# Garden of Evil

Garden of Evil is a 1954 American CinemaScope Western film directed by Henry Hathaway, about three somewhat disreputable 19th-century soldiers of fortune, played by Gary Cooper as an ex-lawman, Richard Widmark as a gambler, and Cameron Mitchell as a bounty hunter, who, along with Vicente, played by Víctor Manuel Mendoza, are randomly hired by a woman portrayed by Susan Hayward, to rescue her husband (Hugh Marlowe). Rita Moreno appears at the beginning of the film as a Mexican cantina singer/dancer. It was the first outdoor picture photographed in the new CinemaScope anamorphic widescreen process and director Hathaway took special pains to use the stunning vistas of the Mexican locations to show off the new screen dimensions to best effect.

## Plot

Three American adventurers are on a boat to the California gold fields, but when their steamship for California experiences engine trouble, the American adventurers find themselves stranded in a Mexican fishing village. While they discuss their options in a local saloon, Leah Fuller, whose husband John is trapped in a distant gold mine, enters. She needs help to rescue him. Noticing the Americans, she offers them $2,000 each, tossing a bag of coins on their table. Her gesture attracts the attention of another saloon customer, Vicente, who accepts her deal. The Americans -- an ex-sheriff, a gambler, and an upstart-kid bounty hunter -- sign on as well.
During the harrowing journey inland, Leah informs ex-lawman Hooker that the site where her husband is trapped was once a boom town. It was wiped out by a volcanic eruption, leaving only a church steeple and a gold mine. The resident priest called it the "garden of evil." The Indians now consider the volcano sacred. One of the group keeps marking the trail and leaving stone arrows with direction, but Leah wipes out the markings as she finds them and only she knows the way. When the group arrives at the mine, they discover John unconscious but alive. They work to free him before the ceiling collapses further. They transport him to a nearby cabin where Hooker sets his broken leg. He sees the men with Leah and asks her how she managed to get them to come and suspects she came back for the gold rather than him, but she denies it.
With hostile Apaches nearby, the group quickly prepare to leave. During their return, John sees he is slowing the group down and gets the young bounty hunter to help him on a horse to get away from the group. He leaves down the trail, but the Indians get the bounty hunter who is killed by an arrow in the back. Later, at a burnt-out mission, the group finds John dead, hung upside down on a cross. Vicente falls next at a ambush, the victim of multiple arrows. Later, the three survivors reach a choke point in the cliff-hugging path, the only way out. Hooker and the gambler, Fiske, draw cards to see which of them will stay behind to hold off the Indians while the other rides with Leah to safety. Fiske "wins" and Leah hugs him as she leaves and tells him goodby and leaves with Hooker. Fiske succeeds in killing or driving off most of their pursuers. However, he is badly wounded. After seeing Leah to safety, Hooker returns to aid Fiske. The gambler admits he cheated on the card draw to guarantee he would stay behind. Before he dies, Fiske urges Hooker to settle down with Leah. Hooker returns to Leah, and they ride off into the sunset.

## Cast

* Gary Cooper as Hooker
* Susan Hayward as Leah Fuller
* Richard Widmark as Fiske
* Hugh Marlowe as John Fuller
* Cameron Mitchell as Luke Daly
* Rita Moreno as Cantina singer
* Víctor Manuel Mendoza as Vicente Madariaga

## Production

The working title for the film was Volcano, it was changed because "there is an Italian pic of same title now playing U.S. art houses", a 1950 film directed by William Dieterle and starring Rossano Brazzi and Anna Magnani.
Robert L. Jacks was originally set to produce, but he left 20th Century-Fox to join Panoramic Productions and was replaced by Charles Brackett.
Outdoor sequences were shot on location in Mexico, at "the colonial town" of Tepotzotlán, in the jungle areas near Acapulco, Parícutin volcano with the church ruin of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, and the village of Guanajuato with the then-unrestored church ruins of Templo Santiago Apóstol, Marfil. Interior scenes were also shot at the Churubusco Studios in Mexico City.
Some of the outdoor footage was augmented by matte paintings.
   The journey [to the mine] is long and arduous. Hayward takes them up a dizzying mountain trail that has a cliff with a drop of a thousand feet, give or take a mile or two. Art directors Edward Fitzgerald and Lyle Wheeler came up with some fantastic matte paintings for these scenes. The vistas that spread out on the vast Cinemascope screen are breathtaking and add a weird touch of fantasy to the film. ... .The use of the matte paintings to enhance the natural scenery of the Guanajuato, Mexico location, I suspect was deliberate, to establish a demarcation between the everyday world of Puerto Miguel and the mysterious Garden of Evil, where the mine is located.

## Reception

The New York Times reviewer wrote, "Although the story and its fireworks are interesting, they are dwarfed by the rugged mountains and lush coconut and banana-tree jungles of the film's natural settings."
In his 1988 book, The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western, author Jon Tuska observed the American characters in Garden of Evil are "stalked on the way to the mine by Apaches wearing Mohawk hairpieces." Tuska was referencing one of the filmmakers' gaffes—dressing Apache tribe members as Mohawks. According to author Josephine Paterek, Apaches generally "wore the hair long and flowing or in two braids." This was sometimes augmented with a war cap consisting of "fur and curved antelope horns." Mohawk and Iroquois tribes, those located in the northeastern U. S., almost exclusively, "shaved off all the hair except for the scalplock at the back", adorned with "a roach spreader of bone holding erect a feather that rotated freely..." Mohawk hairstyles, however, were virtually nonexistent among Native-Americans in the Southwest.