Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

dougdoepke An overlooked gem from 1929. The premise has been remade a number of times, but I can't imagine any being better than this. I hope the three godfathers, actors Hatton, Bickford & Kohler, got big bonuses. They clearly deserve hazard pay for filming in the middle of nowhere. Looking like a parched pancake, it's a nowhere desert the three fugitives must limp across. Worse, there's no sign of relief in any direction. Yeah, they're tough guys, but this is a battle with nature in the raw, a desolate face that's both unyielding and waterless. And catch the rags the guys are wearing. The tatters get even holier as they trudge along. Wardrobe must have shopped on skid row, while I doubt that a grubbier threesome has appeared in Hollywood annals.Speaking of holy, there's a subtext of Christian symbolism to the story, without rubbing our nose in it. Note, for example, the brief cross-shaped cactus providing comfort to the martyred Barbed-Wire as his two buddies depart. Good subtle detail. Then again, the results suggest something of the Three Wise Men, western style. After all, when Mom dies, the three bank robbers are gradually redeemed by their care for the infant boy under what amounts to self-sacrificing circumstances. Their desert trek then becomes a moral proving ground the outlaws must cross in order for symbolic redemption to occur. At the same time, delivering the infant to the altar on Christmas day closes the Three Wise Men loop. By that time, each has shown a higher regard for the infant than himself. Nonetheless, I like the brief moments when the guys show their masculine libido. For example, Bob enjoys biting saloon girls in erotic fashion, while he and Bill jockey over who gets firsties with the girl in the covered wagon. Thankfully, filming was prior to the dead hand of Hollywood's censorship code. Anyway, it's legendary William Wyler's first talky and he hits a homerun, with both staging and performances. In fact, some of those desolate shots against the sky are downright iconic, proving again that artistry surpasses time. Also, the acting's first-rate. Seldom has a trio of tough guys interacted with such unforced naturalness, conveying a rare level of male bonding.. Too bad grubby Oscars aren't awarded for best shabby characters, because these three rank right up there with Sierra Madre's Bogart and Huston. So, don't pass this one up despite its obscurity. I'm really glad an old movie fan put me on to it, and I think you will be too.

calvinnme This is the first sound version and the only precode film version of "Three Godfathers", and it has a coarseness and therefore redemptive power that the later films just lack in spite of the primitive nature of the early sound technology. Four hardened partners in crime meet up in the old west desert town of New Jerusalem shortly before Christmas to rob a bank. Bob Sangster (Charles Bickford) has written for the other three outlaws to join him since he has the town's only lawman and the bank pegged as a soft touch. Before the robbery Bob gets two saloon girls involved in a cat fight over him just for the fun of it. While at the bank, one outlaw keeps putting his leg up searching for the boot rail while leaning across the counter, insinuating that he is only used to leaning on bars in saloons, and after one of the tellers draws his gun and is shot dead, two of the outlaws fight over whether the shot was through the heart or not. One robber doesn't make it out of town - he's shot by one of the townspeople. Bob returns and rescues one of the gold sacks, not his com-padre. Later, when the surviving trio spots a lone covered wagon with an ill woman inside the three have a bit of an argument in what amounts to who is going to rape her.All of this is just to illustrate that these guys seem to have no redeeming value whatsoever - they are savages in a savage land. But when they discover the lone woman is ill because she is about to give birth, their demeanor changes completely, and they become the child's guardian promising to return him to civilization. They do have some of their own problems themselves - their horses have stampeded in a sandstorm, and the place they hoped to refill their canteens is now dry as a bone. Thus they can go back to New Jerusalem and a noose and save the child - and even then it's questionable whether or not they have the water to make it, or they can stay in the desert where they all will perish.Now for 1929, this is a good little Western with much more gritty reality and less unnecessary sentimentality than its two successors, and very natural performances and dialogue considering its early sound pedigree, but I guess what I remember this one for is Charles Bickford's description of it in his autobiography. He gives a description of director William Wyler as a product of nepotism run rampant at Universal and "an inarticulate nose-picking golem" and says that the film would have been a disaster if not rewritten by himself, Charles Bickford, and that he was stuck with a cast of silent screen actors that he had to teach to act before the camera in a situation that required dialogue.Bickford does give a great performance, and the film has become a bit of a minor Christmas classic among classic film buffs, and I've always wondered about the veracity of Bickford's description of the set and why Wyler didn't sue since he was still alive and well when Bickford's book was written. Watch this rare old film and see what you think.

Michael_Elliott Hell's Heroes (1930)*** 1/2 (out of 4) This early talkie from Universal is the first sound version of "Three Godfathers", which would eventually be remade in 1936 with Chester Morris and again in 1948 by John Ford with John Wayne in this lead. The story here is the same as three ruthless outlaws (Charles Bickford, Raymond Hatton, Fred Kohler) rob a bank and then head out into the desert before losing their horses during a major wind storm. Soon afterwards they stumble onto a baby and the men must decide to let it die or try to walk it back to the town they were just running from. I've ended up watching these sound versions in reverse order as I started off with the Ford one many years ago and then just recently saw the Morris version, which was the better of the two. This one here is clearly the leader of the trio because of how raw it is. This movie is pretty mean spirited from the start up until the end and I really love that Wyler didn't pull any punches. Being the pre-code era we get a few things not available in future versions and that includes one sequence where the men argue about who's going to "take" the mother first. We also get a fairly violent scene involving a suicide, which is shown in a long shot. A lot of people bash American westerns saying they aren't ugly enough but that's not true here. The dirt, grease and ugliness of the characters are all over them and their unshaven faces make them look exactly like what their characters would look like. The three leads turn in wonderful performances but to me it was Hatton who steals the show as the big goon who quickly turns into a softy after finding the baby. Bickford is equally impressive and the final vision of him is quiet haunting and will certainly stay with you for a long time. The film runs a fairly short 68-minutes but there's enough heart and soul in this thing for two movies. Another impressive thing is that this was an early talkie yet you really can't tell as everything is recorded very well and it actually sounded a lot better than the same studio's Dracula and FRANKENSTEIN, which would follow the next year.

rsyung There is something captivating about this, the second film adaptation of Three Godfathers. For one, the settings bear the marks of reality.the dusty western town surrounded by vistas of nothingness.the gritty contrast thrown into stark relief by the desert sun. I kept wondering why this film's settings seemed like the real west(or at least my imaginings of it) so much more than today's westerns. Perhaps it was merely the fact that this film, from '29 was only that many years from the real thing. Another early talkie which benefits from the technological limitations of the time. No music scoring.just the plodding of boots, horse's hooves, and the spare dialogue of the three characters. It brought home the isolation of the main characters and the desolation of their surroundings. Yes, the ending was symbolically top-heavy and dialogue was stagy, but there was still that economy of story Hollywood so sadly lacks now. Point made, fade out.