More Dead Than Alive

This is a good one.

MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE uses the ‘outlaw’ character archetype as a constant to show how America progressed since anticipating the end of the 19th century and welcoming the beginning of the 20th. In about 18 years our ‘outlaw,’ Cain, has served his time in prison for a laundry list of crimes and similar offenses. When Cain is released he learns how much the burgeoning United States railroad project alone has accelerated the need for enforcing communities. Thus a set of rudimentary gun laws were implemented. Citizens felt safer and the glorified image of the ‘cowboy’ as it was remembered is just beginning to fade.

Enter Billy Valence, a trick shooter in a traveling show. Valence repeatedly muses on the wonderment of the cowboy age describing how one could have it out in the middle of the street in broad daylight, adding that he would be one of the best shooters thanks to his trick skills. Cain eventually joins the traveling show and Valence, having heard of Cain’s reputation, is elated. He has so many questions for Cain. What were duels like? Did it feel good? How did he kill the twelve people he famously gunned down? And yet, every honest answer Cain provides disappoints Valence. Legend is oft intricate in its exaggeration. Valence takes Cain as weak after learning the truth and instead begins inspiring fantasies himself about becoming an outlaw.

Revisionist westerns tend to focus on questioning and challenging the ideals of traditional western features where audiences followed bank robbers, gunslingers, bounty hunters, et al., and the image of the law is painted in stark black and white strokes. MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE definitely makes this approach albeit from a slightly different angle in following Cain’s journey with a travelling show. The outlaw has served his time but his reputation damns him from honest folk as well as those he wronged in his reckless days. Community then becomes something the ex-con is attracted to contributing to, in the high hopes of vilification. Cain faces an intense & difficult uphill battle here, and his past lashes out to punish him in almost every aspect of the new life he tries to build in earnest for himself.

It’s brutal, but its points are evident and illustrates the importance of social progress. And Vincent Price unsurprisingly steals the show.

[this article was originally published on july 9, 2020 on celluloidconsomme.medium.com.]