Blue * (1968, Terence Stamp, Joanna Pettet, Karl Malden, Ricardo Montalban) – Classic Movie Review 6498

Director Silvio Narizzano’s weird American version of the spaghetti Western is a very typical product of its extravagant 1968 era – and one of its many flops.

In this truly odd Western, Terence Stamp is well cast in only one respect – his blue eyes referred to in the title – as Blue, a Mexican bandit’s adopted son who fights his foster father Ortega (Ricardo Montalban) when his gang mounts violent raids on American border towns.

It is hardly surprising then that an uncomfortable Stamp gives a poor performance in a pretentious, arty, unsuccessful film, which is saved by Yakima Canutt’s exciting second unit action direction and Stanley Cortez’s striking Technicolor cinematography on lovely Utah locations.

Also in the cast are Joanna Pettet, Karl Malden, Joe DeSantis, Sally Kirkland, James Westerfield, Carlos East, Sara Vardi, Robert Lipton, Anthony Costello, Kevin Corcoran, Stathis Giallelis, Helen Kleeb, Dorothy Konrad, Peggy Lipton, Michael Bell, Joe De Santis, and Jerry Gatlin.

It is written by Meade Roberts and Ronald M Cohen, based on Cohen’s story, produced by Judd Bernard and Irwin Winkler, and scored by Manos Hadjidakis [Manos Hatzidakis], with Art Direction by Albert Brenner, Hal Pereira and Al Roelofs.

Director Narizzano produced Burt Reynolds’s Fade-In (1968) on the same Utah locations using the shooting of Blue as a background.

It was the last film for 40 years of Disney child star Kevin Corcoran, then 19, until his final film It Starts with Murder! (2009). He died of cancer on October 6, 2015, aged 66.

Stamp eventually made another Western – Young Guns in 1988.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6498

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