THE DAY OF THE OUTLAW (1959) *1/2 Every bottom-feeding actor in Hollywood should take comfort in the fact that Tina Louise was able to raise her career from this to the elevated heights of "Gilligan's Island." This is lean plot and sexual tension in the snow of the high plains during the cowboy days, with telegraphed and punctuated and pompous misanthropic, misogynistic and sadistic-supposed to be existential-overtones. It takes itself seriously and has a great deal to say-you can see that it thinks that it does-none of which was apparently able to survive the translation from one side of the screen to the other. Something about bad men and women in the first half, and bad men and other men in the second. Too bad, because André De Toth shoots (with camera) a little town in the snow beautifully in black & white, and Robert Ryan and Burl Ives both give performances deserving so much better than this.it just all has the feel of a thin paperback with sleeves folded by an adult still trying to become interested in learning to read. And poor Tina Louise, yes she makes a fine sexual totem but couldn't they have given her any lines that would sound anything but idiotic?
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