Rimfire

This is a good little western from Lippert studios, and I don't understand the low rating by IMDb reviewers. The film is a mystery story and is well-written, taut and compact, and in only 64 minutes. The cast, led by James Millican, does a uniformly good job, and there is nary a bad acting performance in sight from the supporting cast. One is taken aback by seeing suave, urbane Reed Hadley out in the scrubbrush, but it turns out he's the suave, urbane gambler in the story.

Now, we're not talking MGM or Paramount here and so you have to consider economics, but production values are better than expected and there is a good deal of action during this just-over-an-hour affair. Overlook a couple of plot holes and a time-killing romance and you have an entertaining movie which has been unfairly neglected over the years. This was included in a DVD with "Little Big Horn", which is a better picture, but nevertheless, "Rimfire" is still a cut above.

If I was writing the script of Rimfire I might have taken this story in an entirely different direction. I think the film had a lot of potential. When first looking at it I was thinking it might be a harbinger of what Clint Eastwood did in High Plains Drifter. If you remember Clint is an other world figure who exacts a terrible vengeance on everyone in his film.

Here Reed Hadley is a luckless gambler the Abilene Kid who gets himself nicely framed for a gold robbery and murder after first being falsely accused of card cheating. After that a whole lot of people start dying and their left with playing cards near the body. The spade suit is used and it goes right into the picture cards.

James Millican who is normally a good character actor is the lead here along with Hadley and he never believed Hadley was guilty. He's an army captain on detached duty for the Secret Service and sheriff Victor Killian makes him a deputy.

The ending is rather strange and disjointed as well. I will say a good red herring is given as the leader of the gang, but the final showdown left a lot to be desired.

Rimfire is interesting and certainly has its supporters, but I think it fails in the execution.

After a rattlesnake bites his horse, a cowboy named "Tom Harvey" (James Millican) has to walk alone along a dusty trail in a remote part of New Mexico, where he sees a stagecoach being held up by bandits. Skilled with a gun, he surprises the outlaws and, with some help from a stagecoach passenger called "The Abilene Kid" (Reed Hadley), manages to chase them away. Grateful for his help, the stagecoach driver offers him a ride to the nearest town. Once there, he is offered a job as a deputy sheriff, which he performs exceptionally well. Sadly, a short while later, his colleague, the Abilene Kid, is falsely accused of cheating at cards and is tried and sentenced to death. But things don't end there as, not long after he's hanged, a series of murders occur, and the townspeople start to believe that the ghost of the gambler, seeking revenge for his death, is behind them--with Tom Harvey becoming one of his main targets. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will simply say that this was an odd, grade-B Western that managed to hold my attention, mainly due to the mystery surrounding the murders. On a more critical note, although the acting was mostly solid, I didn't particularly like Fuzzy Knight's comedic performance as "Porky Hodges." He just wasn't that funny. However, this film was made during a different era, and comedy of this type was quite typical at the time. So, I guess it's to be expected. Be that as it may, although it's not a great Western, I suppose this film was decent enough to pass the time, and I have rated it accordingly.

"Rimfire" is a low-budget effort from Lippert. Much of their product was forgettable, but every so often they'd come u with a good one, and this is one of them.

There are no "stars", just a good cross-section of solid, reliable character actors, and that helps a lot. James Millican was a supporting actor in a lot of westerns, but he's the lead here and does a very good job of it. Velvet-voiced Reed Hadley is The Abilene Kid, a gambler framed and hung for cheating at cards, George Cleveland is a conflicted judge, Henry Hull is a crusty newspaper editor, and the rest of the cast is comprised of a variety of familiar western faces--among them Forrest Taylor, Fuzzy Knight, John Cason and Don Harvey--who have more screen time than they usually get, and they all acquit themselves well. There are several interesting plot twists, which you don't usually find in low-rent "B" westerns, and give the film the kind of atmosphere that, again, isn't usually found in "B" westerns. This was veteran director B. Reeves Eason's final film as director--although he did do some second-unit work and directed several episodes of TV series after it--and it's a good one to go out on. Well done.

Rimfire is directed by B. Reeves Eason and jointly written by Ron Ormond, Arthur St. Claire and Frank Wisbar. It stars James Millican, Reed Hadley, Mary Beth Hughes, Henry Hull, Fuzzy Knight and Victor Killian. Music is by Walter Greene and cinematography by Ernest Miller.

Captain Tom Harvey (Millican) is an undercover army officer working in a small Texas town investigating the theft of army gold shipments. Taking on the role of a deputy, he suddenly finds the town gripped by terror as they believe the ghost of a gambler who was wrongly convicted and hanged has come back from the grave to enact revenge.

"Gold and greed, it seems, go together. And so do. So do gold and death"

Clocking in at just over an hour, Rimfire is compact and unfussily directed for maximum impact. There's a slight irk that once the central hanging and conviction enters the story, the film barely has time to unfold the mystery element, in fact so much is crammed into the final twenty minutes you really can't afford to look away. But why would you look away when the film is so interesting in narrative and so visually arresting? The biggest character in the piece is Ernest Miller's black and white photography, low-key lighting with prominent shadows, there's a pessimistic ambiance given the production, a sense that humanity is rotten. Which when coupled with the unusual aspects of the story make this very much a unique Western of the 40s.

Well performed with the likes of Hadley, Hull and Millican turning in professional shows, and with super work from photographer Miller, this rounds out as very much a Western noir worth checking out. 8/10