The New Pictures

A Bullet Is Waiting (Welsch; Columbia). In old-fashioned movies, when an innocent girl was trapped with two desperate men in a cabin miles from anywhere, the bad guy made his grab and wound up on a slab, while the good guy took the lady to the preacher. But times have changed. In this picture, for instance the cabin serves as a sort of alchemical vessel in which all the characters are essentially transformed. As a matter of fact after sitting in that cabin for about 85 minutes the moviegoer may never be the same again, either.

Rory Calhoun is a killer wanted in Utah. Stephen McNally is a deputy sheriff who is bringing him in. Lost in the California hills, they stop at Brian Aherne's sheep farm. Brian is away, but Jean Simmons, his daughter, fills the office of host --and her blue jeans, too--very nicely 'Father taught at Oxford," she informs her guests. Rory asks politely: "That's the biggest isn't it?" "The world sickened m, Jean goes on, "and he [came out ] find peace and isolation." Then she reads to them from father's works.

With the carrot of sex before and the lash of culture behind, the killer is soon trotting docilely down the straight and narrow. Even an unattractively moral collie, who obviously thinks he is more intelligent than anyone else in the picture (and may be, at that), condescends to lick his hand. Moreover, Sheriff McNally --a character who has to be unpleasant on principle, since the scriptwriter forgot to give him any specific motivations--mellows a little, too, and in the end they all charge off to Utah together as cheerily as vestrymen to a box supper on the church lawn. "Great Britain and the State of Utah," says Rory to Jean in a wobbly voice. "It's impossible."

Bengal Brigade (Universal). The British laid down the white man's burden in India seven years ago, but it is still a weary load on the U.S. moviegoer's mind. Bengal Brigade is the second Hollywood picture this year to be concerned with the period of the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1856.

As in King of the Khyber Rifles (TIME, Jan. 11), the hero (Rock Hudson) is a British officer, who in this case has a Midwestern twang to his speech. He affects to defect to the enemy, but only in order to diddle some secrets out of a raja (Arnold Moss) with a slight New York accent. Add to the linguistic confusion a Hindu girl (Ursula Thiess) who has a German accent, and even the children for whom the movie is intended may suspect that the action is not quite faithful to history.

On that score, moviegoers of all sorts and ages have the right to an honest gripe: movies about India might do well to be more faithful to history. The truth about the British raj* might make hearts pound --and turnstiles whir--far faster than they do at the conventional buncombe under the banyans.

Twist of Fate (British Lion; United Artists). In most movies about the French Riviera, the scenery at least is worth watching. In this one, however, the landscape is cluttered up with so much unlovely plot that it can hardly be seen. The heroine (Ginger Rogers) is a kept woman who has everything that money (Stanley Baker) can buy--from a villa on the Riviera to a Jaguar parked outside it. But all she really wants is love (Jacques Ber-gerac). Bergerac (Actress Rogers' real-life fourth husband) is an artsy-craftsy type who makes expressionistic pottery for a living. "Maybe you're a genius," sighs Ginger, and decides that she would rather go and pot with him than go to pot with Baker. As a matter of fact, Baker is not a pleasant type. He runs a funny-money business on the side, and before the end of the picture, he is raving like a homicidal maniac. Nonetheless, the moviegoer may feel that homicide is a minor offense compared to those blasted pots.

*One example: a scene (described by Historian Philip Woodruff) that "Tawney of the Central Provinces" lived. "Quite early in his service, [Tawney] was rebuked for not appearing punctually when summoned before a superior. He must come at once, whatever he was doing, he was told. It was a rebuke quite foreign to the traditions of the service, and Tawney made the most of it. Next time he was summoned he appeared naked, borne shoulder high in a tin bathtub by four orderlies."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.