This is ALMOST a western with a difference, but it just never really crosses that undefined line to enable it to really stand out amongst your typical 50's B grade oaters.
It has the sketchings of an interesting plot, great location cinematography in Utah and plenty of horseflesh on show. (I especially admired the piebald horse that Audie Murphy got to ride around.)
Unusually, there is very little gun-play in the movie. In fact I don't think any character is ever shot and killed during the entire film. Mind you that didn't stop me gasping in mock amazement, when a character is shot in the arm to save them (LOL!) from snakebite!
Wanda Hendrix's character had the chance to feature strongly as an independent woman carving out a legal career in the Wild West. But the script never allows a full exploration of the concept and she essentially ends up, as another typical damsel in distress, content to sink into the arms of Audie Murphy's Ring Hassard, seeking salvation from various encountered dangers.
Burl Ives's Lonesome is a welcome character to the story ... except when he continually breaks into song, or is seen singing and playing guitar, whilst riding his mule through the mountains! Such (fairly frequent) episodes dissipate any real sense of building drama in the story. Things reach their most absurd in this regard when Lonesome sings a compliant sheriff asleep, facilitating a jail break!
The characters themselves are pretty bland in what ends up being a rather routine affair. Murphy himself doesn't speak that much in the first act of this, his fifth film. We don't see enough of Dean Jagger's Jeff for him to make much impact. The villains are a pretty nondescript, non-threatening mob, when they raise their heads. However I did appreciate seeing "Anthony" Curtis and James Arness get an opportunity to show their respective spurs in fairly minor support roles in the second half of the movie.
It has the sketchings of an interesting plot, great location cinematography in Utah and plenty of horseflesh on show. (I especially admired the piebald horse that Audie Murphy got to ride around.)
Unusually, there is very little gun-play in the movie. In fact I don't think any character is ever shot and killed during the entire film. Mind you that didn't stop me gasping in mock amazement, when a character is shot in the arm to save them (LOL!) from snakebite!
Wanda Hendrix's character had the chance to feature strongly as an independent woman carving out a legal career in the Wild West. But the script never allows a full exploration of the concept and she essentially ends up, as another typical damsel in distress, content to sink into the arms of Audie Murphy's Ring Hassard, seeking salvation from various encountered dangers.
Burl Ives's Lonesome is a welcome character to the story ... except when he continually breaks into song, or is seen singing and playing guitar, whilst riding his mule through the mountains! Such (fairly frequent) episodes dissipate any real sense of building drama in the story. Things reach their most absurd in this regard when Lonesome sings a compliant sheriff asleep, facilitating a jail break!
The characters themselves are pretty bland in what ends up being a rather routine affair. Murphy himself doesn't speak that much in the first act of this, his fifth film. We don't see enough of Dean Jagger's Jeff for him to make much impact. The villains are a pretty nondescript, non-threatening mob, when they raise their heads. However I did appreciate seeing "Anthony" Curtis and James Arness get an opportunity to show their respective spurs in fairly minor support roles in the second half of the movie.