Echec aux tueurs

Robert Knapp and Maureen Hingert (billed as Jana Davi) make a handsome couple after the former finds the latter tied to a tree - as you do - in this Columbia potboiler shot in pretty colour in what looks like a park.

The cast talk and fight, then fight and talk; but most of the action actually consists of people riding about on horseback. The End.

As someone who grew up watching B westerns during the 1950's from that point of view not a terribly bad movie. Some of the fight scenes could use a little more realism, but Robert Knapp gave a decent performance. However, there isn't much surprise with the plot as this is standard for most B westerns. The return of the hero for revenge. Good supporting cast. My biggest complaint would be the sets, they really looked cheap and the sound editing could be better. For a 1950's western it wasn't the worst I've ever seen. Mention was made about the actress who portrayed Rosita...very pretty and it was explained that she was Mexican not Indian.

A man comes back from prison to take revenge on the men who framed him. Along the way he picks up the phoniest-looking Indian "maiden" in recent memory (Lucille Ball dressed herself up as Pocahontas in an episode of "I Love Lucy" and looked more authentic than this girl does) which gets him mixed up in Indian troubles. A bunch of other stuff happens, none of it interesting and all of it badly done. The acting is amateurish, even though there are several solid character actors (Paul Birch, Don Harvey, Charles Horvath) present--a result of the almost non-existent direction of producer Wallace MacDonald. The "script" is an unstructured, meandering mess; it looks like MacDonald only shot every couple of pages of it instead of the whole thing, or maybe that's just the way it was written. The "action" scenes are laughable; grade-school kids playing Cowboys & Indians could have staged them better. I'm sure that not many of the few people who saw this thing knows how it ends; it's so maddeningly poor in all departments that I can't imagine anyone sticking around to find out. I sure didn't. Don't waste your time on this dog.

In rating Westerns, it's natural to expect more from the Westerns of the fifties with their more identifiable, credible, and interesting characters in an era of "credible motivations in incredible circumstances'".

That's obviously due to a time when people dealt more with harsh realities of survival. Modern Westerns (beginning with the pathetic Leone spaghetti garbage) were geared for bubble boys who felt that they would act the same way as the stereotypical Hollywood "demigods" that the hacks shoved down our throats sometime about after 1965.

Here, we have a case where the two leads are not nearly as recognizable as the villain and the lawman. Walter Coy, of course, is the most recognizable, as the good brother in "The Searchers".

This is a tale of revenge, and of people who wisely tell the hero not to seek revenge. Many of the characters are surprising for Hollywood, but the fifties did have more surprising and more iconoclastic stories.

Birch gets the best role as the lawman here, and kind of steals the show, mostly because it is written for him to steal it, and he does a terrific job. He's the opposite of the usual Hollywood lawman character, a very iconoclastic character who is not the usual "outlaw turned lawman".

That's a risk that few directors or producers would take after 1965, thanks to a more "bubble boy" audience.

If there is a weakness in the story, it's the lack of development of the outlaw brothers. Even Coy doesn't get to do a lot other than be a villain. Not that they aren't credible. They are like real villains. It's just that they aren't given a lot to do other than their evil acts.

A good film. Not the usual Hollywood story.

A band of bad men rustle a man's cattle and then frame him for the murder of their brother. He is sent to a New Mexico prison, but the walls couldn't hold him. Once he escapes, he heads for Laredo where the men who wronged him are. Extremely corny and badly acted story that was so phony I could barely watch it. Don't corral this sway backed nag.