Customer Reviews

Copper Canyon [VHS]

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I like Copper Canyon, it's one of my favorite westerns. Admittedly the plot is somewhat convoluted and the acting is merely adequate. I think I mainly like the cast. Hedy Lamarr is gorgeous -- as always, Mona Freeman was one of Hollywood's prettiest blondes, and Ray Milland is the suave, dashing hero. Copper Canyon was just another western ground out during Hollywood's Golden Age. But at least it was fun to watch, which I can't say about most movies made these days.

Copper Canyon is your typical B grade western from the 1950's. Packed with Hollywood's A-List performers and presented in dazzling technicolor Copper Canyon is a bit corny at times but does have its moments, as you would expect from the principles, the ravishingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr and the urbane Ray Milland. A must have for Hedy Lamarr fans as her body of film works on DVD is rather limited. At least the price is nice.

COPPER CANYON is an agreeably mediocre film, a gray B-movie hiding behind a Technicolor A-list of stars. Although it probably won't win converts to the genre, it will satisfy the faithful.
The plot is cast in the standard Big Bully vs. Little Bully mold. Most commonly it's cattlemen vs. sodbusters, black hats worn by the cattlemen. This time around it copper miner vs. copper miner, or, to be more exact in this post-Civil War drama, ex-Union copper miners vs. ex-Confederate copper miners. The ex-Confederates are the underdog Little Bullies feeling the tight squeeze - their ore is being stolen, the local smelter won't smelt their ore, they're ambushed and killed when they try to sell it in the next town, etc. Standard western skullduggery, although it's unlikely that a modern movie would cast ex-Confederates as sympathetic underdogs, certainly not a movie as light-headed as this one. In any event, the plan is to force out the Little Bullies and buy their claims at severely discounted prices.
Enter Ray Milland, who plays a wandering vaudeville trick-shot artist who may (or may not) have stolen $20,000 which may (or may not) have been rightfully his when he escaped (if he is indeed the colonel in question) from a Yankee prison. You see, the Little Bullies are sure he's a fighting Reb colonel who is traveling incognito to avoid capture and re-imprisonment. They need a fighter to galvanize and lead their resistance, and they make a number of overtures to Milland, who plays coy about his real identity.
With its unique (for a western) and sterling cast the first half of COPPER CANYON won my attention. It was ripe with promise but barren with results. I was disappointed to see the movie drag itself to such a conventional conclusion. For instance, the mistaken identity angle was loaded with possibilities but more or less left unexplored. In the end it really didn't matter much if Milland was the Reb colonel or not. The final showdown certainly didn't call for extraordinary courage or a military genius.
An okay western, with the cast flying high above a leaden plot.

I got this movie for $2 on Amazon. If you watch and wait it is a near freebie. Any movie with Hedy Lamarr in color alone is worth the price, but this one is not a bad little western either. Ray Milland is good as the lead, but McDonald Carey is particularly good as the bad guy. For Carey it is a bit of a revelation for most of us who remember him as the patriarch of "Days of Our Lives". They make the most of the chemistry between Lamarr and Milland and the undercurrent of distrust and betrayal throughout. This is not a great western, but at the price you can not go wrong.

After seeing Johnny Carter (Ray Milland) perform a sharphooting act, a group of townsmen from the nearby village of Copper Canyon approach him with the assertion that he is really ex-Confederate Colonel Desmond - an assertion he denies. The Copper Canyon folks are desperate for a leader to help them in their fight against a crooked cabal of former Union officers, mercenaries and unscrupulous businessmen, who are bilking the mostly southern miners out of all their diggings - and sometimes taking it by force when cheating doesn't work. Despite Carter's protestations, he soon ends up in Copper Canyon, making the pleasant acquaintance of dancehall owner Lisa Roselle (Hedy Lamarr) and the not-so-pleasant acquaintance of Deputy Lane Travis (MacDonal Carey), chief enforcer for corrupt Sheriff Wattling (Philip Van Zandt). It seems that Ms. Roselle is mixed up in the scheme, though her sympathies rapidly start to change when she falls under the spell of Carter's sophisticated charms, and the situation is further complicated by the Union soldiers stationed nearby to keep order, the leader of whom (Harry Carey Jr) finds himself falling in love with Colonel Desmond's widowed sister-in-law.

Unfortunately the various intrigues and connivances aren't played out all the interestingly, though I will say that the way the film gradually moves from being a Confederate vs Union story to one of honest men vs corrupt men - regardless of background - is pretty well handled. Milland is all right here though he's never terribly convincing as a man of action; I kept imagining actual Southerner Randolph Scott in the role; Lamarr also seems a bit of a fish out of water though she gets by on beauty and mystery to a certain extent, so it's MacDonald Carey who has to bear the brunt of interest, and he does a fine job, bursting with venom and violence from the first moment we see him. Director John Farrow and writer Jonathan Latimer had worked together twice previously with Milland, the first time being on the very striking noir The Big Clock in 1948; I haven't seen their second film, ALIAS NICK BEAL, from 1949, but it has a very good reputation. Farrow did go on to make one really excellent western, HONDO, and he had previously made the slightly more interesting CALIFORNIA with Barbara Stanwyck in 1947, so he did have some flair for the genre; it just seems like the pieces in COPPER CANYON don't all quite come together.

One element that does work just perfectly though is Charles Lang's incredibly bright and lush cinematography, and the Paramount disc (with no extras) shows it off nicely. The brightness of the costumes in the dancehall sequences is quite eye-popping, and deep blue sky has rarely looked more blue than it does here. I'm particularly fond of a quick shot of Carter being chased on horseback, heading downhill into some trees, with the dust reflecting the sunlight in a cascade of different hues in just a few seconds - brilliant stuff. Overall, the photography and Carey's performance almost lift this into something more memorable than it is, but overall I can't say I'd recommend it all that strongly to anyone except serious western completists and big fans of the director or stars. Sure does look pretty though.

Not a movie I would order again, nor do I plan to watch it a second time. The action is slow and very predictable, and the character of the stars is never developed. Ray Milland tries hard to make his character interesting, but he just can't beat the way the movie is directed. Pretty B-Grade and silly.