Granted, it doesn’t have much of a title, but Edge of Doom (1950) is a smashing movie in which a man (Farley Granger) harbors some confusing thoughts about what he should do for his newly dead mother. He hates the (Catholic) Church because he thinks it failed and exploited his mother, and demands that Father Kirkman, his mother’s priest, pay for a lavish funeral for the woman. He ends up killing Kirkman and then runs away. Another priest, Father Roth (Dana Andrews), begins to suspect the man of the murder and kindly talks with him.

Adapted from a novel, director Mark Robson‘s film is a crime story, a noir product, partly about religion; about men in religious vocations and those with antipathy toward religion, not to mention “religious” actions. Robson, who made Von Ryan’s Express and Valley of the Dolls, knows how to keep things humming; he wants to engage an audience. His shots in Doom, like those in Valley of the Dolls, are never overripe or pretentious. His actors here—good news—are more skillful than some of those in Dolls. The result is a smart and gripping dime picture.

I found John Updike‘s “Morocco” (1979, from the book My Father’s Tears and Other Stories) a fascinating travelogue story.

Visited by an American family living in England—the year is 1969—Morocco is a land of disturbing men, “little girls in multicolored Berber costume” with their flowers to sell, swaying buses, and even quiet sexual perversion. As it happens, it is a far from lovable country, and a far from perfect vacation. It is feared, in fact, that Morocco might get sinister after Dad runs a red light and the police appear. So the man zips away.

The twelve-page story shows how foreign to Westerners an Eastern country can be. But Updike also uses his elegant prose to smile on family unity (even after a divorce), a unity that follows “the maximum family compression” of the Morocco trip. It should be noted, though, that this realization comes during a vacation in France, a Western land.

I found John Updike‘s “Morocco” (1979, from the book My Father’s Tears and Other Stories) a fascinating travelogue story.

Visited by an American family living in England—the year is 1969—Morocco is a land of disturbing men, “little girls in multicolored Berber costume” with their flowers to sell, swaying buses, and even quiet sexual perversion. As it happens, it is a far from lovable country, and a far from perfect vacation. It is feared, in fact, that Morocco might get sinister after Dad runs a red light and the police appear. So the man zips away.

The twelve-page story shows how foreign to Westerners an Eastern country can be. But Updike also uses his elegant prose to smile on family unity (even after a divorce), a unity that follows “the maximum family compression” of the Morocco trip. It should be noted, though, that this realization comes during a vacation in France, a Western land.

When was the first comic Western written? Beats me, but in this sparse category surely one of the best put on film is the 1969 Support Your Local Sheriff!, directed by Burt Kennedy and penned by William Bowers.

The movie stars James Garner as a fast-drawing drifter—eager to see Australia—who accepts temporarily the job of sheriff in a developing little town. There, he meets Prudy (Joan Hackett), a love interest, and trouble in the form of a family of blackguards. Swiftly rising prices in the town would have meant something to audiences in 1969 who witnessed frustrating inflation. Bowers’s script is frequently amusing and does not seem like a thrown-off item, as movie scripts today often do. It takes a lot of jabs at human behavior too: the town mayor and the council members, for example, are cowardly whoremongers. The film is nothing spectacular but it entertains—all it is meant to do.

When was the first comic Western written? Beats me, but in this sparse category surely one of the best put on film is the 1969 Support Your Local Sheriff!, directed by Burt Kennedy and penned by William Bowers.

The movie stars James Garner as a fast-drawing drifter—eager to see Australia—who accepts temporarily the job of sheriff in a developing little town. There, he meets Prudy (Joan Hackett), a love interest, and trouble in the form of a family of blackguards. Swiftly rising prices in the town would have meant something to audiences in 1969 who witnessed frustrating inflation. Bowers’s script is frequently amusing and does not seem like a thrown-off item, as movie scripts today often do. It takes a lot of jabs at human behavior too: the town mayor and the council members, for example, are cowardly whoremongers. The film is nothing spectacular but it entertains—all it is meant to do.