Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Absolutely Fantastic

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of the worst movies I have watched. The script is awful. It features the worst performances I have seen from Anthony Quinn (particularly unbelievable), Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark on top of scenery chewing cheese from De Forrest Kelley and Frank Gorshin. i haven't watched Dorothy malone much but she is pretty bad here too. The direction of the actors (and Quinn and Fonda are two of the greats) is appalling and the movie is otherwise dully photographed. An embarasssment to all involved. Give it a miss.

Copyright 1959 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Paramount: 30 April 1959. U.S. release: April 1959. U.K. release: 17 May 1959. Australian release: 6 August 1959. Sydney opening at the Regent. 10,980 feet. 122 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Warlock is a small, dusty cow-town which is dominated by a gang of ruffians and cowpunchers. After numerous killings and other incidents, the citizens hire Clay Blaisdell (Henry Fonda) to become town marshal. He is an infamous professional gunfighter who always travels with a club footed sidekick, Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn). In addition, Johnny Gannon (Richard Widmark), until recently a member of a cowboy gang, is appointed deputy sheriff, a job paralleling Clay's and one which is noted for the short life expectancy of its holder. Jessie Marlow (Dolores Michaels), known as "The angel of Warlock", soon comes to like Clay, although she originally protested his being hired. Clay starts to clean up the town, while Morgan starts to run a gambling hall and saloon, a familiar pattern between the partners.NOTES: Negative cost: $2 million.COMMENT: In "Warlock", Dmytryk and Aurthur tried to take the formula western with its standard characters, ready-made plot and familiar backgrounds and give it some unusual and intriguing variations. That they were not wholly successful — despite a lot of earnest acting and some occasionally forceful uses of the CinemaScope screen — is due to the wordiness of the dialogue which should have been trimmed and made sharper and more realistic before shooting commenced.OTHER VIEWS: Big western... Many of the familiar elements of the western story, the frontier town cowed by unruly elements, the imported lawman with a killer's reputation, the citizens who finally assert themselves to gain control of their community, these are all part of Warlock. But the 20th-Fox presentation is an effort to take such a theme, familiar in its basic outline and carry it beyond the ordinary conclusion and behind the usual facade... The plot, dealing as it does with very complicated people, is involved, but not puzzling. Aurthur's characters and their dialogue are fresh and picturesque. Widmark's portrayal is vital, although his early position as a member of the hell-raising gang is not entirely clear. Fonda is particularly fine. It may not be a romantic conception, but Fonda gives his role great validity. - "Variety".

Everyone calls it this "amazing underrated Western psychological thriller", I keep reading this word everywhere, "psychological". Well it ain't deep, that much I can say.There's more dialog and talking and talking here than I can recall a soap opera series doing. It's this annoying situation that's very difficult to keep interest in when the characters keep talking about other characters constantly, and you forget just who does what and what the heck is going on, and this isn't for a lack of focus but the film just makes no effort to be clearer and more captivating, it just goes on with its little plan and as the viewer one will wait and wait until something finally emerges but it's just more of the same.Underrated ? This movie is OVERrated.

The town of Warlock is a downcast, downbeat and desperate zone; an isolated town out there in the Utah desert marred by gunfights, murder and disrespect to those whom wish to stomp that kind of behaviour out. The existing sheriff is both laughed and terrorised out of town, whatever ill feeling those that perpetrate such an act accentuated further by the fact one of their own was killed earlier on that week and that emotions will no doubt be running high. The innocents caught up in the middle of it all powering their own lives appear to have been pushed over that line separating action from inaction. They meet in what appears as a secluded haven in which normalised conversation and reasoning is allowed to play out, but in actuality is nothing more than someone's wood-housed store; those whom are there spending their lives garnering a living out of graft and legal work, each of them wanting to do something about the bandits living by rules of a polar opposite sort. The agreement eventually reached sees them hire a gunfighter to try and clean things up, a man with a reputation and his own way of playing things but additionally with his own experiences and knowledge, all of which will come to wrap everybody up in emotional ties and play out in dramatic fashion.Such is the way most of these really rather enjoyable Hollywood westerns of old begin, Warlock a wonderfully involving character piece covering a man and his bond with another on top of relations with a woman, with the problem of the gunslingers usually hovering perilously overhead. The film was loosely remade in an affectionate and substantial enough manner in 2007's Appaloosa, but even that falls short of what this film here achieves, Warlock a fabulous piece never loosing sight of the fact it's effectively about people dealing with violence with further violence; an enrapturing western, the painful finale of which wonderfully captures the downcast nature of the old west that furthermore, once everything has been said and done, there can still be only very little in the way of a feel-good compromise.Henry Fonda plays Clay Blaisedell, a gunfighter brought in with his second in command Tom Morgan (Quinn) to deal with the problem and help bring some stability to the town. The agonising manner in which those they're there to deal with apparently treat those of a law and order infused nature resonate when Blaisedell is placed in charge, Blaisedell the sort of man whom, when attempting to defuse a rowdy situation involving many-a person forming an angry mob, will ask for the largest and burliest to step forward to speak before laying him out cold again thus defusing the situation and dissipating the crowd. He looks down at the town of Warlock prior to arrival, a small and rounded dystopia seemingly cut off from most other places knowingly about to embark on his next crusade. Upon the arrival, it doesn't take long for either Blaisedell or Morgan to completely renovate their accommodation from downtrodden and somewhat backward living quarters into a far plusher, far richer locale upon which to operate out of here suggesting a higher or a more cultured sense of existence than might be first perceived. Furthermore, after having been greeted into the town and introduced to the general area, Morgan deduces that the showing was a "Hell of a welcoming committee", to which his boss retorts that it was "better than some I've seen" immediately suggesting prior experience and exposure to this sort of scenario.The leader of those they're there to deal with is a certain Abe McQuown (Drake); a thin, weedy, angry little man with a large group of thugs backing him up, of whom one is Johnny Gannon (Widmark), a younger member seemingly wanting to move away from their lifestyle. The two parties initially clash within the town's saloon, the construction to which is a devilishly well played improvisation of diegetic piano music acting as this nervous overlying theme tune, until it's stopped out of the pianist's own noticing of the brooding situation, with the men then spreading out. The attention to each man occupying a specific space within the locale and the permutations that come with such decisions is duly focused upon, before, just as hostilities appear to be a conclusion which will doom everybody, one of the bandits speaks out in regards to Blaisedell's guns and their golden handles, an agonising attempt at inciting violence with immediate reference to the tools of violence.Edward Dmytryk fleshes out the film in an imperial fashion, delicately going back and forth from each of the strands as each of the characters come to deal with the issues they face; one scene in particular highlighting the closer link friends and foes may very well have to each other when respective deputies, or minions to the main attraction, in Gannon and Morgan interact well enough in the street and we must realise that while Gannon does not seem necessarily as evil as those he works for, Morgan is still a man earning a trade through killing and violence - much like those he's there attempting to stamp out. Dmytryk's additional exploring of a complicated back story involving women and sex and murder and death, that later comes to threaten Morgan and Blaisedell's all-male bond with one another, is more than sufficient; the ingredients and approach to the material of which culminates in a deliciously involving film.