An old sheriff (George Montgomery) comes to a village in order to visit a friend who lives there. But when the people mistake him with a hated representative of the railway company, he gets in trouble with some local thugs. At first mistaken for a railroad agent by Beau Santee (Frank Wilcox) , a Sundown businessman who wants to keep the railroad away from his town, Dan is nearly killed by Santee's henchman, Mark Faber (James Griffith) .Montana...gun-raw...gun-ruled...gun hell! The shooting saga of Beattie, who bought the law to Sundown...murder town! Big Montana story !
It's an a so-so story with a brief touch of peculiarity , some decent characters, and atmospheric music score . This movie is a lot of fun to watch. One of the many low-budget Westerns shot throughout his career by the muscular Montgomery. This protagonist was a famous actor who starred B series called George Montgomery . He was born to Ukranian immigrants and was a heavyweight boxer previously becoming an actor . Besides was a magnificent craftsman and built and designed houses, plus a self-taught artist, creating bronze busts for famed actors . Unable to shake his image as a cowboy actor he starred in scores of films with titles like Belle Starr's daughter (1948), Dakota Lil (1950), Jack McCall (1953) and Masterson of Kansas (1954) at Columbia, and for producer Edward Small at United Artists. When not cleaning up the Wild West with his six-shooter he branched out into adventure films set in exotic locales . At the height of his popularity, George attracted as much publicity for his acting as for his liaisons with glamorous stars, like Ginger Rogers, Hedy Lamarr to whom he was briefly engaged and singer Dinah Shore , whom he married. He starred movies around the world and diverse genres : adventures (Watusi,Steel claw) , Warlike (Battle of Bulge, Hell of Borneo) and specially Western (Seminola uprising, Fort Ti, Last of badmen, Great duel in Durango ). In this run-of-the-mill Western in which George plays an ex-sheriff who , through a deal with a friend, gets involved in a land-grab for a proposed railroad in Sundown, Montana . Descendant of an authentic cowboy family, he studied interior decoration and was a boxer before dedicating himself to the cinema, under the auspices of the Republic. Interestingly, though he matured into a competent character actor, Montgomery ended up being much more appreciated among the Hollywood community for his role as a top-notch furniture builder, and even made quite a bit of money building sets for Columbia.
Being regular but professionally directed by Paul Landres . Landres is generally considered to be a prolific director of television episodes as ¨Lone ranger¨ , ¨Cisko Kid¨, ¨Maverick¨ , ¨Life and Legend of Wyattt Earp¨ . He realized his first feature in 1949 , a western , ¨Grand Canyon¨ genre in which he would not only excel but one where he would spent much of the rest of his career. Although Paul Landres couldn't be deemed an "A"-list director, his movies had a professionalism and a verve that many of those made by his fellow B directors lacked . He also filmed detective thrillers , Western as ¨Lone Texas¨, ¨Frontier gun¨ , action motion pictures and even a horror film or two as ¨The vampire¨, ¨The return of Dracula¨. Rating : 5 . Average but passable.
