For several years, director William A. Wellman wanted to adapt this brooding novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (who also wrote The Ox-Bow Incident). When the studio compelled him to shoot the film in color, he filmed the snowy northern California setting in such monochromatic color as to simulate his preferred black-and-white look. The story centers on a slightly unhinged family of backwoods pioneers. Son Robert Mitchum is haunted by a marauding mountain lion, a symbol of evil in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe. With this dark film, Wellman became one of the first Hollywood auteurs to explore 1950s baroque obsessions. This Cold War western has been referred to as “CinemaScope's first genuine weirdie.”
Wayne-Fellows Productions, Inc. Producer: John Wayne, Robert Fellows. Director: William A. Wellman. Screenwriter: A.I. Bezzerides. Based on the novel by Walter Van Tillburg Clark. Cinematography: William H. Colthier. Editor: Fred MacDowell. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, Tab Hunter, Beulah Bondi. 35mm, color, 103 min.
