Gun Street

Plays more like one of those forgettable episodes in a TV Western series of the day. There are a few imaginative touches, but unfortunately they're left to the end. A convict with a confusingly complicated past has escaped prison and now the sheriff (James Brown) has to bring him in. But that proves difficult since the convict knows the territory better than anyone else and has a helpful sister.

You've got to hand it to the producers who hired the slightly paunchy, slightly over-age Brown for the central role. He's hardly a romantic figure, but that does make sense at the end. Likely that's also why the unnecessary role of the young deputy was inserted. The movie's main problem is too much talk for too many actors with too little ability (with notable exceptions, like Jean Willes and John Pickard), along with too many clichés about cowardly townspeople-- think High Noon.

The sometimes muddled script doesn't help either, (e.g. how does the sheriff know about the bank withdrawal). Then there's the "sweep" of the territory by a posse of about a half-dozen men. Spread out, they have about as much chance of catching the convict as a broom does of catching a mouse in a football stadium. It just doesn't pass the laugh test.

The only possible venue for a cheapie like this was a drive-in somewhere in the boondocks on a rainy night. So why did I watch it. Probably because I was one of the beer-swillers at that drive-in.

The horse-rustling, thieving, murdering Welles has escaped from prison, and is heading back to town to seek revenge on a lot of people: on his wife, Jean Willes, who divorced him and married John Pickard, who adopted her boy, telling him his father was dead; on Herb Armstrong, whose testimony convicted him; and on everyone else in town. The mayor wants sheriff James Brown to track Welles down and kill him. Brown is not anxious to do so. He's newly in love and thinking of heading to California. If the town wanted Welles dead, why didn't the jury order him hanged? So everyone is antsy as Welles approaches with his proposed reign of terror.

Director Edward L. Cahn's last western -- he had been in charge of a fair number of them among his more than 120 movies -- suffers from its attempt to have an O. Henry sort of snapper ending, resulting in the whole thing playing like a shaggy dog story. It's efficiently directed, which in many ways was the source of Cahn's failure to ever turn out a great movie. Coming into directing from editing, he showed an ability to "cut in the camera", running a shoot that took less time than other, more nominally creative directors did. This meant he could turn out a feature cheap and fast, which is why he averaged four a year for 30 years, turning out what was in the script according to the abilities of his crew. It's hard o be great on that schedule, and his ability to turn out a decent movie on that schedule kept him working steadily through his death in 1963 at the age of 64.

Okay, it's a low budget movie. A small number of characters and not a huge amount of action do not require a big budget, and some Westerns come through despite not being big buck productions. I think this one qualifies. Another commenter suggested comparisons between this film and High Noon and I think that's valid, except in this case, instead of the sheriff trying to find help against a band of bad guys, it's the townspeople (who chose not to hang him) who keep coming to him for protection or to demand he catch the escaped killer. What I enjoy in this movie is the bitterness of the sheriff, who wanted the bad guy hung six years earlier when he was convicted of a crime; however he was a 'local boy' and the town couldn't bring itself to hang him. Now he's back to kill again and the sheriff is not pleased that once more he has to deal with this guy. The mayor comes to the sheriff's office and says 'That guy needs to be caught!' - and the sheriff says 'You're right - here you go, you catch him' and hands him a shotgun and walks out. Or the guy who is begging for protection; the sheriff hands him a gun belt with a holstered revolver and says 'Help yourself'. The sheriff is peeved at the mayor and the townspeople, with good reason, and it comes through from the start of the film.

Okay, this is not of the caliber of High Noon. On the other hand, there was a film called High Noon Part 2, The Return of Will Kane, which was a complete travesty, an annoying, heinously bad film with big names and a much bigger budget, with a story that had virtually nothing to do with High Noon other than to cash in on the name of the original movie. I think this film is better. Though it makes no claim or reference to High Noon, it certainly carries a somewhat parallel plot line of the sheriff having to deal with a bad guy while the town is of no help. At least the story is interesting enough to hold your attention, and the movie is not overly long, not much over an hour. There are many worse low budget flicks than Gun Street.

A rather good B western, where Edward L Cahn seems to have more ambition than usual, though the story is not that exciting. But the story telling is quite well built, acted, everything seems smooth. There is no obvious bad guy here and that brings a new point of view, rather rare in a grade Z western, or a more than usual elaborate western. I don't know any of the actors and that enhances the interest to watch this small but interesting gem. Maybe not a golden gem, with daring camera work, exciting crazy angles in the Joseph Lewis mode, but I don't ask so much from Edward (who finally can) Cahn , some equivalent of Sam Newfield in the B towards Z movie industry.