Day of the Badman

The parallels between Day Of The Badman and High Noon are way too obvious to be ignored. However one big important distinct difference is there. Gary Cooper was the former marshal of Hadleyburg and had no responsibilities. Coop comes back to answer a personal challenge from the four outlaws on their way to deal with him.

Fred MacMurray is a judge and a guilty verdict has been rendered on Christopher Dark and the usual punishment is hanging. But a whole mess of his swaggering relatives led by Robert Middleton have come to town and so intimidate the citizenry. Individually and collectively thy appeal to MacMurray for a lesser sentence.

Go throughout the cast and you'll see equivalent roles for the various characters in High Noon. One additional role is that of Marie Windsor who is her usual vicious vixen and girlfriend of Dark.

Even the widow of the man Dark killed, Peggy Converse is intimidated enough to change her mind and plead for a lesser sentence. John Ericson stands out as the sheriff ho hasn't got the character for the job.

In the late 50s Fred MacMurray made a series of westerns and he does well as the upright judge. Remember he's not a gunman like Cooper and in a sense that makes him braver than Coop. Day Of The Badman is clearly the best of MacMurray's late 50s westerns.

In the end he even has one more friend than Coop did.

First, I am so lucky to have caught this film in a letterboxed - wide screen - edition, even dubbed in french. Second, I have nothing to add to the other comments - why always repeat the same things the other users did so good ? - except just one little detail. The sequence where the bad guys lead by Robert Middleton enter the grocery store to terrorize the owner, and just after they have got from him what they want to, so just after they have succeeded in their nasty job, Robert Middleton takes a candy placed on the shop counter and - incredible - takes two coins from his pocket to pay the candies. After he nearly killed the poor shopkeeper, he pays him the candy. I found that absolutely fantastic. I don't know how to say it properly. That's the kind of things that are so rare to see. And I think that's the real expression of power. You may really hurt someone, kill him, destroy every thing in or around him, but you can STILL stay somewhere noble, generous, even if you are besides a real S. O. B. An authentic bastard. Fred McMurray has here a character not so far from the one he had in AT GUNPOINT, from director Alfred Werker; some kind of HIGH NOON scheme.

I love seeing, catching such tiny details.

"Day of the Bad Man" was one of a series of westerns made by Fred MacMurray in the 50s just prior to his embarking upon a series of Disney films and his long running TV series "My Three Sons". The comparisons to "High Noon" (1952) will be inevitable.

Convicted killer Rudy Hayes (Christopher Dark) languishes in jail awaiting sentencing for murder. Into town ride his two sweaty and unshaven brothers Charlie (Robert Middleton) and Howie (Skip Homier). They hook up with Rudy's girl friend Cora (Marie Windsor)and Hayes cousins Jake (Lee Van Cleef) and Monte (Chris Alcaide). Opposing them are square jawed righteous Judge Jim Scott (MacMurray) and the pompous Sheriff Wiley (John Ericson).

A sub-plot involves a love triangle consisting of Scott, Wiley and the lovely Myra Owens (Joan Weldon).

The Hayes try to intimidate the towns folk into pressuring the Judge to impose a lighter sentence of banishment rather than hanging on Rudy. Of course MacMurray will not be intimidated and does the right thing according to law. This ultimately leads to the inevitable showdown with MacMurray forced to face the baddies alone. (Sound familiar?).

MacMurray is stern faced and serious as the Judge. Middleton is excellent as the sneering chief villain, a part he perfected. Homier does his hot-headed kid routine yet again. Van Cleef has little to do except sneer. Weldon plays the virginal good girl in typical 50s one dimensional style. Windsor almost steals the film as bad girl Cora.

Rounding out the cast are Universal's usual cast of familiar faces. Edgar Buchanan plays Sam, MacMurray's friend and ally, Don Haggerty, the Deputy Sheriff, and Robert Foulk, Ann Doran, Eduard Franz, Eddy Waller, I. Stanford Jolley, Kenneth MacDonald, Hank Patterson and Tom London as various towns folk. And watch for a very young Paul Peterson as one of the kids on the street.

An average western saved by its superior cast.

Prior to sentencing a murderer to the gallows, the judge, the sheriff, and the townsfolk, find themselves being intimidated by the killer's violent family. Putting asides comparisons with the similarly themed (and superior) 'High Noon' (1952), 'Day of the Bad Man' is a reasonably good western and the issue of threat to 'justice' rather than to single man makes it somewhat deeper than the Gary Cooper classic. Fred MacMurray is quite good as Judge Jim Scott (although the earnest hero who 'reluctantly straps on the gun again' had become a bit of a cliché by the late 1950s). As patriarch of the Hayes clan, a vicious family of black-hats willing to commit any violence to save one of their own from the gallows, Robert Middleton is suitably menacing as are son Howie (Skip Homeier) and cousin Jake (squinty-eyed great Lee van Cleef). Edgar Buchannan (Petticoat Junction's Uncle Joe) is along on side-kick duty and John Ericson plays the 'all show, no substance' sheriff. The storyline is predictable, with only a lazily-handled 'lover's triangle', which puts the judge and the sheriff at odds, adding any novelty to the plot. The ending seems to draw criticism as being contrived, implausible, and serving only to set up the final confrontation but I suspect that Judge Scott's actions are part of a deliberate plan to end the story 'then and there', with either his death or the deaths of the Hayes crew, to avoid the lifelong fear of revenge on himself or on the craven townies. The cinematography is great, notably the opening shot of the noose and the approaching riders.

At 11 o'clock Judge Jim Scott has to hand down a sentence on Rudy Hayes, a man being held in the town jail on the charge of murder-- having been found guilty by a jury of his peers.

It looks to be a tough job for Judge Scott, played by Fred MacMurray with his pants tucked almost under his armpits. The job gets made tougher when four members of the Hayes family ride into town and begin threatening everyone in sight.

As if that isn't enough for Judge Scott to contend with, his best girl Myra, whom he has been dating for six years, is involved in an affair behind his back with the young sheriff of the town.

There are fistfights aplenty along with plenty of gunfire and quite a few character revelations as the story proceeds.

I thought it was a better than the average western. Although it does end somewhat abruptly, there are no major loose ends left hanging.

7 stars