Rimfire

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.

Rimfire is directed by B. Reeves Eason and jointly written by Ron Ormond, Arthur St. Claire and Frank Wisbar. It stars James Millican, Reed Hadley, Mary Beth Hughes, Henry Hull, Fuzzy Knight and Victor Killian. Music is by Walter Greene and cinematography by Ernest Miller.

Captain Tom Harvey (Millican) is an undercover army officer working in a small Texas town investigating the theft of army gold shipments. Taking on the role of a deputy, he suddenly finds the town gripped by terror as they believe the ghost of a gambler who was wrongly convicted and hanged has come back from the grave to enact revenge.

"Gold and greed, it seems, go together. And so do. So do gold and death"

Clocking in at just over an hour, Rimfire is compact and unfussily directed for maximum impact. There's a slight irk that once the central hanging and conviction enters the story, the film barely has time to unfold the mystery element, in fact so much is crammed into the final twenty minutes you really can't afford to look away. But why would you look away when the film is so interesting in narrative and so visually arresting? The biggest character in the piece is Ernest Miller's black and white photography, low-key lighting with prominent shadows, there's a pessimistic ambiance given the production, a sense that humanity is rotten. Which when coupled with the unusual aspects of the story make this very much a unique Western of the 40s.

Well performed with the likes of Hadley, Hull and Millican turning in professional shows, and with super work from photographer Miller, this rounds out as very much a Western noir worth checking out. 8/10

This is a good little western from Lippert studios, and I don't understand the low rating by IMDb reviewers. The film is a mystery story and is well-written, taut and compact, and in only 64 minutes. The cast, led by James Millican, does a uniformly good job, and there is nary a bad acting performance in sight from the supporting cast. One is taken aback by seeing suave, urbane Reed Hadley out in the scrubbrush, but it turns out he's the suave, urbane gambler in the story.

Now, we're not talking MGM or Paramount here and so you have to consider economics, but production values are better than expected and there is a good deal of action during this just-over-an-hour affair. Overlook a couple of plot holes and a time-killing romance and you have an entertaining movie which has been unfairly neglected over the years. This was included in a DVD with "Little Big Horn", which is a better picture, but nevertheless, "Rimfire" is still a cut above.

Millican plays Captain Tom Harvey, who arrives in a dusty New Mexico town looking for stolen shipments of gold. Harvey, undercover as an itinerant cowpoke, confides his real mission to the sheriff (Victor Kilian) and takes a job as deputy.

Meanwhile the Abilene Kid (Reed Hadley), a suave gambler, is framed for cheating in a card game and convicted in a kangaroo court presided over by Judge Gardner (George Cleveland). In a rather shocking development, the Abilene Kid is immediately hung.

Shortly thereafter, various townspeople are murdered one by one, with a playing card left with each body

Rimfire is a gripping little western with good performances, especially by Reed Hadley as the gambler who gets framed and hung - people surrounding his death die with a card placed next to the body. Which indicates that a ghost of the gambler has done this, to exact revenge, which reminds one of High Plains Drifter. Of course, there has to be a reasonable explanation... is there? You have to watch and find out. It might have a short running time but everything is fitted neatly inside - there's a grim atmosphere and it's well-written and fairly suspenseful.

Ignored even when it was released this B western is akin to Audie Murphy's "No Name on the Bullet" as it is a different kind of western, actually a suspense/mystery in a western setting, not a horse opera at all. The cast is an ensemble of reliable character actors doing what they do.

This one is probably lost for ever, but it is an example of what can be accomplished on a starvation budget when a little creativity is applied.

IT'S THE WRITING, STUPID!