Joel McCrea is his usual stalwart self in this late 50s black-and-white Western. He finds a job as deputy in one of those dusty little Western towns with an old sheriff, whose daughter in pretty Joan Weldon, and a mean bandit on the loose, robbing people blind. Oh, we also have that gang of rowdy cowboys out on the ranch who take a break from rustlin' once in a while to come into town and bust things up a little.
So far it all sounds routine, and for the most part it is. There's McCrea as the good guy, Weldon as the girl he winds up with, and Mark Stevens as the miscreant.
But it's not as formulaic as it sounds. As deputy marshall, McCrea's duties include collecting taxes. He balks at first but then complies eagerly when he finds he gets ten percent of everything he collects. The "good guys" in cheap Westerns are usually above such earthly concerns.
Then there's the sneaky bandit, Mark Stevens, he of the spirit-level black eyebrows. Apart from being a kind of interesting man himself, he plays a robber with motives unusually murky. He has a real talent for the piano, which he demonstrates once or twice. But, growing up in a poor family, there was no money for lessons and no connections to get him a scholarship to the Curtis Institute. This has left him bitter and, at times, ugly. But the script gives him something resembling a girl friend too, whom he seems to genuinely like.
None of the acting is bravura. McCrea is stolid and sensible, as always. Mark Steven is intense. Joan Weldon -- well, her acting can't really be criticized because it's so rudimentary. She wears one of those pointed 1950s brassieres that is more suggestive than no bra at all. She looked better in "Them", only three years earlier. But she was never an actress anyway. She was a singer in the chorus of the San Francisco Opera, and for THAT she will have my undying respect. I can act as well as she could -- so could you -- but, by God, I can't sing to save my soul. Well, not without a little chemical help anyway, and even then, not opera.
This was about the tail end of the enduring cheap Western B features. At one point, about when this was released, there were some twenty-one Western series running simultaneously on the three or four television broadcast networks, the unimaginative being driven out by the even less imaginative.
So far it all sounds routine, and for the most part it is. There's McCrea as the good guy, Weldon as the girl he winds up with, and Mark Stevens as the miscreant.
But it's not as formulaic as it sounds. As deputy marshall, McCrea's duties include collecting taxes. He balks at first but then complies eagerly when he finds he gets ten percent of everything he collects. The "good guys" in cheap Westerns are usually above such earthly concerns.
Then there's the sneaky bandit, Mark Stevens, he of the spirit-level black eyebrows. Apart from being a kind of interesting man himself, he plays a robber with motives unusually murky. He has a real talent for the piano, which he demonstrates once or twice. But, growing up in a poor family, there was no money for lessons and no connections to get him a scholarship to the Curtis Institute. This has left him bitter and, at times, ugly. But the script gives him something resembling a girl friend too, whom he seems to genuinely like.
None of the acting is bravura. McCrea is stolid and sensible, as always. Mark Steven is intense. Joan Weldon -- well, her acting can't really be criticized because it's so rudimentary. She wears one of those pointed 1950s brassieres that is more suggestive than no bra at all. She looked better in "Them", only three years earlier. But she was never an actress anyway. She was a singer in the chorus of the San Francisco Opera, and for THAT she will have my undying respect. I can act as well as she could -- so could you -- but, by God, I can't sing to save my soul. Well, not without a little chemical help anyway, and even then, not opera.
This was about the tail end of the enduring cheap Western B features. At one point, about when this was released, there were some twenty-one Western series running simultaneously on the three or four television broadcast networks, the unimaginative being driven out by the even less imaginative.