Molly and Lawless John

A WESTERN FROM THE GENRE'S TWILIGHT YEARS
Had this movie been made a dozen years earlier, it might have found an audience. By 1973, however, the Hollywood western was riding into the sunset and the studio hardly bothered even releasing this admittedly-minor production.

Vera Miles plays the shy, quiet wife of a blustery frontier lawman who clearly doesn't appreciate her. On impulse, she helps a handsome, sweet-talking young prisoner escape from her husband's jail. The bulk of the movie then follows this mismatched pair as they flee across a desert landscape.

The dialog between the runaway wife and the outlaw isn't sharp enough or observant enough to lift the proceedings above the ordinary, but the femininist tone of the script is a pleasant surprise and Vera Miles makes for an appealing heroine.

Sam Elliott, virtually unknown at the time, plays the escaping prisoner. His screen personae hadn't yet developed and so his character never quite comes into focus. At times the movie simply uses him for...

Technical problems render this oater virtually unwatchable
This undistinguished oater is made much worse by technical problems. It isn't a bad little western, and the two lead roles are played competently by Vera Miles, whose most famous role was Laurie Jorgensen in "The Searchers," and Sam Elliott, who was born to make westerns. It had a good plot and some beautiful desert locations.

Unfortunately, the film was not well shot. None--and I mean not one--of the interior scenes is adequately lighted; you can barely make out dark shadows moving around against a black background. The scenes in the Cactus Jail, which are key and set up the movie, might as well be taking place in a cave without even a candle for light. Then there's the DVD which is full-frame and was mastered from an extremely distressed print of the film. The DVD is blurry and shows every scratch, spot, and speck of dirt that 33 years of obscurity could inflict on the print. Too bad. Miles and Elliott deserved better. Frankly, because of the technical issues,...

Great finish
I bought this film as part of a double feature with a terrible movie called Gone With The West. I was surprised at how good this one was. It is about a self centered jerk, played by Sam Elliot, and an incredibly gullible and stupid woman, played by Vera Miles. Vera is married to the obnoxious sheriff who is holding Sam in jail for murder. Sam plays on Vera's gullibility to let him out of jail, thanks to the fact that the sheriff just smacked Vera in the face and made her mad.

Vera follows Sam out of town, only to learn that he is a total jerk. The movie takes a really strong turn at the end, with a great climactic scene. Check it out.

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