Douglas, Gordon

Director. Dou?glas' Westerns are among the best films of this prolific, variable, efficient and occasio?nally inspired director. The Iron Mistress, a biography of Jim Bowie, contains a knife fight in pitch darkness, Yellowstone Kelly is powerfully anti-racist and both this and the other two Clint Walker vehicles, Fort Dobbs and Gold of the Seven Saints, display con?siderable skill in the dramatic handling of landscape and decor. The Fiend Who Walked the West is an interesting remake of Kiss of Death but Douglas' undoubted masterpiece is the demented Rio Conchos, in which Dou?glas abandons his normal businesslike style of direction for something much more baro?que. The arid setting, the crazy characters, the picaresque and violent action put one in mind of a Western Breughel, and all com?bine to produce a delirious climax of almost operatic proportions.