Watch The Sons of Katie Elder For Free

Too much of everything

The Worst Film Ever

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It tries everything to win the viewer over, all of the typical western tactics and tropes, but a western with a vapid story line, basic acting, and too many improbable and poorly edited shoot 'em up moments cannot be rescued, no matter how many whiskeys and cowboy antics are thrown in, even with a star-studded cast.

Four brothers reunite in Clearwater, Texas to attend the funeral of their mother--Katie Elder. None of them has been very attentive to her needs, but their neglect has not been intentional. They are all wanderers. When they return to Clearwater, they discover how little they know of Katie's recent circumstances.John Elder (John Wayne) is a renowned gunfighter and the father figure to his younger brothers. Tom (Dean Martin) is an inveterate gambler who likes to manipulate the odds. Earl Holliman plays Matt, next to youngest. And Michael Anderson, Jr. is Bud, the youngest--a reluctant student who is always ready to prove his mettle.As the sons visit local merchants and the town bank, hoping to settle Katie's accounts, they find that the townspeople knew her better than they did. One woman, Mary Gordon (Martha Hyer), plays the good neighbor while they are in town, just as she had promised Katie.Two mysteries arise: Why had Katie moved from the family homestead? And who had killed their father? In the first part of the film, the men investigate, unable to let go. The rest of the film is a series of actions sequences.John Wayne plays his usual cowboy self--forceful and determined. Earl Holliman is solid as Matt. Martin and Anderson are less natural in their portrayals. Martha Hyer plays Mary in a wonderfully understated fashion. The remainder of the cast includes a delightful collection of character actors who add color and are fun to recognize.The musical score feels forced and reminiscent of other, larger films. When the insistent strains of the orchestra back up a scene on horseback where the action is sedate, it feels inappropriate. I blame the director, not composer Elmer Bernstein.I really enjoyed the way the story develops in the first half of the film--with subtlety and sophistication. The second half is your standard shoot 'em up.

A lot can be said about what John Wayne was becoming in the 1960s: old-fashioned; rampant, unquestioning patriot; militant right-winger, etc., etc. But there was something else that he still was: a Hollywood presence like few others before, and even fewer since. He was also undergoing a stark change in his life, one that can be seen to some extent in the film he made early in 1965 with old friend Henry Hathaway (NORTH TO ALASKA) in the director's seat—namely THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER.Wayne, Dean Martin (reuniting with The Duke from RIO BRAVO), and relative greenhorns Earl Holliman and Michael Anderson Jr. are four brothers who have returned to their former hometown of Clearwater, Texas to pay their respects to their mother Katie Elder, only to find that their family's ranch has been bought off under mighty peculiar circumstances, namely (and supposedly) a card game that their father lost, and was shot and killed for. The four brothers' reputations as overgrown juvenile reprobates (even Wayne), however, precede them; nobody's talking, not even the local sheriff (Paul Fix, of "Rifleman" and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD fame); and Fix's deputy (Jeremy Slate) has a lot against them. Then the four have it out with the man (James Gregory, who had played the manipulated politician in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE) who bought their family's ranch out in that suspicious way that he has, along with a beefy gunslinger (George Kennedy), and Gregory's vicious but none-too-sharp kid (Dennis Hopper).What was notable about KATIE ELDER was that it was the first film Wayne had done after having had one of his lungs removed (in late 1964) because of all the smoking and boozing he had done throughout his life. This required him to carry an oxygen tank with him on the set; and he had to use it a lot since he not only did a fair amount of his own stunts, but also because much of KATIE ELDER was filmed in the rarefied high-altitude air of Durango, Mexico. It didn't seem to affect his performance adversely, though; he was still doing his particular thing, being The Duke as he would be for practically every Western he did from this point forward (even in his Oscar-winning role as Rooster Cogburn in TRUE GRIT in 1969). He also was so taken with the scenery in Durango (and the cheap Mexican labor there) that a lot of the Westerns he made between this one and 1973's THE TRAIN ROBBERRS would be made in that locale.Even with Wayne's stoic presence here, he doesn't overshadow his co-stars too much. Martin, looking fairly sober, does his turn as the card-shark brother; and Gregory, Kennedy, and Hopper make for a trio of nasty villains. There is also the reassuring presence of Strother Martin in one of his many character roles; the great cinematography of Lucien Ballard; and a rousing score by Elmer Bernstein, with the title song done by the legendary Man In Black himself, Johnny Cash.While both the film and its Big Star may seem quite dated in a lot of ways, as an old-fashioned, traditional Western opus, THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER delivers the goods in ways that you would expect any John Wayne film, especially one directed by Hathaway, to do. No one will mistake it for the more radical films that would soon alter the Western (THE WILD BUNCH; ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST; BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID); but for what it is and what it intends to do, one could do far, far worse.

(8/10) Without a doubt one of Duke's most underrated Westerns. The fact that the four main stars are so unbelievable as brothers is shadowed by the acting and charm that each character brings to the screen. Dean Martin follows up his Rio Bravo performance with another gem cementing his place as one of the supporting stars working alongside Wayne. George Kennedy makes an intriguing antagonist but was underused. Wayne's romance with Martha Hyer and was pointless and a waste of time; the film should have devoted the attention to better build up the relationship among the brothers. The film tends to drag on towards this is a fun movie even non- western fans can enjoy. Excellent score.