The Jackals is an enjoyable Western film and I saw it without seeing beforehand Yellow Sky which I did not know before that The Jackals was a remake of. Vincent Price headlines The Jackals although much of the action belongs to Robert Gunner. The only principal female cast member is Diana Ivarson as Willie Decker the granddaughter of the Price character. Diana Ivarson is pretty feisty as Willie and she is not bad to look at. In fact unlike Price, who has numerous credits to his name, Gunner and Ivarson only have a handful of credits to their name in their respective brief acting careers. Not a bad Western and having not seen Yellow Sky beforehand, The Jackals is good enough story to follow on.

Remake of Yellow Sky set in South Africa. Vincent Price gets top billing as the only star in the movie, but his role is not the biggest. The plot is about seven bank robbers who happen upon a ghost town. The only people in the town are gold prospector Price and his daughter (Diana Ivarson). Vincent Price is generally worth recommending any movie for and he's the best thing about this one. Robert Gunner plays the Gregory Peck role from the original as the bandit who falls in love with the daughter. Gunner is OK but no Peck, to put it politely. Blonde beauty Ivarson makes for an unconvincing tomboy. Moving the setting to South Africa is the film's only original feature. I fail to see why they even bothered to do this as it adds nothing to an otherwise typical western. Dull movie.

"Yellow Sky" (1948) was one of the better American westerns of its era. It was also one of Gregory Peck's better starring roles. So, it's a tall order to try to remake the picture, though "The Jackals" does a better job than I expected--especially since it mostly stars folks you probably won't recognize. Aside from Vincent Price (who should not have been listed first in the billing), the rest are actors we probably wouldn't recognize here in the States.The film begins with seven crooks robbing the bank in the style of the old west--though of course it's South Africa. One is killed in the process and the others beat it across the desert--most likely to die of thirst. However, when they've given up all hope, they happen upon a ghost town that is populated by an old man (Price) and his pretty daughter. These two are not friendly towards the crooks though they do help them find water. Before leaving this little oasis, however, the crooks realize that there MUST be something keeping these two here--and that something is gold. Much of the rest of the film consists of a game of cat and mouse and unless something rather miraculous happens, the granddaughter and grandpa are doomed.The best thing about "The Jackals" is that instead of setting the film in the same locale as the original, this time it's South Africa. Considering that they, too, had gold fever and there are potentially dangerous natives, it works well. The second best thing is the acting. Very competent and well done all around. Of course, I'd recommend the original first--but this little South African/Australian production has every reason to be proud of this effort--even if the accents were all wrong!

This is a vastly inferior remake of YELLOW SKY (1948) – with the ghost town itself now becoming “Yellow Rock”. Apart from the fact that it features Vincent Price in a rare non-horror role from this period (he did appear in a few Westerns early in his career), the film’s most unusual aspect is the fact that it trades the original’s Death Valley landscape for the equally forbidding one of South Africa (with stock footage of wild animals, and Zulus instead of Indians); incidentally, I recently taped another African Western – UNTAMED (1955), with Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward – off Italian TV, which is a title that often turns up in this guise but I’d never managed to check out so far.Anyway, THE JACKALS duplicates the classic original scene-for-scene and virtually line-by-line; in fact, Lamar Trotti (who adapted the W.R. Burnett source novel to the screen in 1948) is credited as co-writer here as well, even if he had died way back in 1952! The other basic difference between the two versions – other than some ineffective name changes (for instance, the black-clad villain here becomes Dandy rather than Dude) – is that the remake is in color…though the Public Domain print I watched was so faded that day-for-night scenes are blatantly exposed as such! So far so good but, then, the rest of the cast is an anonymous bunch (though Diana Ivarson is O.K., certainly cute and, if anything, even more obviously masculine than Anne Baxter from YELLOW SKY); also, for whatever reason, the character played by Henry Morgan in the original is omitted altogether from the narrative this time around (and, amusingly, the actor taking over John Russell’s womanizing cowboy role looks and sounds just like Oliver Reed!). And, worse still, they’re all saddled with intrusive Australian accents! As for Price, though top-billed, his part is no bigger than James Barton’s in the 1948 film and he turns in a hammy performance, as was his fashion; for the record, he would return to the genre twice more in the next couple of years – both equally undistinguished films – MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE (1968; available as a DVD rental) and the Elvis Presley vehicle THE TROUBLE WITH GIRLS (1969; which I watched last year in tribute to the 30th anniversary from The King’s death). By the way, I should mention that the film is accompanied by a weird, inappropriate and frankly awful score. Though director Webb had previously helmed three reportedly efficient entries in the genre, this turned out to be a lackluster venture – shabby and lifeless where YELLOW SKY had been stylish and exciting – and it’s small wonder that it proved to be his penultimate work.