Die letzte Kugel

Harry Keller, better known for comedies than Westerns, has the good luck of having Fred MacMurray in the cast, a city judge doing his utmost to make sure that the killer of a local resident is brought before the court and probably hanged.

All conditions seem in place to ensure that that happens, but things begin to slip: his fiancée Joan Walden falls in love with the handsome sheriff and his wedding is on the skids; the lady whose husband Rudy Hayes killed first wanted him dead, then changes her mind in tune with most of the town and just wants him banished; and, HIGH NOON-like, top villain Bob Middleton and his evil bros, including Lee Van Cleef, converge into town to ensure that Rudy does not pay with his life for the commission of murder.

Only good ol' Edgar Buchanan stands by poor Fred, who thankfully knows the arts of fisticuffs and manages to put some of the baddies to brief sleep... but soon all is stacked up against him. And then, miraculously, a shootout turns things around and even Walden comes running to him for a happy ending, the handsome sheriff thankfully discarded and forgotten.

And on that naif note the law and Fred win the day. 6/10.

The parallels between Day Of The Badman and High Noon are way too obvious to be ignored. However one big important distinct difference is there. Gary Cooper was the former marshal of Hadleyburg and had no responsibilities. Coop comes back to answer a personal challenge from the four outlaws on their way to deal with him.

Fred MacMurray is a judge and a guilty verdict has been rendered on Christopher Dark and the usual punishment is hanging. But a whole mess of his swaggering relatives led by Robert Middleton have come to town and so intimidate the citizenry. Individually and collectively thy appeal to MacMurray for a lesser sentence.

Go throughout the cast and you'll see equivalent roles for the various characters in High Noon. One additional role is that of Marie Windsor who is her usual vicious vixen and girlfriend of Dark.

Even the widow of the man Dark killed, Peggy Converse is intimidated enough to change her mind and plead for a lesser sentence. John Ericson stands out as the sheriff ho hasn't got the character for the job.

In the late 50s Fred MacMurray made a series of westerns and he does well as the upright judge. Remember he's not a gunman like Cooper and in a sense that makes him braver than Coop. Day Of The Badman is clearly the best of MacMurray's late 50s westerns.

In the end he even has one more friend than Coop did.

First, I am so lucky to have caught this film in a letterboxed - wide screen - edition, even dubbed in french. Second, I have nothing to add to the other comments - why always repeat the same things the other users did so good ? - except just one little detail. The sequence where the bad guys lead by Robert Middleton enter the grocery store to terrorize the owner, and just after they have got from him what they want to, so just after they have succeeded in their nasty job, Robert Middleton takes a candy placed on the shop counter and - incredible - takes two coins from his pocket to pay the candies. After he nearly killed the poor shopkeeper, he pays him the candy. I found that absolutely fantastic. I don't know how to say it properly. That's the kind of things that are so rare to see. And I think that's the real expression of power. You may really hurt someone, kill him, destroy every thing in or around him, but you can STILL stay somewhere noble, generous, even if you are besides a real S. O. B. An authentic bastard. Fred McMurray has here a character not so far from the one he had in AT GUNPOINT, from director Alfred Werker; some kind of HIGH NOON scheme.

I love seeing, catching such tiny details.

Prior to sentencing a murderer to the gallows, the judge, the sheriff, and the townsfolk, find themselves being intimidated by the killer's violent family. Putting asides comparisons with the similarly themed (and superior) 'High Noon' (1952), 'Day of the Bad Man' is a reasonably good western and the issue of threat to 'justice' rather than to single man makes it somewhat deeper than the Gary Cooper classic. Fred MacMurray is quite good as Judge Jim Scott (although the earnest hero who 'reluctantly straps on the gun again' had become a bit of a cliché by the late 1950s). As patriarch of the Hayes clan, a vicious family of black-hats willing to commit any violence to save one of their own from the gallows, Robert Middleton is suitably menacing as are son Howie (Skip Homeier) and cousin Jake (squinty-eyed great Lee van Cleef). Edgar Buchannan (Petticoat Junction's Uncle Joe) is along on side-kick duty and John Ericson plays the 'all show, no substance' sheriff. The storyline is predictable, with only a lazily-handled 'lover's triangle', which puts the judge and the sheriff at odds, adding any novelty to the plot. The ending seems to draw criticism as being contrived, implausible, and serving only to set up the final confrontation but I suspect that Judge Scott's actions are part of a deliberate plan to end the story 'then and there', with either his death or the deaths of the Hayes crew, to avoid the lifelong fear of revenge on himself or on the craven townies. The cinematography is great, notably the opening shot of the noose and the approaching riders.

This routine horse opera from Universal stars Fred MacMurray at the height of his success. He plays Judge Jim Scott, the incorruptible small town hero who has to sentence a killer - and contend with the pressures exerted by the guilty man's family.

Filmed in Universal's trademark bright, clear Eastmancolor, the film has an attractive look, even if the characterisation is crude. The bad guys go unshaven, and Lee Van Cleef even wears a black hat.

Rudy Hayes killed a man in cold blood, and at eleven o'clock on this fateful morning, Judge Scott will carry out his sworn duty and sentence the murderer to death by hanging. Charlie Hayes (Robert Middleton) and the hot-headed Howie (Skip Homeier) have come into town as representatives of the all-bad Hayes clan, to see if they can exert some crooked influence, and save Rudy's neck.

Such sub-plot as exists centres on Judge Scott's fiancee, Myra, who has fallen in love with another man - no other than Barney Wiley, the town's good-looking new sherriff (John Ericson).

Even in the Wild West, it is stretching things a little to have a circuit judge engaging in a knife-fight before sitting, and drawing his pistol in the courtroom. The attempts of the Hayes boys to pervert the course of justice are ham-fisted and frankly unbelievable, as is the spurious whinnying of a horse which alerts Judge Jim to danger - twice!

The early passages of the film are good, showing the judge operating in and with the community as a respected citizen, until in mimicry of 'High Noon' the good people of the town desert the judge when the going gets tough. Edgar Buchanan, stalwart of a thousand westerns, is competent as Sam, the judge's loyal sidekick. Myra (Joan Weldon) and Barney are so lightly-drawn as characters that the actors can be forgiven for failing to impress. No doubt Marie Windsor had fun playing the bad girl Cora, but both the Hayes kinsmen, Monte and Jake, are dreadfully under-used.

Predictable, static and utterly unsubtle, perhaps this film, and those like it, do no more than mirror the values of the society which gave rise to them - the predictable, static and utterly unsubtle America of the Eisenhower era.