Villi ja viaton

Audie Murphy stretched his youthful appearance once too often in doing The Wild and The Innocent. Neither he or Sandra Dee are all that wild, but brother are they innocent enough. If this were done today, both probably would have had sex scenes with Joanne Dru and Gilbert Roland.

It's hard to believe such folks exist, but Murphy plays a mountain trapper, probably one of the last of his kind in the rugged Wyoming Rockies. Normally he goes to a trading post to sell his furs, but as he gets there the trading post has been burned down because some peckerwood played by Strother Martin sold some moonshine to the Indians with predictable results.

Murphy's got to take his furs to Casper and this is first time in the big city. God only knows what he would have thought of Chicago or New York if Casper, Wyoming is defined as a city. Strother Martin leaves his daughter, young Sandra Dee with Murphy and both go to Casper.

Which is having a Fourth of July celebration. Let's say that both Murphy and Dee get a big city education from Dru and Roland.

The characters are a bit too much to swallow. Murphy's education may be lacking, but I can't believe he didn't learn a bit about the birds and the bees living in the wild. In fact country folk probably have a far more relaxed attitude about sex as they see it in the livestock they raise.

Gilbert Roland is one of my favorite character actors, I love him in anything and another good performance here is Peter Breck as a cowboy tough who Murphy deals with quite expeditiously.

Still Murphy and Dee look like one very odd couple.