Kentucky Rifle

Everyone in this film is sooo clean and smelling of roses even though they are in the middle of nowhere, and BO is never a problem in the hot sun ! Cheap Western, shot mostly in a studio with a few external shots somewhere just outside ... Oh, and the bad guys are the Red Indians as usual .

Out of the several hundred Westerns in my DVD collection, this one has to be the very worst. Totally incompetent. Hittleman must have been a better salesman than a movie maker to have even managed to raise what little money would have been needed to make this awful mess. It's devoid of even the campy charm that Ed Wood might have put into it. Wills, Downs, Holloway, & Cagney must have been hurting for money to have agreed to appear in something this bad. Released in 1956, the same year as George Stevens' Giant, Chill Wills must have been been rather amazed to find himself in two such different movie productions in the same year. I only wish that I could get back the time I wasted watching this trash.

This is an awful western. The plot reminds me of "The Last Wagon", but it is far from having the polish of that film. The cast includes Cathy Downs and veteran character actor Chill Wills and is largely wasted. Chill Wills' performance is particularly annoying. He spends much of his time spewing almost unintelligible praise for the Kentucky rifle. While the Kentucky rifle was surely a fine weapon, it is not exactly the gun that won the West.

The premise for this film is dumb. A wagon loaded with Kentucky rifles belonging to star Lance Fuller breaks down. The Comanches want the rifles. The Indians offer a deal. The guns for their lives. Surprisingly, those in the wagon are willing to make a deal. The Indians waste no time betraying the foolish Whites, but they don't get the rifles. After a battle in which many of the Indians are killed by the sure firing Kentucky rifles the Indians promise to allow the wagons to proceed in safety. This time they keep their promise.

Technically, this film has serious problems. Much of it was filmed indoors, and the sets have a cheap look to them. The artificial rocks have a particularly phony look about them. The lighting is confused. Daytime scenes turn to shadows without warning. This aspect of the film reminds me of "Plan Nine from Outer Space".

I rented this film twice. I wanted to see if it was as awful as I remembered it from the first time. It was.

"Jason Clay" (Lance Fuller) and "Tobias Taylor" (Chill Wills) are two people who have decided to join a wagon train headed to California where they can sell a new rifle they call the "Kentucky Rifle". To get to California they have to venture into Comanche territory which is made even more dangerous due to the fact that the Comanche know about these new rifles and want them very badly. Also in this wagon train is a pretty blonde by the name of "Amy Connors" (Cathy Downs) who is engaged to a man named "Daniel Foster" (Jess Barker) but becomes somewhat enamored of Jason along the way. This proceeds to create almost as many problems as the Comanche. Now, as far as the merits of this movie are concerned, I would just say that whenever the lead actor is somebody like Chill Wills or Lance Fuller then it pretty much goes without saying that this film doesn't exactly feature an all-star cast. And that could partially explain why this movie lacked excitement. In any case, those who enjoy western movies from this particular period might like this one. But quite frankly I thought it was marginal at best and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Kentuckian Lance Fuller heads west with a wagon train and his one-hundred rifles meant for the settlers of California. When his wagon breaks an axel, he's forced to stay behind with a small disparate group and look for a large enough piece of wood to fix it, all the while contending with in-fighting and the lingering threat of Comanches.

This starts slow and only gets a little better as time goes on. Despite a few sparks along the way, this dull western never catches fire the way it should have. Chill Wills is good as Fuller's partner, but not good enough to inject much life into this very Luke-warm production. There is some good scenery though.

Viewers seeking out a nineteen-fifties color B-western can do a lot worse, but they can definitely do a heckuva lot better too.