My main reason for seeing The Jackals was Vincent Price. And while he has given better performances before, he still gives amusement and sometimes creepiness to the role of the grizzled grandfather figure. Other redeeming qualities are the final gunfight, the most exciting and original of the fight scenes in the film, Diana Ivarson's beauty and the striking photography and scenery. There are however major debits with The Jackals, which I think outweigh the good things. The rest of the cast(particularly from tall and ruggedly handsome Robert Gunnar), and actually Ivarson is the same, are very stiff and do nothing with their cardboard characters, who are to me little more than Western cliché bookends. The violence is more at home in a network television programme from the mid-1960s, while the story is overall dull and bland as well as playing it far too safe. The dialogue, of which is very faithful to Yellow Sky, word-for-word often actually, because of the blandness of the pacing and story seemed very wordy and stilted here. While the score is really out-of-place, it is difficult to take seriously a jazzy xylophone-like score that adds nothing to the mood in a Western. Overall, has some bright spots like Price and the scenery but because of the story, the rest of the acting and the music especially The Jackals did little for me. 4/10 Bethany Cox
Review of The Jackals
