Sunday, May 18, 2014

Flick Pick: Rio Lobo

Rio Lobo
(Paramount, 1970)

Third and final re-work of this story, and probably the best of the three (Hawks and Wayne were getting pretty good at doing this story by this time through). Features Mexican cinema star Jorge Rivero, and Robert Mitchum's son Chris, along with Jack Elam in the ornery old coot role for this run through, and Jennifer O'Neal as the girl in the story. Writer George Plimpton gets a cameo as a gunslinging version of a Star Trek red-shirt, and one bit part was played by flaming 25-year-old beauty (but middling actress) Sherry Lansing, who polishes off the villain at the film's climax, then dissatisfied with her work, dropped out of acting within a year. She started working behind the camera, finishing up as the head of Paramount Pictures during its longest and most financially successful stretch, from 1992-2004, overseeing a string of features that were 80% profitable, when Paramount garnered three Best Picture Oscars, and including the then-highest grossing film in movie history, Titanic.

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