Oh, a rugged outdoor adventure that I had never heard of--with Robert Mitchum hunting a bad killer cat ...I was looking forward to it! Well there is a reason few people have heard of it...this movie is terrible! I mean, this is the type of movie where you keep on thinking it's going to get better, but it never does.
Mitchum's family is losing livestock, then lives, to some big cat. The family calls it a "painter". Don't ask. The old dad of the bunch drinks and says crazy things. Mom is old Beulah Bondi with her weird eyes, quotin' the Good Word and hanging out all day and night with her son's corpse in his bedroom as he rots away. (Don't bother ma, she's corpse-sittin'!) Mitchum found the brother's body, no blood, no nothing, even still has color in his face! Hey, couldn't the makeup folks apply just a little makeup? Look closely and you'll see him shift a little bit after Mitchum puts him on his horse, if you can stand getting that far in this movie.
Determined to go get that bad cat, or painter, Bob dons a bright red coat. This is the only color in the outdoor scenes as the director wanted it to look like black and white and shot things in shadows. Don't try to figure that one out.
Late in the movie, there's a scene where Mitchum tries to light a fire and the wind keeps blowing out his matches. Finally he gets one going, only to have snow from a tree fall and put it out. It plays almost like a Laurel and Hardy moment.
But that is right before the best part--and most action--of the whole movie. Right after he loses his fire, the sun starts coming up, and weeeeeee! Mitchum is so elated he starts running down the mountain side. Then he starts "body skiing". Then, all of a sudden, he falls down a big cliff, screaming like a woman, and is horribly killed. I kid you not.
Then handsome Tab Hunter finds his dead body, but hears the cat "growling". He goes behind the bush and kills the cat. We never see that, because this cheesy production must have run out of cash for paying Mitchum so they couldn't afford a fake cat or renting one from a zoo.
At the very end, the families old, nutty Indian worker babbles something very Indian-like about what death is all about. Some people don't realize even then that the old Indian is freaking Alfalfa from "Our Gang" in old Indian makeup.
No, I am not making that up.
One of the worst, slowest moving, dumb "westerns" you will ever see. I think some of the raters here must certainly be offspring of the original dumba%$ producers of this turkey, this rating is way high.