McLintock!

McLintock! (1963)
Dir. Andrew V. McLaglen
Staring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Patrick Wayne, Yvonne De Carlo, Chill Willis,



McLintock! is one of those fan hangout movies, where the fun is just being with the characters. It's not a movie that's great from a technical standpoint, it's great cause it's a fun way to fill 2 hours. It's a Batjac production, so it was more than likely something that was made so John Wayne could be around a bunch of people that he liked. But that's fine.

The movie is a riff on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, with Maureen O'Hara's Katherine being the Shrew. It's a rather small stakes movie, dealing mostly with the affairs of G.W. and his family. There's a bit with the local Indians that seems like it might set up something toward the end of the picture, but instead it ends rather quietly. The most interesting thing about the handling of Indians in the film is during the big mud fight in the middle of the story. After G.W. stops the lynching of a subchief due to a misunderstanding, a brawl erupts between the "civilized" townspeople, while the "savage" Indians silently watch from the sides.

This film is another pairing between John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and in this film, link their others, shows the great on-screen chemistry that they had together. Patrick Wayne is in the film playing the love interest of G.W.'s daughter, and I really enjoyed him in this film. He didn't have the star factor like his father did, but he did fine in this suppoeting role. Chill Willis is great as G.W.'s number 2 Drago, as is Yvonne De Carlo as Louise Warren, a woman new in town that actually seems to be a better fit for G.W. than Katherine does.

Often I will sing the praises of the brick sets of public domain films as a good way to get a lot of films for cheap. McLintock is often included in those sets, but if at all possible I highly recommend tracking down a copy of the blu-ray released by Olive. Their blu-ray of the movie looks amazing, like most Technicolor films tend to. There's something about the blu-ray format that makes films shot in Technicolor just great, and it's far better than the pan and scan TV rips that are in most of the brick sets. I compared the bluray to the copy included in the Mill Creek 50 Western Classics* release and there was just no comparison. The print in the Mill Creek set was faded and dull, but watchable.

This is just a fun, classic film. If you haven't seen it for some reason, now's a great time to change that. But really, watch the blu-ray if at all possible.

*The set does have a complete copy of China 9, Liberty 37, which can't be said of Mill Creek's spaghetti westerns set that cuts off before the end. Both sets are pretty solid, even if there is a bit of overlap.