Saturday, June 13, 2009

Republicans in Drag

Arrowhead (1953)
directed by Charles Marquis Warren
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Proof that even those of us willing to defend (or ignore, or at least take with a grain of salt) the climate of casual racism in Old Hollywood productions as a “sign of the times” – because otherwise, what would we watch? - have our limits, in my case Charlton Heston dressing down a white actor painted to look like an Indian with all the choking rage of a white man raised by Indians to “cut a man’s throat from ear to ear.” Pitting Chuck as the Indian foundling against Jack Palance as a redskin brought up in Christian schools is laughable, then fun, and finally exhausting. The shit-eating grins on both actors faces more than buoys Palance’s costume changes from Little Lord Fauntleroy tie-and-derby jumpers to bare chest-and-vest wartime regalia, but in the movie’s push to be thematically aggressive, it’s too much like a bully picking on a nerd: brutish, obvious, and wrong.