Gunfighters

I saw the movie the first time back in the late 1940's after reading the book "Twin Sombreros". When I taped it recently from the Westerns Channel, I noted that R. Scott's name was Brazos Keene in the book, but Brazos Kane in the movie. Also I still had a hard time telling the girls apart. The story drifted away a little from the book, the names were still familiar, Kiscaden, Inskip, Johnny, Beth and Jane. One of the greatest lines in Westerns was uttered by Kiscaden when he told Brazos that his badge represented the law..."if the man wearing it goes down, it just gets up and jumps on the pocket of another man, and keeps right on coming" (that's as close as I can remember the statement). You can still watch the movie, it was very interesting.

Randolph Scott again tries to hang up his guns and walk away from violence, but those pesky bad guys just leave him with no choice in this good-looking Cinecolor potboiler that anticipates 'The Gunfighter'.

As usual it benefits from a literate script (by Alan LeMay), good production values and a good cast, including handsome Arizona locations and a pair of handsome female leads playing sisters, in the form of blue-eyed Barbara Britton and titian-haired Dorothy Hart (best remembered as Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan five years later in 'Tarzan's Savage Fury') in stetson and jeans.

This is a routine but entertaining western with nice colors.Randolph Scott portrays a gunfighter who is sick and tired of killing his fellow men (that's what a voice over tells us at the beginning of the film).So he decides he will retire in a horse town where his good old pal lives.But alas the friend has just been killed when he arrives and he is a suspect (A wealthy man who owns lots of acres in the country needs a suspect ,more like).

The main originality is that ,generally ,the rich villain ranch man has two sons or more ( a good one and (a) bad one(s);see "duel in the sun" " broken lance").Here,for a change,the old rich person has two gorgeous daughters,one of whom's in love with one of his pa's henchmen whereas the second falls for...well you guess who.

GUNFIGHTERS is the unoriginal title for Zane Grey's "Twin Sombreros", which, considering the story is about two sisters who are almost twin-like in appearance, would have been a more apt title for this film.

The story is routine as depicted here, with bad guy BRUCE CABOT as the man responsible for a few killings over range rights on property owned by GRIFF BARNETT and his daughters BARBARA BRITTON and DOROTHY HART.

RANDOLPH SCOTT is the man who rides into town at the start without his gunbelt, but by the end of the story he dons it for the final gun duel before tossing it off again and heading west for the happy ending. This is after he's fought a couple of the town bullies, including FORREST TUCKER, and won.

What surprised me was how good the warm tones of Cinecolor looked, while not quite up to the standard of three-strip Technicolor. Looks as though Columbia was aiming to give the film an A-budget look.

For Randolph Scott fans, it's a treat to see him in fine shape--but the script is ordinary and the direction is uninspired. One would never guess the story is from an original penned by Zane Grey.

Back in his early days Randolph Scott did a whole flock of westerns for his original studio, Paramount, based on Zane Grey novels. In a sense Gunfighters is a return to those roots, but not terribly successful.

After he nearly kills a friend who just had to see if Scott's prowess with six shooters is for real, Scott determines to hang up the weaponry and look for an obscure place to settle down.

It's all been done before, the gunfighter with his skills are needed to right some local wrongs and Gunfighters is no exception. Before he knows it Randolph Scott is involved in the local range war and has to deal with such baddies as Forrest Tucker and Bruce Cabot and a pair of sisters who've got their eyes on him in Barbara Britton and Dorothy Hart.

Nothing terribly exceptional in Gunfighters, but Randolph Scott fans will like it.