Top Gun

Thanks to Sterling Hayden, this Ray Nazarro movie is above average for a B western, but again, as I have said many times before in my reviews, no surprise here. It is tense, taut, gritty, and saved by Sterling Hayden's performance, never wooden, never lame, only the eternal Sterling Hayden, as we love him so much. Yes, a good western from a Lesley Selander like western director. It also looks like a Sidney Salkow film in the directing and overall atmosphere. After all, the latest also directed Sterling Hayden in westerns: IRON SHERIFF, GOLDEN HAWK - though not western. So don't miss it please. It is really worth.

This fairly typical formula Western of "Town not trusting a gun man", in this case a gun man who has a history with the town.

Sterling Hayden is the stone faced lead, and that's not unusual. In many cases, it is a stone faced lead who goes through the motions, surrounded by more likable characters. Here, the supporting characters aren't "likable", but are credible.

What I like best about this Western is the "bad guys". They are dirty, unshaven, sloppy, and imperfect even at mayhem. Quite believable. It is this group of ravaging skunks, flea bitten mongrels, that makes this Western superior to the modern idiotic spaghetti garbage in which the bad guys are demi gods.

The townspeople are credible once one gets past the few stereotypes, like the uppity young gun. Ironically, this most ridiculous cliché has one of the biggest names of the movie portraying him (Rod Taylor).

Just a few more assets than detriments make this a decent Western.

Western fans who like their stories brisk and to the point, should find enough reason to like this mildly interesting western with STERLING HAYDEN as a gunslinger who returns to his hometown after a prison stay and runs into trouble again when he finds corruption rampant and the town's citizens all have him wrongly responsible for a series of murders.

KAREN BOOTH is the love interest and she gets to play a crucial role toward the climax when she saves Hayden from a gunman's bullet. WILLIAM BISHOP is a corrupt landowner who had something to do with the death of Hayden's mom and becomes his staunch adversary throughout the plot.

The opening credits fail to mention ROD TAYLOR who plays a town bully interested in provoking Hayden into a gunfight. He makes a convincing braggart with hardly a trace of his Austrlian accent showing. But the real villain of the piece is JOHN DEHNER as the head of an outlaw gang that Sterling Hayden tries to warn the villagers about.

It's a decent enough western with a theme similar to HIGH NOON in that the town's sheriff has trouble rounding up a posse to take care of the invading outlaws.

Summing up: All of the principal players do a decent enough job but it's more or less a standard western with some conniving characters getting their comeuppance in time for Hayden and Booth to ride off into the sunset.

Having acted alongside Bette Davis and Joan Collins in 'The Virgin Queen' the previous year, the 25 year old Rod Taylor progressed from extra work to small acting roles in films like this one. Although he was born in Australia, you didn't notice his Australian accent.

What a shame that a really competent director like Andre de Toth who specialized in slippery, shifting alliances didn't get hold of this concept first. He could have helped bring out the real potential, especially with the interesting character played by William Bishop. As the movie stands, it's pretty much of a mess (as asserted by reviewer Chipe). The main problems are with the direction, cheap budget, and poor script. The strength lies in an excellent cast and an interesting general concept-- characters pulled in different directions by conflicting forces. What was needed was someone with vision enough to pull together the positive elements by reworking the script into some kind of coherent whole, instead of the sprawling, awkward mess that it is, (try to figure out the motivations and interplay if you can). Also, a bigger budget could have matched up contrasting location and studio shots, and gotten the locations out of the all-too-obvious LA outskirts. The real shame lies in a waste of an excellent cast-- Hayden, Taylor (before his teeth were capped), Dehner, Reeves, along with James Millican and William Bishop shortly before their untimely deaths. Few films illustrate the importance of an auteur-with-vision more than this lowly obscure Western, which, in the right hands, could have been so much more.