Watch Blood on the Moon For Free

Too much of everything

Nice effects though.

Excellent but underrated film

Crappy film

This movie is entertaining due to the writing. Every cliché found in so many other westerns of this era, are found in this movie! The first time i saw it, i noticed the number of them, but as i talked to others who viewed, we decided to watch again and count them. It was a great way to view an old movie as well as count the number of clichés used. The action is fast and in black and white the movie is perfect as it does achieve its goal of entertainment. It doesn't really have an original western genre plot but nonetheless i think you will find it fun and worth your movie time. it is always nice to see an "action" movie with more talking than action too!

Don't let the whims of men fool yaThrough the opening credits Jim Garry (Robert Mitchum) arrives; a plains drifting stranger who we are immediately as unsure of as the other characters - this uncertainly of intent remains for the majority of the picture. Garry, hired by friend Riling, is invited to cheat the Lufton ranch of their cattle by forcing them to remain on government land, pressuring the Lufton's to sell cheap or lose everything. When the plot turns deadly Garry is forced to confront his friend's real intentions.Garry's independence is the focus of Blood on the Moon's reputation as a noir-ish western: Mitchum's character is not a traditional black or white, good or bad guy. He is a recognisable isolated cowboy freelancer, a hired gun willing to double-cross if it serves him well. But he is not amoral. Mitchum's laconic, too cool for you, persona is at full strength. In a couple of scenes he almost completely drifts into himself. Garry's motivation and alliance is ambiguous throughout, but is eventually tied up a little too neatly which detracts from the overall atmosphere, "you always had a conscious breathing down your neck".Aside from Mitchum's Jim Garry (and writer Luke Short), the 'noir' in Blood on the Moon comes courtesy of director Robert Wise and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (fresh from Out of the Past the previous year). Night shots with moon light tearing through the tree leaves, and in particular the barroom high-key lighting during an important fight scene are very reminiscent of film noir and serve this film very well.A dirty 'psychological western' where heroism and sacrifice are replaced by mistrust and revenge. The ending is fairly abrupt, disappointing the ambiguity wasn't carried through until the close. One review from 1949 makes reference to the original Saturday Evening Post serial, on which the story is derived, and the relative 'ordinariness' of the Hollywood- adapted film.Odeon Entertainment (UK) have released a good quality DVD edition, taken from a good US source. The picture does suffer from format conversion (some softness), certainly not enough to detract from the film. The only real damage is a mighty tear which only last a couple of seconds.Well, I'll drift...

The novels of Luke Short paint a dark picture of the old west and Hollywood has made good use of them in making some really good westerns. Blood On The Moon is one of the best screen adaptations of one of his stories. A quick cursory glance of the films made from his stories, Ramrod, Ambush, Station West, Vengeance Valley, Coroner Creek all of them are pretty dark, almost noir like stories set in the old west. Blood On The Moon has Robert Mitchum as a cowboy sent for by his friend Robert Preston to be part of scheme to grab the herd of cattle baron Tom Tully. Not that Preston wants to do a little honest rustling, no his is a complicated plan involving getting the small ranchers and homesteaders riled up against Tully and getting a small range war started. He's even seduced one of Tully's daughters, Phyllis Thaxter, into betraying her father with promises of love and undying affection.All of this is a bit too much for Mitchum for whom it is alluded was quite the hellraiser in earlier times, but now is just sick of it all. Tully's other daughter Barbara Bel Geddes is checking him out if he would only break with Preston.When discussing this film in his book about Robert Mitchum, Lee Server makes the point that this film was far from what RKO planned for its star. Originally Mitchum was to be the white hat cowboy hero and successor as its B picture western star when Tim Holt went off to World War II. Little did they dream at RKO back in 1944 when Mitchum made his first with top billing, Nevada that he would be in this kind of western and do it so successfully.Preston had finished with his contract at Paramount and was now freelancing. We now know him primarily for The Music Man, but in his early film days he played many a villain and this one is a study in malevolence. His superficial charm even carries menace with it.Blood On The Moon enters that list of really top notch westerns that were originally authored by Luke Short. Try not to miss it when broadcast.

Although RKO was a major studio, in the 1940s an unusually large proportion of its output was low-budget B-movies. And not just any B-movies – psychological urban horrors from the Val Lewton unit, and plenty of gritty thrillers of the type that would come to be known as film noir. There was also a brisk trade in Westerns at all the studios, and RKO was no exception, but perhaps no picture better demonstrates that the studio was practically stuck in "noir" mode than the literally dark Western Blood on the Moon.Much of Blood on the Moon's bleak look is down to director of photography Nicholas Musuraca, who did the job on many of the Lewton horrors, including the seminal Cat People. Musuraca was quite capable of doing regular (and still very accomplished) cinematography – take a look at I Remember Mama, for which he received his only Oscar nomination – but his speciality was cloaking the screen in vast swathes of black. You would think this would be difficult in a Western, which ought to be full of vast empty plains and sunny skies. But Musuraca uses lighting techniques that can turn anything into a silhouette, or edges and corners into indistinct patches of darkness. He even makes clouds and buttes into foreboding black blobs. But he does not simply dim everything darker – his craft is very precise, and he is capable of throwing sharp white light where it is needed, or creating layers of grey amidst the gloom. Incidentally, while this adds immensely to the atmosphere, it is also probably part of RKO's general trend of hiding the lack of lavishness on a cheap production. After all, who needs a big town set when all you can make out is a door frame and a hitching post? Musuraca's partner in crime is director Robert Wise, another graduate of the Lewton unit. Wise adds to the atmosphere by composing tightly framed shots with bits of scenery and foreground clutter obscuring chunks of the screen. And look at how much of the movement is in depth rather than across the screen. Often characters are moving straight towards us, virtually staring into the lens, and this adds to the aura of menace. Just like in a well-made film noir (as well as those Val Lewton horrors) the overall impression is of a surreal nightmare world from which there is no escape. That is quite an achievement in a Western.Wise was also an expert at handling the pacing of his pictures, here shooting intense and nasty action sequences, spaced out by moody and measured dialogue scenes. This latter actually gives room for some nice acting performances. Robert Mitchum – a man who made an art form out of laconic moodiness – is perfect for those quieter moments. Like Humphrey Bogart, he was at first mistaken for a supporting player, but film noir gave him a niche as a leading man. Barbara Bel Geddes seems really cut out as Mitchum's tomboyish love interest. Active and assertive parts like the one she has here did not come up often for women in this era, and she gives it her all. Best of the bunch though is Walter Brennan, who looks and sounds like the typical crusty old man, and as such played a part in dozens of Westerns in his time. But under his character actor exterior he could emote beautifully, and in Blood on the Moon you really believe his mourning for his son.What we have here isn't simply a case of Wise and Musurasca giving a mischievous murky makeover to a good ol' cowboy flick. It seems the project was in noir territory right from the outset. Lillie Hayward, who I don't recall seeing credited anywhere else, but seems to have done a top job, has really just given us a gritty PI thriller out West. Mitchum is not so much the iconic drifter and more a grudgingly moral gun for hire. There is little distinction between the cowpunchers and the homesteaders (although in any case these two groups tended to be fairly interchangeable as villains and heroes from one Western to another – a bit like the North and South in Civil War movies). And interestingly this is one of the few pictures of this time to feature bona fide cowgirls, who shoot, talk and ride like the men. Parasols and petticoats are out of the question in this Western.Leaving aside all social context and genre subversion, the most important question is surely, is it actually any good? The answer is yes. Blood on the Moon does what any decently made B-flick ought to do – it is neither deep, moving or intelligent, but it gives a quick and reliable round of entertainment.