We all have a childhood memory of watching a film and retaining a certain line of dialog or particular scene. If you are lucky, you will discover that scene or particular speech in an adulthood and finally have a title to add to the memory.
That is the case for me with "Lust For Gold", an adult western with certain elements of film noir, much like " Pursued" and "The Furies". I happened upon this several years ago and just about choked when the scene from my childhood came back. My brother and I had been watching this some rainy afternoon and we both laughed at the scene where Glenn Ford happens to leave a shop with two baskets of cookies. He gives them to a little boy who happened to be close to my age with truly comical results. For years afterwords until our adolescence came to an end, we would remind each other of the line.
The story surrounds a rich gold mine and the mystery surrounding an alleged curse. Starting in the present day with Ford's grandson William Prince trying to find it, then flashes back 60 years to Ford's discovery of it and how it ruined his life.
Along the way, he falls for the secretly scheming Idea Lupino, a married woman who pretends to be in love with him to get her hands on the bulk of the hidden claim. Sort of like a period version of " Double Indemnity", it ends up with the two playing cat and mouse with each other which leads to an ironic conclusion.
A very intelligent opening narration by William Prince sets the intrigue in motion and there is a fine cast of character actors in support, among them Paul Ford, Hayden Roarke and Edgar Buchanan. A great bit by an old lady claiming in 1949 to Prince leads to a funny sequence with Ford from years ago where the obnoxious little old lady becomes an obnoxious little girl. This is smart in every way, making it a sleeper of a western film noir that is hard to resist.
That is the case for me with "Lust For Gold", an adult western with certain elements of film noir, much like " Pursued" and "The Furies". I happened upon this several years ago and just about choked when the scene from my childhood came back. My brother and I had been watching this some rainy afternoon and we both laughed at the scene where Glenn Ford happens to leave a shop with two baskets of cookies. He gives them to a little boy who happened to be close to my age with truly comical results. For years afterwords until our adolescence came to an end, we would remind each other of the line.
The story surrounds a rich gold mine and the mystery surrounding an alleged curse. Starting in the present day with Ford's grandson William Prince trying to find it, then flashes back 60 years to Ford's discovery of it and how it ruined his life.
Along the way, he falls for the secretly scheming Idea Lupino, a married woman who pretends to be in love with him to get her hands on the bulk of the hidden claim. Sort of like a period version of " Double Indemnity", it ends up with the two playing cat and mouse with each other which leads to an ironic conclusion.
A very intelligent opening narration by William Prince sets the intrigue in motion and there is a fine cast of character actors in support, among them Paul Ford, Hayden Roarke and Edgar Buchanan. A great bit by an old lady claiming in 1949 to Prince leads to a funny sequence with Ford from years ago where the obnoxious little old lady becomes an obnoxious little girl. This is smart in every way, making it a sleeper of a western film noir that is hard to resist.