Black Patch

It’s too bad director Allen Miner’s film career was limited to a handful of low-budget outings because his unique eye and melancholy sensibility could have produced some memorable noirs. Sadly unknown, unappreciated, and/or misunderstood, Miner’s Black Patch is a mature, offbeat, and deeply psychological western noir in which the main characters ache for what might have been while barreling toward a collision of resentments. A brooding George Montgomery stars as Clay Morgan, a one-eyed Civil War veteran now serving as town marshal and faced with the return of his best friend Hank Danner (Leo Gordon) and his new wife Helen (Diane Brewster), who also happens to be the love of Clay’s life (the feeling is mutual). These triangular feelings are further complicated when Clay is forced to arrest Danner for a recent bank robbery and reluctantly throw him in a cell. Local saloon owner (and harpsichordist) Frenchy de Vere (Sebastian Cabot) sees this as an opportunity to get his hands on the bank loot, so he helps Danner escape and frames Clay for murder. Tom Pittman, who sadly died in a car accident the following year at 26, plays the young, gun-toting Flytrap looking for ways to prove his manhood, and Lynn Cartwright plays a small but key role as Kitty, Frenchy’s abused “moll” whose desire for revenge alters the story’s trajectory. The film is dark, bleak, and somewhat claustrophobic. Miner and cinematographer Colman enhance nearly every scene with unorthodox camera angles (through stairs, upside down, high angles of the hotel lobby) and thoughtful compositions (a pacing shadow in the middle of the night, Danner adjusting his belt in the foreground while his wife and Clay rediscover each other in the background). Notably, this was prolific composer Jerry Goldsmith’s first Hollywood score.