garden of evil

It's more than a little shocking to discover that Bernard Herrmann only scored one western in his entire career: Garden of Evil (1954), an all-star affair with Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward and Richard Widmark on the run from a tribe of angry Apaches in central Mexico. And the result, which elevates director Henry Hathaway's film from a tense bit standard studio filmmaking to a nearly non-stop barrage of horns, drums and trilling trumpets, only makes one wonder why he didn't get a chance to contribute more to the genre over the years!

Promising $2000 per man for the rescue of her husband from a cave-in at their gold mine, Leah (Haywayd) manages to secure four recruits: a bounty-hunter on a short fuse (Cameron Mitchell), a laconic card shark (Widmark), a gung-ho local (Victor Manuel Mendoza) and Hooker (Cooper), a soft-spoken ex-sheriff who does his best to keep the group on the straight and narrow. Between Leah's irresistible femininity and a pile of gold for the taking, he has his job cut out for him. And to make matters worse, a tribe of Apache warriors is hot on their trail.

Shot with stunning use of the local scenery - from jungles to cliffs to mountains of volcanic rock - Garden of Evil maximizes every inch of the cinemascope frame, with Hathaway and DP Milton Krasner dotting the landscape with characters like carefully arranged toy soldiers (check out that final sunset and tell me you don't wish you bought a bigger TV!). Despite using the same ingredients as most other westerns of the era, the film looks like its working on a larger canvas, aided and abetted by Hermann's often cacophonous score which is never afraid to make its presence felt.

The script allows for some enjoyable male bonding between Cooper and Widmark, with the latter providing a pleasantly sarcastic counterpoint to Cooper's straight-arrow image. There are a few "on-the-nose" morality lessons (the film manages to tackle several of the major sins) and Hayward's character, although entertainingly feisty, is a whipping post for some seriously dated chauvinism. But Garden of Evil is too energetically paced to allow itself to be bogged down for long.

Twilight Time has released some incredible looking titles on hi-def, but this one might be the pick of the litter (for now). There is so much color and clarity here that the picture almost looks three-dimensional. Add in Herrmann's score and you've got a cinematic experience that rivals just about anything new released on the Blu-ray format! And there are an unusual amount of extras included as too including a 2007 "Making Of" and short featurettes on the careers of Susan Hayward and Henry Hathaway, all very well done. New additions includes an isolated score track, audio commentary (with emphasis on the score as well), liner notes, trailers and TV spots.