Directed by Robert Wise
The plot of Blood on the Moon sounds like standard Western fare: A stranger rides into town and finds himself driven by circumstance and conscience into choosing sides in a range war. The familiarity of the tale highlights the film’s stylistic gambit. An unshaven Mitchum plays the stranger, Jim Garry, with a gritty, seedy edge, he’s a hero from hunger, that perfectly anchors the hard realism of old Val Lewton hands, director Robert Wise and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who suffuse the sagebrush with deep noirish shadows.
RKO. Producer: Theron Warth. Based on a novel by Luke Short. Screenwriter: Lillie Hayward. Cinematographer: Nicholas Musuraca. Editor: Samuel E. Beetley. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Preston, Walter Brennan, Phyllis Thaxter.
35mm, b/w, 88 min.
