Five Bloody Graves

source: Five Bloody Graves

Five Bloody Graves

Five Bloody Graves with different soundtrack, any other soundtrack ,would have been a winner. As it is, there are some fine performances with Bob Dix as (Ben Thompson) and Jacky Gleason look alike Scott Brady as (Jim Wade). Everybody else is also fine with John Carradine as the good and unctuous Reverend (Boone Hawkins) keeping it in the ballpark. This one has a high body count and the plot moves right along, however, the soundtrack is obnoxious with Peter Gunn meets the Nutcracker which is just terrible especially in a Western. I am still going to give it a recommendation as I cared about the supporting characters including a young and charismatic John 'Bud' Cardos who was well cast as (Joe Lightfoot).

Compared to other Al Adamson films this is pretty good, hence the 3 stars. Only two things worth noting, it starred John Carradine, who as well as classics was known for making turkeys and if you're English it suddenly plays the theme music to the News at Ten, which caught me completely off guard.

Ben Thompson is a messenger of Death. We are constantly reminded of this through the CRAP FEST that is Five Bloody Graves, by DEATH himself no less! Crappy narration aside, there are plenty of things to keep the watcher engaged, or more accurately, perplexed. Beautiful scenery is destroyed by bad acting. Promising character development and story lines are killed by senseless violence, most notably a rape scene. This is probably an accurate portrayal of what occurred in the Old West, but this seems like lazy film-making. I wish the Indians had won. One redeeming feature of the film is John Carradine in his role as a sleazy preacher. While this is easily one of the crappiest westerns I have ever seen, I truly don't believe it deserves a rating as low as 1.8. That's not to say it doesn't deserve a low rating. Maybe a 3 or 4 perhaps? Death demands it!!!!

A more suitable title for this exploitation-Western would be DEATH VALLEY, or VALLEY OF DEATH, as a ragtag group consisting of cowboys, hookers and a preacher get picked off by Indians who appear from the rocks whenever the dialog runs its course. Add to this a jazzy game-show score and Death as the narrator, philosophizing why each character must die, sometimes even giving it away but that's alright, because in this doomed situation: death is the main character. A campy yet brilliant low budget Western with some terrific actors like Scott Brady (who dies gallantly), Jim Davis as a scumbag backstabber, and John Carradine as a pistol-wielding preacher, but none work too hard except John Bud Cardos in duo-roles as a friendly Indian and a bad one, the latter battling star (and writer) Robert Dix, firmly strident throughout, in the knife-wielding climax that begins on a cliff top and winds up in a river and down a waterfall: THE QUIET MAN be darned.

I've seen nearly two thousand films and this ranks amongst the worst ten I've ever seen. Its violence is crude and unnecessary; its plot sounds totally straight-forward, yet is somehow confused; its music is plundered from other sources thoughtlessly (almost unrelated to the on-screen action at some points, especially when the music which British viewer's will recognise as the music from ITV's evening news roars into life during one particularly naff action sequence); and the acting is amateurish to the point of school-pantomime level. What do you expect from a picture that's from the Al Adamson school of lousy film directing? Believe me, it takes a real big effort to sit through this junk - I managed it, but I can't say that I'm proud of the achievement.

Five Bloody Graves is one of the few real drive-in westerns. It's directed by the much maligned Al Adamson, who made many colorful schlockers in his day. With it's nonstop violence and gory excess, this is no exception. In this the west is depicted as a vast wasteland of hate and savagery, populated by half mad characters including death himself. There isn't much plot except for numerous people wandering around the rugged Utah landscape trying to massacre one another. Being that this is narrated by the grim reaper, there's not much mystery as to where most of the characters wind up. Incidentally, John Carradine, Scott Brady, and Robert Dix were back together a year later in a better drive-in western, Cain's Cuttroats. As far as the detractors go, many of them were tricked by the deceiving advertising on the video box into thinking that this is a horror picture. Fans of B-westerns will most likely be more forgiving than the average viewer.