by Tony Dayoub
Two of the harder to find films to watch in Nicholas Ray's oeuvre both star future svengali to statuesque blonde starlets, John Derek (
The Ten Commandments): the social conscience/proto-youth film
Knock on Any Door, and the Western
Run for Cover (now easy to view on Netflix streaming, albeit in the wrong aspect ratio).
Knock on Any Door is both a precursor to
Rebel Without a Cause and its opposite number. Its misguided juveniles are from the bad part of town and far enough down the road of delinquency as to be considered hopeless.
Run for Cover is the last of Ray's Western trilogy which began with
The Lusty Men (1952). (Ray's
The True Story of Jesse James would come later and is quite different from his previous oaters). But as different as each sounds from the other, the fact that the two are tied together by Derek's casting is just one indication of how close
Knock on Any Door and
Run for Cover are thematically.
