Fury at Showdown

This western has a very small budget.

But the story and the actors are as powerful and motivated as it were a blockbuster.

John Derek delivers a convincing portrait of a young man full of goodwill and also full of wrath. He is perfect for the leading part. His supporting cast - although not so well known - is a good one. Especially Nick Adams and the actor who plays the sheriff.

Gerd Oswald directed a couple of movies with stories of high morality. This one is his best.

The story is about a man who was in prison for manslaughter. He tries to come back to society and to his profession as a farmer but there is a man who wants revenge for the death of his brother...Village people are not very happy too...

Looks like much of the movie was turned over to a John Derek uplift, his once promising career then in decline. He may get the screentime, but an unusually meek and mild Nick Adams almost steals the flick with his sympathetic portrayal as Derek's loving brother. I gather (Trivia) the western was shot in just five days, and frankly, the congested narrative and crowded cast show a hurry-up schedule. The various storyline threads are hard to figure out, while the number of supporting cast members drift in and out in hard-to-follow fashion.

Nonetheless, the rivalry thread between Derek and gunslinger Adams is well-done, especially Adams' unusual verbal abuse of the oddly silent Derek. How this will resolve amounts to the flick's main suspense. There're also good touches from director Ulmer, such as realistically keeping the brawlers' bruises for the narrative's remainder, or dragging the brawlers away beneath a galloping stagecoach, et al.

All in all, I get the feeling that a much better Western could emerge from the clotted ingredients if more time were afforded to preparation, especially in better organizing the screenplay''s unusual elements - for example, heightening the critical business papers suspense, or what will happen to Adams's vulnerable character. What survives is a promising flick that needs a more accommodating remake. So anyway, here's hoping.

After serving a year for a killing in self-defense, gunfighter Brock Mitchell tries to help his younger brother save his ranch but a crooked lawyer has other ideas.

John Derek stars as a gunslinger just released from jail and a crooked lawyer whose brother had died in a gunfight when facing a showdown with Derek plots revenge by goading the easily riled Derek into a gunfight with his gun thug (Laramie's John Smith). Fury at showdown is a tightly-conceived stark western similar in vein to the Brass legend ( also directed by Gert Oswald) in terms of its starkness and its emphasis on character depth and tension. Not much action, but there's a killer fist fight between Derek and Smith. You got to see it to believe it.

Sometimes the tension can fluctuate and the pace is slow; overall, though, it's a decent western with good performances- but Derek steals the acting honours as the young man who is trying to restrain his anger and not turn to violence. The camera work, the town and characterisation is good. The finale was quite tense.

This Western had one particular thing going for it that really stood out. Every time there was a wide shot of the town, there were not large numbers of people walking around the streets. Perfect! In most Westerns, there are way too many people all over town. At this time in history, when 95% of the population worked on farms, it is just totally unrealistic the way directors put so many people in town. This movie was right on the mark. Well done. Some reviews say it was too slow. Well, it wasn't a time of the internet and instant everything. Things moved slower as did the pace of the movie, which seemed appropriate. As I have mentioned in my reviews of other Westerns, I still have a problem the way actors are dressed. Costumes seem to be "cowboy" attire taken from the 1930's and put in stories from late 1800s. This includes saddles and bridles. Having it in black and white gave it a nice "old time" feel.

The only reason I watched this super-obscure 1957 oater (allegedly shot in seven days) is because Philip Hardy, in his 1980s encyclopedia of westerns, called it a "masterpiece" (his word).

I certainly wouldn't go that far, but the direction (Gerd Oswald) and camera-work (Joseph LaShelle, who IIRC shot Laura) are definitely eye- catching. Many angles include ceilings, and there are a number of striking shots of actor(s) in extreme FG with other(s) in extreme BG. Oswald and LaShelle even use the film noir technique of lining up actors in dialogue scenes at various depths so they can all be in the shot without cutting (or having to re-set up the camera).

This second feature programmer is in fact far more interestingly made than A Kiss Before Dying, Oswald's A picture of the year before. Why Oswald went from that well-publicized production of a bestseller to this B- drive-in special is unknown to me. Too bad he didn't show the same level of creativity on that clever Ira Levin mystery that he does on this horse opera, which is quite routinely scripted aside from a few minor curiosities, such as Nick Adams homoerotically caressing the unconscious face of his big brother John Derek.