Era de violencia

George Montgomery, Jerome Courtland and Richard Egan are undercover agents in the old west trying to break a gold smuggling ring working out of the town of Cripple Creek.

This is good, solid western entertainment. It's a buddy- western, shoot-em-up, fist-fight, and midnight rides type movie. I found it to be well paced, written and acted. It has some plot twists that make it more adultish than the usual kid-western fodder.

For the western movie fan, there's alot of other familiar faces among the cast, and everyone gives a fine performance.

This has been on Encore's Western Channel. Catch it if you can without commercials, it's so much better.

I can see why Westerns eventually withered after seeing this one. It was competently produced and had a surprisingly good and familiar cast, especially of the bad guys. George Montgomery sure looked the part.

What bothered me the most is the facile and unbelievable way the characters followed and watched each other, moved about and sneaked in and out of hideouts. The heroes conveniently and luckily see so much from their second floor room. … … They follow a horse-drawn wagon undetected and see so much (also undetected) from a high-up perch.

The best example of this: twice George Montgomery sneaks undetected into a highly populated bad-guy mine-smelting operation, quickly sees and grasps the entire operation and has the great luck of being next to a shipping stencil that shows the place (San Francisco) and pier number where the contraband is shipped out of the US. Then a secret service agent goes to the pier and happens to see a Chinaman depositing an envelope into a postal collection box. What luck, the agent has the post office examine all the letters in the box, and they find a letter going to a reputable citizen in Cripple Creek telling him to pay off the bad guys for the gold delivery. That bit of "luck" solved the case.

And then the dialog was filled with so many trite clichés.

The big surprise ending (which I won't divulge) wasn't important, but was unbelievable and unnecessary.

Real Saturday morning western with enough surprises and cliffhangers to have been a serial. Saw it today on TV and wondered why I'd never come across it before. Unusual subject matter for a western. Secret Service men brought in to deal with a gold smuggling operation in Cripple Creek , Colorado. Interestingly, a gang is stealing wagonloads of freshly mined ore, instead of the smelted gold. Why? Unless they're smelting it themselves? But then; where is it taken afterwards? It's up to agents Iverson (George Montgomery), Larry Galland (Jerome Courtland) and Strap Galland aka Gillis ( Richard Egan) to find out and thwart the operation, which they do by two of them posing as bandits on the run looking for profitable employment. As you would expect, they find it remarkably easy to be taken on by saloon owner William Bishop. Is he the big guy, surrounded by villainous henchmen? And what role does saloon gal Julia play? The final reveal, and the scale and purpose of the operation, come as something of a surprise. However, there is a big clue dropped early on, if you're paying attention. But,before that there's plenty of gunplay, fisticuffs, ruses and twists to satisfy any fan of the genre.

There's one well organized ring of gold smugglers operating out of the gold strike camp of Cripple Creek, Colorado. There's so much gold being smuggled out of the place that the Secret Service is concerned. Remember the USA was on the gold standard back then.

So the Secret Service assigns agents George Montgomery, Richard Egan, and Jerome Courtland to go undercover and apprehend this gang. Courtland is young and impulsive, but both Montgomery and Egan think pretty fast on their feet as you'll see as the story unfolds.

Just about everybody of any importance in Cripple Creek is involved in the smuggling which is why the government hasn't been able to get a handle on it so far. That's why our agents really have their work cut out for them in this fast paced western.

Cripple Creek is a competently made B western with a real twist at the end. Two twists in fact, especially when you find out who the head of the smuggling ring is and what's the purpose behind all the gold smuggling.

Cripple Creek is one western not just for the kid trade.

The script sprawls some, but the oater's well cast and entertaining. Three Secret Service agents led by Ivers (Montgomery) go undercover to break up a gold smuggling ring in Cripple Creek, headed by a smug city slicker, Silver (Bishop). Two sequences are real nail-biters—the Russian roulette scene that's really well done, and the smelter scene that pays good attention to detail. Then again, there's the silly barroom brawl that suggests the influence of a kids' matinée feature. Really, George Cleveland's crusty old grouch is all the comedy relief that's needed. Anyway, the western's uncommonly well cast with familiar faces up and down the line. The script even manages a good surprise at the end. As a former resident of the real Cripple Creek, however, I'm surprised at how much that mountain town is supposed to resemble LA's San Fernando Valley, as though that matters entertainment-wise. Anyway, it's a pretty good western somewhere between an A and B production.

(In passing-- the Cripple Creek gold camp was a boom town for several decades; then became a near-ghost town in the 1950's after the price of gold was frozen; but has lately revived with casino gambling and a and a return to market pricing. It's got a magnificent scenic view across a hundred miles of South Park to the main range of the Rockies. So visit there if you can.)