Rimfire

There's quite a lot to enjoy in this quickly paced little spooky western. It all starts with an attempt to hijack the stagecoach, one that is luckily thwarted by "Harvey" (James Millican). One of those he rescues happens to be the neice of the local sheriff, and soon he finds himself deputised. "The Abilene Kid" (Reed Hadley), meantime, gets himself into a bit of bother with some marked cards, and after a cursory court hearing under the jurisdiction of the no-nonsense "Judge Gardner" (George Cleveland) is sentenced to hang. Now the film gets interesting. He was found guilty by public acclamation (i.e. A vote of those in the courtroom, rather than by a formal jury) - 11 to 6. Shortly after his execution, some of the eleven start to go the way of the dodo - and the townsfolk start to suspect a ghost! Could it be the "Kid" back for vengeance on this who wronged him? There's a decent sub-plot about some missing gold, too - just to keep it interesting, and a little romance with "Polly" (Mary Beth Hughes). The ending is a bit rushed, but hough the production is pretty basic and the acting really unremarkable, the whole is better than the sum of the parts and we are presented with an entertaining film for an hour.

The Abiline Kid is set up and convicted by a Kangaroo court for using marked cards. Executed by hanging, he seemingly returns as a ghost to terrorize and wreak vengeance on the guilty town that murdered him.

Rimfire is loaded with great character actors, including James Millican, Reed Hadley, Jason Robards Sr., and Fuzzy Knight, alongside two previous Universal monsters, The Werewolf Of London's Henry Hull and Glen Strange, the last of the classic Frankenstein monsters!

Although it's running time could (and should) have been stretched a little for greater suspense, this is still an entertaining, if compact, western whodunit with lots of great scenes.

It can also be viewed as sort of a forerunner (along with Django Il Bastardo) to Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter. In fact, the three would make a great triple feature.

"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.

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.

Army officer James Milican comes to the small western town. He's undercover, looking for federal gold that went missing three years earlier. Sheriff Victor Kilian swears him in as a deputy to hide his true purpose. So, however, he is distracted by Kilian's niece, Mary Beth Hughes, and the entire town is distracted when gambler Reed Hadley is tried and hanged for cheating at cards. He pronounces a curse on the town, linking gold and death before he goes. Soon people are being shot by gold bullets fired from a rimfire gun, and a playing card is always found near their bodies.

B. Reeves Eason last big-screen feature as director has a lot going for it. There's a compelling story, the sort of cast that Lippert Pictures could assemble -- Henry Hull, Chris-Pin Martin, and Jason Robards Sr. All show up -- and some nice camerawork and brisk editing. Unfortunately, it's got a lousy conclusion to the plot, indicating the editing was a mite too brisk to make sense.