A TIME FOR DYING: Budd Boetticher/Audie Murphy's final narrative film gets the remastered treatment on DVD

TrustMovies had never heard of  A TIME FOR DYING prior to receiving the announcement of its imminent appearance in remastered form on DVD from Corinth Films, a distribution company the output of which I've been particularly fond of over the years.

Turns out that this very odd little (it lasts only 76 minutes) western from 1969 -- the last narrative film directed by Budd Boetticher and featuring the final performance of Audie Murphy -- is very much one-of-a-kind.

It's no secret to film fans -- particularly those of westerns -- that Mr. Boetticher (pictured left) was one of the better directors in this once-popular genre. Boetticher was drawn to and had a knack for making the most of stories that highlighted moral questions, together with those oft-times gray areas between right and wrong, evil and good.

This interest gets full play in A Time for Dying, as we note early on a scene in which a sweet bunny rabbit is about to be attacked by a rattlesnake. After the movie's hero (Richard Lapp, shown two photos below) prevents this, he is interrupted by a young man who looks rather villainous (actor Bob Random, shown below and currently making news via the popular documentary, The Other Side of the Wind), who suggests to our hero that the rattler had a right to live, too. Hmmm...

A Time for Dying turns out to have been both directed and written by Boetticher -- his first and only try at screenwriting, although he did provide stories for a few films. His script may not have won any awards, but it still stands as a simply-constructed, nicely-written and very surprising piece of work. Its simplicity, in fact, is one of the reasons the film so easily draws us in and keeps us both amused and interested in just where this oddball story might be heading.

The movie possesses genuine charm, thanks to the work of actors Lapp (above, who looks amazingly like a young and fresh-faced Audie Murphy) and its heroine, a spunky and intelligent young woman played by Anne Randall, shown below. These two "youngins" combine sweetness and naivete in such perfect measure that it's difficult not to be charmed by the pair and the situation in which they find themselves.

Though the two have only just met -- they're both "new in town" -- only a day elapses before they've gotten themselves "hitched." At the point of a gun. The gunslinger is none other than a certain famous Judge Roy Bean (played with great relish and fun by Victor Jory, below), who takes a liking to these kids, even as he sentences another sweet-looking youngster to be hung by the neck until dead for possibly stealing a horse. ("Don't worry," my spouse noted, "he won't really be dead.") Hmmm again...

By the time you have reached the finale and denouement of what one of our more famous critics, Roger Ebert, called "the damndest and confoundingest western you can imagine" -- I suspect you'll have arrived at a notion that would have pleased the late Mr. Boetticher immensely: It really does not matter how charming or sweet or "good" you might be, people: 
Life is mostly shit.

Along the way, not only do we meet that hanging judge, but also Jesse James (played by Murphy, shown above, in his final screen role), Jesse's brother Frank, and their relative, also known (by a pompous-but-not-so-hot filmmaker) as "the coward Robert Ford." Boetticher's take on these famous folk, just as on Judge Bean, is every bit as unusual and enjoyable as is all else in this oddly sweet and darkly satisfying film.

From Corinth Films, A Time for Dying makes its DVD debut this coming Tuesday, February 5. Simultaneously -- already, actually -- the movie is available via Amazon Prime Video and free, for members of that popular streaming service.

From the treasure trove of classic, "disappeared" B films: Budd Boetticher's THE KILLER IS LOOSE

Unless you're a connoisseur of Hollywood's B movies of the 1940s and 50s, you might not have noticed that Netflix streaming is offering of late quite a selection of these, some of them I've not been able to find anywhere else. One excellent example of this genre from the late 50s, around the time Bs were beginning to disappear: THE KILLER IS LOOSE, written by Harold Medford from a story by John Hawkins and directed by a guy film buffs will certainly know and love, Budd Boetticher (shown below).

A great watch for nostalgia buffs; lovers of  tight, 50s crime flicks; folk who want the chance to see the voluptuous redhead Rhonda Fleming in black-and-white (many of her films were in color, and why not? Her peaches-and-cream complexion against that red hair: Whew!); or anyone who'd like to view a Boetticher movie that's not a western (the genre he's best-known for) -- if any or all of the above entice, then The Killer Is Loose is made for you. TrustMovies is offering a double dose of poster images this time (see above) -- partly because there are so few decent images available from the film but also to point up how badly designed some of the poster art from the 50s could be. (These were the days when the designer had to pack in an awful lot of information the best he could.)

The film runs but 73 fast-paced minutes and was most likely considered quite violent for its time. (Boetticher knew how to do the most with the least.) Think of this one as kind of police procedural of its time. The tight plot begins with a bank robbery in which not all is as it first appears. When our star policeman (the usual OK work from stolid Joseph Cotton) and his crew accidentally shoot the wife (above) of the robber (Wendell Corey, the  film's stand-out), the already unstable fellow goes full-out nuts -- but in his own quiet, mild-mannered-but-scary way (below).

Within the short running time,  Boetticher and Medford manage to work in the old "I-can't-bear-my-husband-being-a-cop routine, which helps lead to the movie's climax, along with several scenes that give Corey the chance to shine -- making us fear him but also understand where all this is coming from (his wartime service and a history of bullying). If the points scored aren't exactly subtle, neither are they driven home in any overly melodramatic way. This director was too smart for that, which makes so many of his films so surprising and so much fun to view.

One of the movie's best scenes has actress Virginia Christine (above, playing the wife of another cop) giving Fleming's character a good dressing-down for her selfish attitude. One of the later examples of the fine B film that often outshone the A film with which it was paired, The Killer Is Loose is available now via Netflix streaming -- another reason why this very affordable service is currently the best deal going for movie lovers of all kinds (except mainstream, would-be blockbusters).