Warlock

Introduction by Geoffrey O’Brien, former editor of Library of America

In Edward Dmytryk’s ’Scope Western, the mining town of Warlock is at the mercy of a band of rogue cowboys, until citizens engage the sharpshooting services of Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda), accompanied by right-hand man Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn). Adapted from the razor-sharp 1958 novel by Oakley Hall, Dmytryk’s film becomes a roiling panorama of competing drives and moral ambiguities, epitomized by Richard Widmark’s tormented Johnny Gannon. Warlock costars Dorothy Malone and DeForest Kelley, and was shot by Joe McDonald (My Darling Clementine, Pickup on South Street). Thomas Pynchon pronounced Oakley’s original book (a Pulitzer finalist), “one of our best American novels,” which “restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity.”