Jack Slade is a remarkably different western. The hero,is not handsome, but is very dirty and with each scene goes from the loved hero to the unloved bad guy. It shows the emotion of the gunfighter and his hatred for his job. I wonder if it is truly an honest western depicting the gunfighter. I am surprised it did not become a cult film. This movie asks the question. Are their really any good guys. The only real problem with the film is that the weapons used, do not fit the pre-civil war era.
11 Reviews
Well-done B Western drama.
rmax30482312 December 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I saw this as a kid and was impressed by it. Seeing it for only the second time, six-hundred and twelve months later, it STILL seems pretty good.
Ordinarily, one judges a film chiefly by the story, direction, and acting, but this is different because so much of whatever qualities it has comes from the talents of such neglected offices as Art Direction (Dave Milton), Set Decoration (Ben Bone), Makeup (Ted Larson), and Wardrobe.
The acting is okay -- no more than that, but no less. As the lead, the eponymous Slade, Mark Stevens looks the part. He's slim, dressed in dark clothes and a man-with-no-name kind of black hat. His eyes are rather large and overbeetled by a single line of extremely dark brows. As his wife, Dorothy Malone also looks good, as good as she ever has. Neither is an outstanding performer. Stevens isn't particularly expressive. He glares more than usual when he's supposed to be aroused in some way, but his style is cautious, akin to that of David Janssen, and seems more suited to a cool medium like television than to feature films. I could never understand Dorothy Malone's appeal, nor her long career. She's never embarrassingly bad. It's just that it seems that she and the viewer are both very aware of the fact that she's acting in a movie. Barton McClane is the main heavy and he does a schtick that was already old twenty years earlier. All the usual conventions are followed in the dialog. ("Go ahead -- reach for it.")
But the visuals are impressive in their shabby way. The bar, for instance. It's not one of those fancy bars with a stage and a band, or a big mirror on the wall, and a bartender wearing a ruffled white shirt with sleeve garters and a vest. It's a crummy joint. It looks real. The bar itself is no more than a couple of planks laid across a row of barrels. Everyone looks properly dusty, if not outright filthy. The men's shirts are sweated through and grimy, and their faces are dark with a patina of soil. (Even the hero's.) The story isn't easy to dismiss either. A boy sees his father killed and decides to rid society of its bad people. A stint in the Civil War army gives him his first taste of killing, an act that disquiets him but seems to draw him. His next job is that of law keeper in a small western town. He kills when necessary -- strictly in accordance with cheap movie formulae. (Two men stalk towards one another on an empty street.) But as the number of killings mount, they take their toll on his character, so that he begins to drink and abuses innocent people. He becomes a human wreck, ridden by a self-loathing he can't seem to understand. By the end he's killed an innocent man and is himself shot down by a friend.
Cheaply done, yes, but it raises questions of some importance. What is the psychological toll on the agent of social control? Is it possible, say, for a modern soldier to initiate a mass killing of enemy prisoners without being certifiably mad? And it poses a problem raised in Plato's "Republic." Who will guard the guardians? It's a rather touching story, like watching a Greek tragedy played out on the screen, in the form of a second-feature Western with over-the-hill actors.
Ordinarily, one judges a film chiefly by the story, direction, and acting, but this is different because so much of whatever qualities it has comes from the talents of such neglected offices as Art Direction (Dave Milton), Set Decoration (Ben Bone), Makeup (Ted Larson), and Wardrobe.
The acting is okay -- no more than that, but no less. As the lead, the eponymous Slade, Mark Stevens looks the part. He's slim, dressed in dark clothes and a man-with-no-name kind of black hat. His eyes are rather large and overbeetled by a single line of extremely dark brows. As his wife, Dorothy Malone also looks good, as good as she ever has. Neither is an outstanding performer. Stevens isn't particularly expressive. He glares more than usual when he's supposed to be aroused in some way, but his style is cautious, akin to that of David Janssen, and seems more suited to a cool medium like television than to feature films. I could never understand Dorothy Malone's appeal, nor her long career. She's never embarrassingly bad. It's just that it seems that she and the viewer are both very aware of the fact that she's acting in a movie. Barton McClane is the main heavy and he does a schtick that was already old twenty years earlier. All the usual conventions are followed in the dialog. ("Go ahead -- reach for it.")
But the visuals are impressive in their shabby way. The bar, for instance. It's not one of those fancy bars with a stage and a band, or a big mirror on the wall, and a bartender wearing a ruffled white shirt with sleeve garters and a vest. It's a crummy joint. It looks real. The bar itself is no more than a couple of planks laid across a row of barrels. Everyone looks properly dusty, if not outright filthy. The men's shirts are sweated through and grimy, and their faces are dark with a patina of soil. (Even the hero's.) The story isn't easy to dismiss either. A boy sees his father killed and decides to rid society of its bad people. A stint in the Civil War army gives him his first taste of killing, an act that disquiets him but seems to draw him. His next job is that of law keeper in a small western town. He kills when necessary -- strictly in accordance with cheap movie formulae. (Two men stalk towards one another on an empty street.) But as the number of killings mount, they take their toll on his character, so that he begins to drink and abuses innocent people. He becomes a human wreck, ridden by a self-loathing he can't seem to understand. By the end he's killed an innocent man and is himself shot down by a friend.
Cheaply done, yes, but it raises questions of some importance. What is the psychological toll on the agent of social control? Is it possible, say, for a modern soldier to initiate a mass killing of enemy prisoners without being certifiably mad? And it poses a problem raised in Plato's "Republic." Who will guard the guardians? It's a rather touching story, like watching a Greek tragedy played out on the screen, in the form of a second-feature Western with over-the-hill actors.
Fast gun with a nasty disposition
bkoganbing9 April 2015
In this grim western the prologue involving Sammy Ogg is essential in that it keeps our sympathy with hero/protagonist Mark Stevens playing the title role of Jack Slade. Ogg plays a child version of himself and he sees his father just gunned down in cold blood during a stagecoach holdup when he protested the outlaw slapping his young son. Kindly stage driver Harry Shannon takes him in but can't cure him of his anger. Ogg grows up to be Mark Stevens a man with a fast gun and a nasty disposition.
Paul Langton hires Stevens to maintain law and order on the stagecoach line plagued by outlaws. The meanest of them is Barton MacLane who plays one of the nastiest parts I ever saw him in a career filled with nasty villains. Even the love of a good woman Dorothy Malone can't turn Stevens into a settled member of society in the changing west.
Elements of High Noon and Robert Taylor's Billy The Kid are present in the plot of Jack Slade. Stevens who was now reduced to working for Allied Artists from his glory days of starring roles for 20th Century Fox gives one of his best screen performances. Jack Slade is one western definitely not geared to the Saturday matinée kid's crowd.
Paul Langton hires Stevens to maintain law and order on the stagecoach line plagued by outlaws. The meanest of them is Barton MacLane who plays one of the nastiest parts I ever saw him in a career filled with nasty villains. Even the love of a good woman Dorothy Malone can't turn Stevens into a settled member of society in the changing west.
Elements of High Noon and Robert Taylor's Billy The Kid are present in the plot of Jack Slade. Stevens who was now reduced to working for Allied Artists from his glory days of starring roles for 20th Century Fox gives one of his best screen performances. Jack Slade is one western definitely not geared to the Saturday matinée kid's crowd.
One of the better westerns made
helpless_dancer16 June 1999
This was a good shoot-em-up western about a boy who was traumatized around the age of 10 by witnessing his father being murdered. He took the name Jack Slade and became a criminal, but never murdered anyone - sort of a likeable bad guy. He became one of the fastest guns in the west. This film had one of my favorite bad guys in it, Lee Van Cleef. This man just looks evil. He gave one of my favorite one liners in all of filmdom, "that's fast enough". You'll have to see the film to get that one in context, which is not a bad idea. Go see it.
Jack Slade
mhrabovsky69123 December 2007
This is a deep, dark, western about a man who tries to fight the devils in his psyche as a gunfighter and a man who wants to settle down with a wife in a small town.....Mark Stevens gives a solid performance as Slade, a man who grew up with violence and lives with it on a near daily basis.....Slade as a kid accidentally kills a man and lives with the demons of the mans death.....as a man growing up he lives with a man who was a stagecoach driver and became his mentor....trying to go straight he takes over the running of a stagecoach line in the west and has to make his mark...the stagecoach line has a problem with stolen horses depleting it ranks....Slade goes after the gang stealing the horses and blows away several bad guys...the killing keeps going on as Slade becomes a target for every gunslinger in and around the town....Barton McClane a staple as a bad guy in those old black and white westerns plays Slade's nemesis.... Mclane swears to kill Slade and in the end in a saloon with his partner holding a gun on Slade tries to humiliate and belittle Slade.....his partner holds a gun while Slades is on the bar...Slade's wife enters through a side door and shoots down McLane's sidekick while Slade blows away McClane. Again, this a deep, dark western with Mark Stevens giving a very solid performance as Slade...a man who looks greasy and dirty throughout the whole film....sort of goes with his personna.....for one thing Stevens is not the most handsome guy around who could have played this role, maybe Kirk Douglas or Robert Mitchum...In fact Mitchum played a very, very similar role to this film in "Man with the Gun" a 1955 oater about a dark, sinister sheriff blowing everyone away who gets in his way. Both films remarkably similar.....Dorothy Malone is a real beauty in this film as Jan Sterling was in "Man with the Gun".......both women much younger in those 1950 days....Both Stevens and Mitchum both shot down laying on the ground in the final scenes in both films.... This is a western that will not disappoint for a 1950s B film.
A very bad 'B' western
lexvmi25 March 2010
This is a very bad western mainly because it is historically inaccurate. It looks as if it were shot on a back lot in California instead of where Jack Slade lived and died, Idaho, Colorado Territories, and Montana. It fictionalizes everything that is known about this mysterious 'bad man,' 'good man.' The script is horrible; there is very little direction, and lousy acting. Dorothy Malone is completely wasted as his wife. Mark Steven never seems to know how to portray this mysterious Jack Slade. In real life, Jack Slade was a very good stage line superintendent. He was feared by his local townsmen for his hard drinking. When drunk he would start fights and cause other problems in Virginia City, Montana. To insure that he could never terrorize them again, vigilantes lynched Jack Slade after he ignored their warning to leave town immediately. This is a horrible movie. I can not recommend anyone to watch this movie other than to see how Hollywood butches history at will, even to this day.
Actually pretty good
franco-1029 July 2002
While watching this on TV the thought came to be that this is a neo-realist American Western. Then I realized it was made at the height of the Italian neo-realist craze. This movie is worth seeing. There is great chemistry between Slade and his woman, Dorothy Malone.
Relatively unmemorable B-western
funkyfry15 October 2002
It's pretty good for what it is, but in telling the tale of Slade, a hired killer for the stagecoach, the story slides too easily into sentimentality and easy ways to show things. It does have the essential theme, that Slade's humanity is lost in his profession, and this theme is effectively explored. Van Cleef shows up for a minute; fans of his showboating bravura acting style are bound to be disappointed.
Film Daily was correct...at the time.
horn-518 December 2006
Their reviewer called it..."one of the most violent pictures ever to come out of Hollywood." The story runs thusly(Monogram synopsis): With a violent orphaned boyhood in Texas behind him, ex-cavalry trooper Jack Slade ( Joseph A. Slade), using a revolver given him by his foster father, Tom Carter (Harry Shannon), quickly builds a reputation as a "legal' gunman throughout the west. As district manager for the Overland Stage Line out of Julesburg, Colorado in 1859, his killing continues. His bride, Virginia Dale (Dorothy Malone), and his boss Dan Traver (Paul Langton), watch helplessly as Slade goes his violent way. The men he is after are outlaws, chief among them the drunken Jules Reni (Barton MacLane) whom Slade had replaced as the district manager for the stage line, and who has joined the gang of the Prentice boys...Rude (Richard Reeves), Tad (Duane Thorsen) and Ned (Ron Hargrave.) The Prentice gang holds up a stage, and Slade, Traver and others go after them and track the outlaws to a cabin and fire it during a gunfight, in which Slade accidentally kills Old Tom (Hank Patterson), who has been working as a cook for Reni and the gang. After this, Slade turns really bad, drinking heavily and not listening to Virginia's pleas. Traver is forced to fire Slade. He is drinking in a saloon when Reni and another gunman come in and Slade is trapped. Just as Reni gets set to let Slade have it, Virginia bursts in and kills Reni's partner with a small derringer. Slade's gun accidentally cuts down an innocent stranger as he guns down Reni. Wounded, Slade bids Virginia farewell and rides out of town.The aroused citizens demand that Slade be lynched, but Traver prevails upon them to let him follow Slade and bring him back for fair trial.
But Jack Slade ain't having none of that. The only Italian influence on this American Western is the influence it later had on some real bad Spaghetti westerns---there were only five good ones ever made anyway and all five of those would still benefit by some editing snips---,and the influence Mark Stevens (as Jack Slade) had on future western badman heroes. Stevens was great in a departure role,simmering Dorothy Malone burned the edges off some of the film frames...and Jack Elam (as Tobey Mackay)stole the few frames he was in as a badman with a fatalistic sense of humor. The major drawback is Barton MacLane's usual one-dimension badman.
But Jack Slade ain't having none of that. The only Italian influence on this American Western is the influence it later had on some real bad Spaghetti westerns---there were only five good ones ever made anyway and all five of those would still benefit by some editing snips---,and the influence Mark Stevens (as Jack Slade) had on future western badman heroes. Stevens was great in a departure role,simmering Dorothy Malone burned the edges off some of the film frames...and Jack Elam (as Tobey Mackay)stole the few frames he was in as a badman with a fatalistic sense of humor. The major drawback is Barton MacLane's usual one-dimension badman.
Another version of Billy The Kid
searchanddestroy-112 April 2021
That's the kind of western I prefer among many other ones. The western with a perfect anti hero, maybe not an evil dude, no, but very ambivalent indeed. Everyone will think about William Bonney's story watching this film, awith a Mark Stevens at his very peak. Dotty Malone is also at the right place in this gritty and violent western, among the best that Harry Schuster gave us. The basic scheme, a gunslinger to whom it is asked to get rid of the bad guys and then asked to "moderate" his actions, reminded me TOM HORN, but with a slightly different following events; though remaining dark and gloomy, gritty and pretty downbeat. A superb ending. I will always perfer this movie to RIO BRAVO, though the latest will remain a true masterpiere and this one, absolutely not. I just LOVE it. Period.
Good Ideas on the Cheap
dougdoepke12 October 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Low-budget Western (Allied Artists) that tries to be different and largely succeeds, but in a not very impressive way. Instead of the usual Western hero, Jack Slade is highly flawed. He's brutal, tormented, and in maybe the biggest departure, he's decidedly un-handsome. So, it must be that aura of danger that turns Dorothy Malone into a lioness-in-heat 10 seconds after meeting him. Slade's personality problems go back to childhood where he accidentally killed a man and has been reliving the guilt ever since. Actually, this cheap Western anticipates a major trend of the period—the so-called "anti-hero"— which Paul Newman, among others, popularized. Here, it gets obscure treatment but remains a telling departure, nevertheless.
The movie's more interesting than anything else, mainly because you never know what's going to happen. For one, Slade appears to enjoy pumping lead into a guy long after he's dead—not exactly a Western cliché. For another, he kills his adopted dad, accidentally, but no less effectively. Then too, how many hit-and-run scenes have you seen in a Western. And though not played-up, the movie could easily have developed an anti-gun subtext since the young Slade is ultimately undone by guns and the gun culture.
Director Schuster must come cheap since he adds nothing to the script and was apparently blind to Mc Lane's ridiculous over-acting. In fact, the acting as a whole is uneven to a damaging degree. Malone's got a small part, probably to make Slade more sympathetic, but vamps it shamelessly into a bigger impact that would soon lead to A-productions. Also, that final shootout is dragged out to a diminished extent, and I kept thinking Slade was just using Langton to put him out of his misery, but there's no hint of such nuance. Instead, Slade dies a bad man trying to kill his one friend and conscience. Nonetheless, the movie's basic ideas are complex and sound. I just wish the budget had been big enough to better realize the potential.
The movie's more interesting than anything else, mainly because you never know what's going to happen. For one, Slade appears to enjoy pumping lead into a guy long after he's dead—not exactly a Western cliché. For another, he kills his adopted dad, accidentally, but no less effectively. Then too, how many hit-and-run scenes have you seen in a Western. And though not played-up, the movie could easily have developed an anti-gun subtext since the young Slade is ultimately undone by guns and the gun culture.
Director Schuster must come cheap since he adds nothing to the script and was apparently blind to Mc Lane's ridiculous over-acting. In fact, the acting as a whole is uneven to a damaging degree. Malone's got a small part, probably to make Slade more sympathetic, but vamps it shamelessly into a bigger impact that would soon lead to A-productions. Also, that final shootout is dragged out to a diminished extent, and I kept thinking Slade was just using Langton to put him out of his misery, but there's no hint of such nuance. Instead, Slade dies a bad man trying to kill his one friend and conscience. Nonetheless, the movie's basic ideas are complex and sound. I just wish the budget had been big enough to better realize the potential.
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