CLINT WALKER WITH VINCENT PRICE IN 'MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE'

Clint Walker in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE Year: 1969 Rating: ***

Opens with the kind of shoot-em-up gusto of the otherwise cliche Western, MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE stars gentle giant Clint Walker as a formerly infamous gunslinger who basically stands around inside a fort-like prison while his muscular doppelganger Mike Henry violently busts out his own gang...

What was needed in this extremely strange/offbeat 1969 Western was a prologue before the prologue: like how Clint Walker went to prison in the first place, since his character's brutal past means pretty much everything...

Clint Walker and Vincent Price in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

As the now infamous ending shouldn't be spoiled (although in the EASY RIDER era, it's not impossible to predict), while the cast is extremely unique... featuring Vincent Price as the flamboyant flim-flammy boss of a traveling gun show where ex-con Walker, trying to exist as a pacifist in the usual one-horse-town, finds his only future is reliving the past...

Enter the second lead even beyond Price or extremely anachronistic 1960's hippie-like rich artist Anne Francis (ambiguous bar-girl Beverly Powers is a better fit for the genre): where an energetic yet thoroughly miscast no-name actor Paul Hampton plays a wannabe gunfighter so brash and sadistic, the character almost deserved his own picture...

Clint Walker and Paul Lambert in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Or maybe he's who MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE is about, providing thoroughly handsome yet monotone Clint Walker a borderline peripheral role: not the heroic star of his own glorious vehicle but a symbolic pawn in what's ultimately more an experimental cautionary-tale fable than even the strange little Anti-Western that's ultimately attempted...

Including sing-song music so jazzy and cheerful, it almost deliberately clashes against what an audience would expect, backing the man who starred in the first televised Western... and at least visually, ALIVE feels more like an intriguing big budget TV-movie than the avant garde theatrical motion picture that's been both sadly and understandably lost in the Post Spaghetti Western/counter-culture boom.

From MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Clint Walker in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Vincent Price in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Clint Walker and Anne Francis in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Clint Walker and Beverly Powers in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Clint Walker, Emile Meyer and Paul Lambert in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Clint Walker in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Mike Henry in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Mike Henry in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Beverly Powers in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE

Clint Walker and Anne Francis in MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE