in the Sun" was a film done much to stardom Jennifer Jones to raise the western name. But over the following years it is both. It is an exceptional film. But in the case of "Yellow Sky" very competently directed by William Wellman we have a pure western, exciting, honest. The black-and-white photograph only the values ​​with outstanding play of shadows. Anne Baxter has a performance of the best. She could remain silent in the film all along that we would know exactly what she wanted to say. It was a wonderful actress. And the film dramatic load is intense. Richard Widmark a little outside the box hero who built later have a great performance as one of the bandits. And Gregory Peck is nothing less than the great actor we've come to see. A great movie that deserves to be reviewed as.

Director William Wellman is a clever and innovative guy. Who else would shoot a scene of hoodlums racing their horses away from a bank robbery with the camera placed only a few feet to the side of one horse's legs, almost at ground level, with the other hoodlums visible through the flashing legs of the nearest galloping horse? That takes a kind of reckless talent. You can't help wondering what the camerman was being paid.On the other hand, the script itself, while suspenseful, is a bit routine and sometimes contradictory. The handful of bank robbers led by Peck, establish their bona fides early. There's the fat drunk, the would-be rapist, the naive homesick boy, the greedy gambler (Widmark), and the disheveled but fundamentally decent leader.The dimensions are doled out piece by piece, the way the gang divides the gold they discover in the ghost town of Yellow Sky. Well, it's not entirely a ghost town since Anne Baxter and her Grandpa live there still, having dug up all that gold. The presence of the hip-swinging woman confuses everybody except the would-be rapist, who knows exactly what he wants, in addition to his share of the stolen loot.Yet, the script is confusing too. Here's Harry Morgan -- Detective Bill Gannon or Colonel Sherman T. Potter, if you like -- "Half Pint" in this movie. The gang is stranded in the middle of a vast blazing salt flat with practically no water. It was shot in Death Valley before the company moved to the more comfortable venue of the Alabama Hills, locally called Movie Flats. The thirsty would-be rapist is angry. He might die and be skeletalized in the middle of nowhere. He points to a lizard and complains that even that lizard (Dipsosaurus dorsalis) will outlive him, so he shoots the lizard. Harry Morgan slouches towards him, ready for a fist fight, and says "that lizard wasn't doing you no harm." In other words Morgan has a kind heart. Yet he turns just as cruel and greedy as the others before, at the very end, giving up his villainous ways for no particular reason.It's a longish movie, strung out, and unnerving in the way it shows us the disintegration of the bank robbing community, although there's never much doubt about which way things will turn. (That naive kid was dead meat the moment he maundered on about his folks back in Ohio and developed a crush on Anne Baxter. A thousand years ago, when last names were being handed out for tax purposes, "Baxter" was the feminine form of "Baker". The voices told me to just throw that in.) Peck and Baxter accidentally bump into each other one night in the barn. They don't exactly wrestle with their passions; they immediately get all hormonal, Bartholin's glands become gushers, even though there has been so set up whatever or the scene.Wellman is no poet but he's a craftsman and has an eye for composition. The script may have kinks in it and enter the doldrums from time to time, but it's hard to criticize Wellman's handling of the material. Look at what he managed to do with "Battlefield," a movie about combat shot almost entirely on a sound stage.