Watch Those Redheads from Seattle For Free

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

With Easter coming up I started looking round for films to watch with my dad over the holiday season.Taking a look at a DVD seller page,I spotted the first ever 3D Musical Western (!) ,which led to me getting ready to meet the redheads of Seattle.The plot:Running a campaign in his newspaper to get Johnny Kisco's salon shutdown, Vance Edmonds newspaper business gets burnt to the ground by Kisco's henchmen.Thanks to their being a gold rush in the area,Edmounds writes a letter to his family telling them to come down.Shortly after sending the letter,Vance is killed by Kisco's handyman (who have not been ordered by Kisco to burn the building,or kill Vance.) Getting the letter, Mrs. Edmonds gathers her daughters and sets off to the city to be reunited with her husband. Arriving in the city completely unaware,the Edmonds soon receive some bad news. View on the film:Whilst the transfer from 3D to 2D, (the 3D version was shown at the premiere,then never shown again,talk about value for money!)does slightly mute the colours,co-writer/(along with Daniel Mainwaring & George Worthing Yates) director Lewis R. Foster and cinematographer Lionel Lindon are able to find glitz in the redheads.Foster greets the girls in rosy blues and greens,whilst Lindon offers a glimpse to the 3D take with a depth of field which give the salons a touch of glamour,and the great snow covered mountain final a frosty atmosphere.Joined by sweet songs from Sidney Cutner and Leo Shuken,the screenplay by Foster/Mainwaring and Yates neatly blends the light Musical glaze with sawn-off shots from the Western.Entering the town all elegant,the writers rub the Musical girls against the outlaw,double-dealing world of the west,by wonderfully throwing their limelight dreams into the seedy smoke of the salons.Keeping the family in line, Agnes Moorehead gives a very good performance as the level-headed Mrs. Edmonds,whilst Gene Barry terrifically reveals Kisco trying to keep his outlaw life hidden,as Kisco's head is turned by the girls from Seattle.

In 1953, while so many good musicals, and not just at MGM, are integrating their scores, plots, and production designs, this Paramount oddity is a real throwback. All the songs, by a variety of hands, are "diegetic," i.e., stage-presentation numbers that have nothing to do with plot. Which may be just as well, since the plot is such a schizophrenic affair. It's about mom Agnes Moorehead (in an uncharacteristically humorless, uninteresting performance) squiring her four daughters to the Yukon in 1898, not aware that their dad has been murdered, and their falsely blaming saloon owner Gene Barry for it. The motivations are as scattershot as the intended 3D effects; when prettiest daughter Rhonda Fleming ends up with Barry, Moorehead glows with delight, even though she's hated him for most of the movie, because, well, it's time for fadeout and we need a happy ending. Teresa Brewer, with the best songs, is spunky and appealing, and Guy Mitchell, with a lovely voice, is more effective than he was the following year in another odd Paramount musical, "Red Garters." The tone's now-somber, now-boisterous, and the western and musical motifs do not blend well.

When I saw this movie in first run, 1953, everyone in the theater laughed out loud. As the film progressed people started to make random comments aloud, increasing the laughter. In 1953 it was the worst movie I had ever seen and, even though a child, I had seen a lot of movies. It still is though The Sicilian ranks close. Rhonda Fleming was beyond awful. Teresa Brewer, a top of the charts pop singer of the day, not only couldn't act, she looked terrible. Many of the scenes were shot against backdrops to show the vast Artic region, and those shots were also terrible. Gene Barry was miscast. The plot was inane. The acting was painful to watch. The only reason I went to see this movie was because they were having a sneak preview that night and, WHAT LUCK!, the preview was "Singin' in the Rain."

I really like this movie. It is a good story & has a great cast.Theresa Brewer has a wonderful voice and I have always liked Agnes Moorehead. All the girls & the mother have red hair except the youngest & she is a blond. The husband/father was killed & they went to Alaska to settle his affairs. He ran the local newspaper & he wrote an item about the local saloon. One of his men killed the father. They find that there is no money. They are in Alaska, totally broke so they all find ways to earn money. Even the youngest sells kittens to help. It is a wonderful musical.There's the bad guys & the good guys. And each of the girls end up with someone. But Gene Barry plays a bad/good guy.