Mari Blanchard

John Wayne stars as Cattle baron George Washington McLintock, who fights with his wife, his daughter, and political land-grabbers, finally "taming" them all.

McLintock! -- Cattle baron, banker and model citizen George McLintock has the world in the palm of his hands. The only thing missing is his wife who left him two years earlier. In an effort to get his life back, he saves an impoverished widow and hires her as his cook--welcoming both her and her two children into his home.

This three part horror story is taken from the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vincent Price stars in all three tales starting with Dr. Heidegger's Experiment". Heidegger (Sebastian Cabot) attempts to restore the youth of four elderly friends. In a ghastly and ghoulish scene, a bride in her wedding gown returns to life after being dead for forty years. Although her spirit is alive, her body is ravaged by forty years of grave rot. "Rappaccini's Daughter" finds Price as a demented, overprotective father inoculating his daughter with poison so she may never leave her garden of poisonous plants. Part three, "The House of the Seven Gables" has Beverly Garland, Richard Denning, and Jacqueline de Wit accompanying Price, who retains his horror hero status that alternates between villain and victim.

Wayne shows off his funny side in this 1963 western, a comedy inspired by The Taming of the Shrew. Starring as wealthy cattle baron G.W. McLintock, Wayne shows a real sense of comic timing in several scenes filled with slapstick humor. After his wife (Maureen O'Hara) and daughter leave him for the East, McLintock attempts to win them back. The dynamics between O'Hara and Wayne are the strong suit of this film, the actors having worked together previously on The Quiet Man. As this is by no means a revisionist western, McLintock's chauvinistic attempts to "tame" his wife fit within the problematic ideology of the larger western genre. The ultimate example of this comes at the end of the film when McLintock settles his marital dispute by publicly "spanking" his wife in what is now a notorious cinematic moment.