His identity is announced with some boldness, given that it contains even a middle name: Peter Paul Mendicott. Moreover, it is repeated on another title card:
Based Upon the Novel by Peter Paul Mendicott.
I have to tell you that I don’t remember this from that viewing so long ago, I know this because I have watched the movie a few times subsequently. I sought out and purchased what seems to be the only extant print of the film. I have screened it in private, renting whole movie theatres, which can be surprisingly affordable, especially if you want to watch something in the dead of night. Edward Milligan watched it with me one time. He fell asleep in the middle, but I should mention that we were both very stoned and drunk.
Not that the film isn’t tedious. The story mostly concerns a lawman named Johnny Mungo, portrayed with mind-numbing inertia by someone named Mark Goode, who was semi-famous as a stock car driver. It may be baffling to you, the kind of productorial thinking that went into designing a vehicle for a stock car driver (I know, I’m sorry about that), but I have been in the business long enough to know the kind of twisted logic that exists. All it takes is someone half-crazy with a little bit of money, and bingo, you got a movie.
The story is basically this: the town is bad, because of the evil and pervasive presence of a fellow named Black Chester Nipes. (He is not a black man, but owns that sobriquet because a gun backfired and the gunpowder stained his face. A nice touch, wholly preposterous.) Mungo comes to town, clears away all of the henchmen and riffraff and finally confronts Nipes himself. Mungo emerges victorious, soupy music fades up and that’s the end.
Pretty unimaginative stuff, for the most part. By far the most interesting thing about the story, at least for me, is the secondary character Father White. He is a young, good-looking clergyman, singularly uncowed by Black Chester Nipes. As soon as he stepped onto the screen, I knew I wanted to be this man. It had something to do with the way he looked, because he had a raffish quality and, although I remain a little uncertain as to what that actually is, I’ve always wanted to possess it.
About an hour into the story, there is a big fight in the town tavern (which is far nicer than the one Nipes hangs out in) and, through various plot machinations on the part of Mr. Mendicott, Father White is there. At one point during the brouhaha, a brace of henchmen approach the clergyman, obviously with mayhem on their minds. Rather than appearing afraid, Father White takes up his Bible and begins reading with intense concentration, concentration that is rewarded by the blossoming of a blissful smile. The henchmen are so intrigued with this that they lean in to see the passage in question, leaving their weapons hanging at their sides. Father White lashes out with the Good Book, snapping it shut on one of the thug’s nose. Then he grabs a whiskey bottle and rather impassively cold-cocks the other guy, dropping him like a sack of wet bricks. The man with the sore nose hightails it out of the barroom, a story contrivance I should have made more note of. I mean, even given the questionable logic and reality that permeated the Galaxy Odeon every week, there was nothing preventing the guy from simply lofting his side arm and drilling Father White a third eye. But I was too taken up with the laughter that sounded in the theatre to reflect on this. My, how the children laughed. Even Rainie van der Glick laughed.
And then, at the end of the movie, when Black Chester Nipes and Johnny Mungo meet on the street for the traditional shootout, Nipes has Father White as a hostage. Nipes presses the barrel of hissix-shooter into the clergyman’s temple and says, “Take another step, Mungo, and I’ll shoot the padre.” (A script editor might have found that dialogue unnecessary, but
The Bullet and the Cross
is full of such on-the-nose stuff.)
What can Johnny Mungo do?
Based Upon the Novel by Peter Paul Mendicott.
I have to tell you that I don’t remember this from that viewing so long ago, I know this because I have watched the movie a few times subsequently. I sought out and purchased what seems to be the only extant print of the film. I have screened it in private, renting whole movie theatres, which can be surprisingly affordable, especially if you want to watch something in the dead of night. Edward Milligan watched it with me one time. He fell asleep in the middle, but I should mention that we were both very stoned and drunk.
Not that the film isn’t tedious. The story mostly concerns a lawman named Johnny Mungo, portrayed with mind-numbing inertia by someone named Mark Goode, who was semi-famous as a stock car driver. It may be baffling to you, the kind of productorial thinking that went into designing a vehicle for a stock car driver (I know, I’m sorry about that), but I have been in the business long enough to know the kind of twisted logic that exists. All it takes is someone half-crazy with a little bit of money, and bingo, you got a movie.
The story is basically this: the town is bad, because of the evil and pervasive presence of a fellow named Black Chester Nipes. (He is not a black man, but owns that sobriquet because a gun backfired and the gunpowder stained his face. A nice touch, wholly preposterous.) Mungo comes to town, clears away all of the henchmen and riffraff and finally confronts Nipes himself. Mungo emerges victorious, soupy music fades up and that’s the end.
Pretty unimaginative stuff, for the most part. By far the most interesting thing about the story, at least for me, is the secondary character Father White. He is a young, good-looking clergyman, singularly uncowed by Black Chester Nipes. As soon as he stepped onto the screen, I knew I wanted to be this man. It had something to do with the way he looked, because he had a raffish quality and, although I remain a little uncertain as to what that actually is, I’ve always wanted to possess it.
About an hour into the story, there is a big fight in the town tavern (which is far nicer than the one Nipes hangs out in) and, through various plot machinations on the part of Mr. Mendicott, Father White is there. At one point during the brouhaha, a brace of henchmen approach the clergyman, obviously with mayhem on their minds. Rather than appearing afraid, Father White takes up his Bible and begins reading with intense concentration, concentration that is rewarded by the blossoming of a blissful smile. The henchmen are so intrigued with this that they lean in to see the passage in question, leaving their weapons hanging at their sides. Father White lashes out with the Good Book, snapping it shut on one of the thug’s nose. Then he grabs a whiskey bottle and rather impassively cold-cocks the other guy, dropping him like a sack of wet bricks. The man with the sore nose hightails it out of the barroom, a story contrivance I should have made more note of. I mean, even given the questionable logic and reality that permeated the Galaxy Odeon every week, there was nothing preventing the guy from simply lofting his side arm and drilling Father White a third eye. But I was too taken up with the laughter that sounded in the theatre to reflect on this. My, how the children laughed. Even Rainie van der Glick laughed.
And then, at the end of the movie, when Black Chester Nipes and Johnny Mungo meet on the street for the traditional shootout, Nipes has Father White as a hostage. Nipes presses the barrel of hissix-shooter into the clergyman’s temple and says, “Take another step, Mungo, and I’ll shoot the padre.” (A script editor might have found that dialogue unnecessary, but
The Bullet and the Cross
is full of such on-the-nose stuff.)
What can Johnny Mungo do?
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