Garden of Evil

Plot synopsis:
En route to California to prospect for gold, Hooker (Gary Cooper), Fiske (Richard Widmark), and Luke Daly (Cameron Mitchell) stop over in a tiny Mexican village. The three men and Vicente Madariaga (Victor Manuel Mendoza) are hired by a desperate Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward) to rescue her husband John (Hugh Marlowe), who is trapped in a gold mine in hostile Indian territory.
During the harrowing journey, the party's already frayed nerves are aggravated when the men become attracted to the woman. The group then arrives at the mine site—called the "Garden of Evil" because the Indians regard it as the domain of evil spirits. They find an injured, but living John Fuller.
As they leave, they are pursued by Apaches. Eventually, only Hooker, Fiske and Leah are left alive. At a choke point in the cliff-hugging road, the two men draw cards to see who will stay behind to hold off pursuing Indians while the other two ride to safety. Fiske "wins" and succeeds in killing or driving off the enemy. After seeing that Leah is safe, Hooker returns to talk with a dying Fiske, who urges him to settle down with Leah.

Tags: violence, melodrama

Review:
While Cooper's career spanned ninety-two feature films, in which he appeared as everything from a masked Cossack to an Italian Renaissance explorer, a foreign legionnaire, a baseball great and countless sophisticated romantic adventurers, he is best remembered as a Western star...'Garden of Evil' tells the story of three American adventurers (Cooper, Widmark, and Mitchell) who are stranded in a Mexican fishing village after the ship that was taking them to California is put out of commission...
Instead, they are now in Puerto Miguel, approached by a woman in trouble, a Spanish-speaking American woman, Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward), who offers to pay them handsomely if they escort her through hazardous Indian territory to rescue her husband who is hurt and trapped in a gold mine up there in the hills...The mention of gold makes them agree and, together with a Mexican macho man named Vicente (Victor Manuel Mendoza), begin their long, arduous journey...Emotions become tense when Leah discovers Vicente marking trails and, later, finds herself fighting off the crude advances of one of the three soldiers of fortune...When the group arrives at what the Indians call the Garden of Evil, a sacred grounds atop a high mountain where the mine is located, they found Fuller (Hugh Marlowe) still alive, but embittered and with a broken leg...
Wellman's superb, high adventure 'Beau Geste,' and her third with director Hathaway...Richard Widmark proceeds his ways of gambling with a neat line in cynical cracks; Cameron Mitchell fails in his unwelcome sexual advances; Hugh Marlowe uses a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with his angry feelings; Victor Manuel Mendoza gets intensely angry after being hit; and Rita Moreno delights the environment with her sweet voice...Hathaway was one of the great Hollywood veterans still in harness, a versatile director whose Westerns have been as variable in quality as his other films...
One of the early Cinemascope adventures from Fox, GARDEN OF EVIL has a superb cast at the top of their respective games, fantastic special effects, wonderful widescreen photography, and one of house composer Bernard Herrmann's very best scores (which is saying a mouthful).
First of all, the story works....Next, the lines work and the performances are perfect: Susan Hayward's voice is the feminine equal of the stoic, knowing and forceful sound of Gary Cooper's voice: those voices are the trademarks of both of their film careers, and in this movie the interplay of their vocal tracks are very significant, definitive performances in both their careers....just listen to their lines and you will appreciate the fact that this movie is one of the high points of the dramatic art of two great performers...You will also enjoy the visuals in this movie....Hayward is sexy, and backed by beautiful vistas.
It also has more great lines than most movies - alldelivered brilliantly by Susan Hayward, Gary Cooper and Richard Widmark.Here are some as I remember them (not necessarily accurate).
Coop and two other Americans heading around the cape to California, find themselves stranded in a hole in the wall village on the Mexican coast for several weeks while the ship they are sailing dropped anker for repairs.A desperate woman arrives at the cantina looking for men to help rescue her husband trapped in their gold mine.
Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, and Richard Widmark are on a trip through the wilds of Mexico in search of gold.
However, the lure of the prospects of wealth spur the group on to the mine, and they reach the mine, save the husband, but now face the dangers posed by the Apaches.Each character offers some sense of presence to the film; Cooper is able to portray the silent, strength of character person, while Widmark adds a philosophical, yet cynical, view of life in his role as Fiske, a gambler.
A trio of American drifters formed by a veteran ex-sheriff named Hooker (Gary Cooper) , a card player named Fiske(Richard Widmark) and a gunfighter , Luke Daly (Cameron Mitchell) going to California and marooned in rural Mexico are recruited by a beautiful woman named Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward) who offers a strong reward to rescue her husband named John Fuller (Hugh Marlowe) from vengeful Apaches .
It's gold rush time and en route to California, Hooker (Gary Cooper), Fiske (Richard Widmark) and Luke Daly (Cameron Mitchell) stop over in a small Mexican village.
Here the three men hook up with Vicente Madariaga (Victor Manuel Mendoza) and are lured by a desperate Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward) to go rescue her husband John (Hugh Marlowe), who is trapped in a gold mine up in the mountains.
Mountains where hostile Indians lay in wait, but the Apache are not the only thing to be worried about, the other is themselves.With that cast, Henry Hathaway directing, Bernard Herrmann scoring and CinemaScope inspired location work coming from a volcano region in Mexico, you would think that Garden Of Evil would be far more well known than it actually is.
That it isn't comes as no surprise once viewing it myself.Hathaway's film has real good intentions, it wants to be a brooding parable about the effects of greed, a character examination as men are forced to question their motives.
Some people complained about the Indian's role.I think that the first thing to bear in mind is that this western is more a fable than a realist story:the Indians ,whom we almost never see -a little more than the Arabs in Ford's "the lost patrol" or Duvivier's "la bandera",but not much more-:they are silhouettes in the landscape .The real danger is man's endless greed who ,were the earth made of gold,would die for a handful of it.That's what Gary Cooper's character says.I think that Hathaway's 1957 movie "Legend of the Lost" is more convincing than "Garden" .This search for a treasure in the desert does not need an outside threat:no hostile tribe here.Men are finally on their own and madness is around the corner.Try to see both movies in a row,mainly if you do not think that Henry Hathaway is  an auteur.He is..
I bought this film on DVD in a local secondhand DVD shop,ours being region 2,i was surprised that you can not get this on region 1 area or region 0 which a lot of modern dvds are now,i suppose if you really look around you will find them.I thought the film was very good for 1954,the photography was good,the horse riding scenes on the cliffs were exciting,and the music was good,it was subtle and gradually built up to a climax,but never became to intense,the film was quite atmospheric almost as if you were with them,the directing was clever.the characters were interesting,five very different types of people all brought together.However i think i am the only female so far to wright a comment on this film ,and my point of view may differ.What i see is that the female character is acting in a very paranoid and agitated way ,and is trying to distance her self from them,which is how you would react if you were a woman travelling with four men you don't know,to her the enemies may not just be the Indian's in the mountains.The scene in where she is riding her horse and she looks round because she can hear Hooker and Friske laughing,believing it must be about her, says it all.I mean ,every time she makes a move to go anywhere one of them follows her,i don't think it has occurred to them that she may just want to go to the toilet,the only ulterior motive i can see her having is get me out of this uncomfortable situation,thats why she wanted to stay behind and stoke the fire,she was probably thinking give me some space.A good intriguing film any way..
An all-star cast gets us through the plot.With breathtaking scenery, Susan Hayward, as Leah, secures the aid of Cameron Mitchell, Gary Cooper and Richard Widmark in trying to free her trapped husband in a mining cave.As the husband, Hugh Marlowe steals the acting in the film.
Garden Of Evil is an entertaining and well made Technicolor/Cinemascope adventure that shows a part of Mexico's interior not usually shown in western pictures.The plot involves Gary Cooper and his treasure seeking pals being paid to rescue Susan Hayward's husband from a collapsed goldmine located in the supposedly cursed title area.
This is a fine watch in spite of the choppy script.Cooper and Widmark's characters' boat breaks down on the way to the California gold fields--they have to stop in Mexico.
Faced with weeks on end of boredom the men agree to follow a woman in need into the interior, in order to rescue her husband from a cave-in in their gold mine.The Garden of Evil is really is a downright theological movie at times.
Offhand the only matte shot I've liked more is from Tarzan the Ape Man, 1932 (actually another cliff overhanging green plains).Did I mention that this film has Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark, and Susan Haywood?
This flick i remember when i was a kid in the fifties and so it has stuck w\me all these years...I am totally bias when it comes to this Western gem,for i see it as special and original in its own right !Pure adventure w\its exotic locales in Mexico and the music of Bernie Herrmann is unsurpassed !Widmark I would single out as the glue of this yarn and Coop & Hayward are more than adequate;It is majestic in scope & breath and I personally opine that it is the greatest of all exotic(the look)Westerns ever filmed !There is a moral here and it just further enhances this dusky jewel....-the Mighty Bo. A rare Western but still got some stereotyped annoying flaws.
This is a pretty good Western, from an expert in the field (Hathaway) – immeasurably aided by its star cast (Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, Hugh Marlowe and Cameron Mitchell), a compelling plot line (three adventurers help a woman save her husband, trapped in a mine, then fight over her and the couple’s gold), the pleasant Widescreen photography (the format was still a new fad at the time), and a magnificent score (courtesy of the great Bernard Herrmann).
Incidentally, yet another contemporaneous Western pitting one woman among several desperate men in a remote landscape was THE NAKED SPUR (1953), one of the well-regarded series of Anthony Mann/James Stewart Westerns – as in that film, the central group here has to contend also with a horde of marauding Indians.Cooper, the nominal lead, had just had a career resurgence with his Oscar-winning performance in another genre outing – the classic HIGH NOON (1952); as I said in my review of YELLOW SKY (1948), which I’ve just watched, Widmark’s role here was kind of similar to the one he played in that earlier Western – though, by now, he had begun to stretch effectively from outright villain types.
The supporting cast, then, includes only one prominent role for a Mexican – yet another member of the group who, in defiance of the Indian onslaught, expires in a hail of arrows – whereas young Rita Moreno’s saloon singer proves to be the only other female character in the film.P.S. I own a copy of the bare-bones R2 DVD of GARDEN OF EVIL; the upcoming R1 edition should be a SE and include an Audio Commentary – and, as far as I can tell, it’s only going to be available as part of a 3-Disc Collection also comprising two other classic Westerns from the Fox studio: THE GUNFIGHTER (1950; which I already own on R2 as well) and RAWHIDE (1951; not available elsewhere)....
Coop made several films in Mexico, including "Vera Cruz" with Bert Lancaster.All entertaining to watch, but this one I especially liked.It has the standard "coop gets the girl" ending, and some fairly corny mellowdrama, but by and large it was worthwhile, and even, in some ways, memorable.My favorite scene is near the end of the film where Coop and his friends are fleeing from a hoard of Indians along a narrow trail that skirts the side of a mountain (perhaps special effects, perhaps a real place, I've often wondered), and someone has to stay behind to stand them off while the rest make it to safety.
Above average western yarn complete with an array of fine actors and a script rich in symbolic metaphors.The cast features the likes of Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark, Susan Hayward, Cameron Mitchell, and Hugh Marlowe.
Something much more could have been made of this story, but apparently Henry Hathaway went ahead and directed this meandering tale without his usual enthusiasm for stark adventure laced with a morality tale about gold and its effect on men.SUSAN HAYWARD rounds up three men to escort her through dangerous territory in Mexico, circa 1850s, so that she can redeem herself by rescuing her husband, hurt in a mining accident.
Gold prospectors GARY COOPER, RICHARD WIDMARK and CAMERON MITCHELL agree to escort the woman, all of them aware of her allure and equally lured by the money she offers them for their help.Once again, GARY COOPER gets to play his heroic man of a few words, rising to the occasion especially at the climax when he proves himself a true hero.
CAMERON MITCHELL gets to do some over-acting as an unpleasant man with his mind on seducing Hayward while chewing the scenery.Although much of the film was shot on location in various Mexican locales, some of the night scenes have a strictly stagebound studio look that the CinemaScope camera cannot disguise.
The film was beautifully shot by veteran cameraman Milton Krasner, but it's panoramic vistas sometimes overshadow the story of four men hired to escort a beautiful woman through hostile territory to rescue her husband trapped in a gold mine in 1850's Mexico.
Gary Cooper (Hooker), no stranger to "buddy films", this time finds a the "so called" buddy in Richard Widmark (Fiske).
A stellar cast that includes; Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, Cameron Mitchell and Hugh Marlowe traveling through Indian country leaves the audience pondering the usual, "Who will survive?".
"Garden of Evil" was the first western filmed in the original wide screen format of CinemaScope and stereophonic sound.(The second was "River of no Return") both produced by Fox studios.The Mexican landscapes are excellent thanks to the superb photography and use of color.
While in a cantina, these men (Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark and Cameron Mitchell) are approached by a frantic Susan Hayward who is trying to recruit men to follow her into Apache territory to rescue her husband who is trapped following a mining accident.
Here, Gary Cooper and Richard Widmark are given good opportunity to finally flesh out their characters.Overall, this is a slightly better than average Western.
Richard Widmark & Gary Cooper arrive in town looking for some action when Hayward bursts in offering them a reward to save her husband hurt in the mine they own.
Hooker (Gary Cooper), Fiske (Richard Widmark) and Luke Daly (Cameron Mitchell) are stranded in the dusty town of Puerto Miguel, Mexico when their ship breaks down.
Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward) comes to town in need of men to rescue her husband John Fuller (Hugh Marlowe) who is trapped in their mine.
With lovely locations in Mexico this was Fox's first western in the then new process of Cinemascope and Stereophonic sound and boasted a top notch cast in Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward and Richard Widmark.From a fine screenplay by Frank Fenton - Cooper and Widmark together with Cameron Mitchell and Victor Manuel Mendoza are four adventurers contracted by Leah Fuller (Hayward) to go back with her into the wilds of Mexico to rescue her husband (Hugh Marlowe) who is lying trapped and injured in a gold mine.
Cooper as Hooker is at his laconic best, Hayward is as gorgeous as ever, Mitchell in a good part as a temperamental and impatient young gun, Mendoza as the likable and amiable Mexican companion and Widmark shines as Fiske the droll and garrulous gambler who cuts for highest card to see who goes and who stays behind.Beautifully photographed in Cinemascope and colour by Milton Krasner it is all excitingly handled by Hathaway.
Three men (Gary Cooper as "Hooker"; Richard Widmark as "Fiske"; and Cameron Mitchell as "Daly) are stuck in a Mexican sea town while their ship is being repaired.
While drinking together in a cantina (where Moreno is dancing - it is owned by her boyfriend Victor Manuel Mendoza, here as "Madariaga") they are all approached by Susan Hayward (as "Leah Fuller") to assist her in rescuing her husband (Hugh Marlowe as "John Fuller") who is an engineer exploring a gold mind.
Mendoza's character of Madariaga is as complex as Cooper's Hooker, Widmarck's Fiske, Mitchell's Daly, or Hayward and Marlowe's twisted Fullers.
Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark and Cameron Mitchell are leads; Hugh Marlowe and Victor Mendoza are in supporting roles; and Rita Morena has something a little more than a cameo.
An American woman, Leah Fuller, hires them to rescue her husband John who is trapped in a gold mine located deep in Indian Territory.
Beautiful location photography and a good score by Bernard Hermann...and that about warps it up for GARDEN OF EVIL.Gary Cooper seems very bored with his part.Richard Widmark seems there for a vacation and doesn't want to get too worked up, either.Cameron Mitchell and the Mexican dude really get excited over their thinly written parts.And Susan Hayward, once again, gets a part that suits her non-acting ability.Do Cooper or Widmark get any close-ups in this film?
This long-forgotten western boasts a great cast with Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark and Cameron Mitchell, filmed extensively in seldom seen remote Mexican locations.
Who would think a line up like Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark, and Susan Hayward, could lend themselves to such a disaster.Garden of evil was slow, ponderous and boring.