Menschenjagd in San Francisco

Joel McCrea had made these his home ground and this independent effort, picked up by Warners, was pushed along by the amiable Robert Parrish who obviously found some elements more involving than others.

The dialogs between McCrea and Yvonne De Carlo, in her spotless Fifties outfits, are lifeless and often filmed against back projection. However when Tor Johnson opens the hatch to Florence Bates' waterfront dive bar with a back room full of drunken sailors that she's sold to shanghai-ing captains, thing pick up. The scenes are played for comedy and the smoke filled, low roof ship's hold decor is striking.

Easy to get nostalgic for a time when these came two a time in neighborhood theaters.

Joel McCrea is just reassuring. He delivers a strong performance and you feel secure in his hands as you watch the movie. He's just reliable as the actor and the character - very consistent.

It does a good job showing the vigilante system during a rough period. There was much justice to be achieved, and much corruption. Killing was frequent.

It would be good to see a little more character development between McCrea and De Carlo, the romantic leads. I would have liked to have known more backstory about him and his past, as well as her's. How did she get so mixed up with someone like Cain, trying to take over the whole state.?

While I did believe her's and McCrea's connection, is she to be trusted for the longterm? Will she just change? How will she adjust to life at the mines, returning with McCrea to his work? She's had a very exciting life with the villain Cain, in beautiful homes, political campaigns, and surrounded by tons of ambition she admitted she liked. Will McCrea's character have enough ambition and drive for her? While it's great to see them together at the end, would Rick go back to just "having fun" and she go back to a more ambitious life? That would seem the case, but we should hope and believe that they found true love. And then therefore they changed.

There are some superb scenes..... an escape from being Shanghaied through water, boats and taverns; understanding how Vigilantes worked; and amazement at the sense of lawlessness and Killings that can occur in the wild west of the 1880s.

A compelling well thought story, clear, committed characters, twists and turns, strong resolution at the end. It also has a lot of great comedic events!

A very good movie, easy to watch, and very enjoyable.

This is sort of a desultory effort on the part of the star, Joel McCrea, a man who usually takes command of a scene merely by his presence, but here looks tired and like he would rather be on his own ranch instead of this talky, studio-bound production. The thing probably looked good on paper--and if you've got the knowing sultriness of Yvonne DeCarlo, things are set up for some hot romance, at the very least. But the script is a little unfocused, and there's a lot of chatter about the legal Vigilante group, and Sidney Blackmer attempts to show some menace by mouthing menacing lines--but for an action-packed Western or a thoughtful revisionist history lesson, this effort falls flat, and would be a loss leader except for two brilliant, lively scenes with character actor Florence Bates, sporting an eye patch and plenty of life as her own Shanghai Lil (helped along by a massive, silent Tor Johnson) and this viewer perked up and wondered how the rest never recovered; even the final confrontation lacks either suspense or tension, and just allows almost everybody to go home quietly.

The only real positive distinction this movie has is Joel McCrea in the lead. He was terrific in westerns and he's very good in the this one. However, the plot is not great. 95% of all westerns basically boil down to 3 or 4 plots...and this one has the big baddie who is trying to take over the new state of California. Yep, Andrew Cain is yet ANOTHER big greedy baddie...a plot seriously overused in westerns. And, not surprisingly, there is a hot babe who comes between the two men (Yvonne DeCarlo).

While the acting is good an makes up for the dullness of the plot, there is something that retired history teachers would not like about this film--the highly inaccurate details. The guns are all circa 1870s and the set clearly is a typical western set--but it's supposed to be San Franciso in the 1850s. Hand guns were almost never revolvers and very few folks in the town would have been walking about in cowboy apparel. After all, by then it was an up and coming coastal city...not Deadwood or some other western locale.

So is this one worth seeing? Well, possibly. McCrea is great...he almost always is. But the plot might be too familiar and you need to look past the fact that it's not at all historically accurate.

All dressed in white ,except in the last sequences,Yvonne De Carlo reigns over the movie.At the time,IMHO,only Ava Gardner surpassed her in beauty.So we can forgive Robert Parish if he often forgets his script which is rather desultory for a western and anyway is not much interesting in the first place .You can't make new things out of (already) old :a tycoon who wants to have the whole town under his thumb (Sidney Blackmer was a fine villain,remember Roman Castevet?),shameless politician,bribery and corruption... and a noble hero played by aging Joel McCrea who could be De Carlo's father.His first line when he sees the hanged man is full of humor.

Parrish made better westerns in the late fifties such as "saddle the wind" and " the wonderful country".His foray into sci-fi gave an (overlooked) memorable movie: "Journey to the far side of the sun" aka "doppelganger".