Lawman
Dir. Michael Winner (USA 1971)
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)
Capsule Review by: David Austin

Lawman is a cold, hard, revisionist western, masquerading as an old-fashioned oater. Listen to the plot – a Marshal (Burt Lancaster) rides into town to arrest 7 men who shot an old man in his jurisdiction. They resist arrest, resulting in several gunfights and an old-fashioned showdown. Except it is not that simple. The old man’s death was accidental, and the cowboys responsible aren’t bad guys for the most part. They work for Lee J. Cobb, who plays a prominent man in the town who has put violence behind him. The Marshal is a stiff, merciless son-of-a-bitch who has been nicknamed “The Widowmaker.” He won’t shoot a man who doesn’t draw first, but he goes about his business in a way that almost guarantees that others will draw on him. His mission is borderline pointless as everyone knows that the men will be acquitted anyway, but he’ll kill whoever he has to in order to accomplish it. The local sheriff (played by Robert Ryan) is a realist - it’s pretty clear that if he was in charge, things would go very differently.

So the hero isn’t a hero. The villains aren’t villains. And the best men in town are the morally corrupt who have found a way to get by peacefully. Sound familiar? Lawman plays the game that Unforgiven mastered decades before Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece. Michael Winner (Death Wish) does a fine job as the director here, keeping the characters ambiguous enough that the finale packs a wallop. Unlike Death Wish, there are no vicarious thrills in the killings. Lawman is the finest kind of tragedy, the kind that could have been avoided, and the film leaves the audience keenly aware of the waste involved.

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The Witch’s Mirror
AKA: El Espejo de la bruja
Dir. Chano Urueta (Mexico 1962)
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)
Capsule Review by: Charlie Prince

The Witch’s Mirror was a pleasure. CasaNegra is three for three so far on these old Mexican horror films; I’m definitely looking forward to watching more of their releases. The opening scene of The Witch’s Mirror features a magic mirror that predicts a Satanist’s “goddaughter” (hello?) will be unfairly murdered. When the loyal Satanist appeals to the dark forces to intervene, they basically tell her to piss off. “Don’t interfere,” she is told, because a higher decision has been made and that’s that. So what’s the point of a magic mirror if you can’t do anything about what you see? Idle curiosity? Well, it turns out it’s okay to interfere for purposes of revenge. That mucks up who our hero is a bit — are we cheering for our local Satanist to get revenge for a wrong to the innocent, through the torture of other innocents? Oh well, so there’s no hero, but it’s still fun. There is a bit of a disjoint in the film — halfway through a mad scientist story kicks in that feels like you just switched channels somehow. It’s also pretty clear that the director had recently seen Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960), though with all the witchcraft stuff added on, it’s not fair to call it a complete ripoff.

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The Cheat
Dir. Cecil B. DeMille (USA 1915)
Rating: 2 out of 4 stars (average)
Capsule Review by: David Austin

A silent melodrama about a married woman who shoots a man when he tries to force her to compromise her honor in order to hide a debt from her husband. This would be an utterly unmemorable film were it not for the presence of Sessue Hayakawa (The Bridge on the River Kwai) as the seducer, a wealthy Burmese ivory merchant. Hayakawa’s silky menace transcends the offensive “Yellow Peril” stereotype of his role – the other characters are entirely uninteresting, but Hayakawa holds the screen like a magnet. In fact, he almost unbalances the film – surely a man so wealthy, handsome and charming need not press his affection on a frumpy local housewife.