Johnny Guitar
buy videos, movies
|
 |
List Price: $14.98
Features
• Color
• Special Edition
• NTSC
In Theaters : 27 May, 1954
Video Release : 04 April, 1995 |
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] |
Video : This item is currently not available. |
|
Johnny Guitar Customer Reviews
|
|
|
|
♥♥♥♥♥
|
The Entire Movie Is Bursting To Come Out Of The Closet!
|
Packing a gun, dressed head to toe in desperado black, and freed from the constraints of having to make even the tiniest concession toward acting feminine, Joan Crawford looks like she's having the time of her life playing "Vienna," the wild west's snarliest, toughest, butchest b-tch, in this most Freudian of shoot- em-ups. Symbolism runs rampant in this riotously purple-with-passion melodrama, and the whole cast goes way over the top, playing people driven mad by the frustration of not getting what they really want.
Crawford, for example, is the onetime saloon gal who's ready to open her own gambling joint, if the railroad ever blasts its way through that damned mountain that's blocking the way. In the meantime, she's playing footsy with both psycho Scott Brady and former psycho turned music man Sterling Hayden, but it's really wild-eyed, hard-breathing, she-cat Mercedes McCambridge -- who snarls dialogue like "You're nothing but a railroad tramp" and "I'm not satisfied!" -- that heats Crawford's blood to the boiling point. "I'm going to kill you," McCambridge says, as the two women stare longingly at one another; "I know," pants Crawford, "if I don't' kill you first." Incredibly, none of this is played for subtext -- the entire movie is bursting to come out of the closet. As one of Crawford's male employees says about her, staring into the camera lens at us, "Never seen a woman who was more a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, sometimes makes me feel I'm not." And he's not the only one walking funny down Main Street: John Carradine eyes Hayden and tosses off a pickup line worth memorizing: "That's a lot of man you're carrying in those boots, stranger." In a scene heretofore unknown to westerns, saddle tramp Ernest Borgnine can't help noticing Hayden's lips. Brandishing a bottle of whiskey, Borgnine says, "Open your mouth, I'll feed you. I said open your mouth, guitar man!"
When the screenplay, halfheartedly tries to play it both ways -- and insists that we believe that Crawford and Hayden were lovers long ago -- the pair give this dialogue their best, you-guess-what-it-all-means once-over: "How many men have you forgotten?" Hayden asks, and Crawford replies, "As many women as you've remembered." There's nothing halfhearted about McCambridge, however; whip in hand, she knows what she wants -- to see Crawford hung. Bound on a horse, Crawford's neck is in the noose before Hayden shows up in time to cut the rope -- treating us to the ultra-bizarre sight of Crawford making a getaway, in bondage. The two women finally meet in a showdown and, ahem, shoot it out. Before McCambridge dies, we expect her to look up at Crawford and ask "Was it good for you, too?"
A MUST see! |
|
Johnny Guitar movies, videos.