With the cushion of a big hit behind him (Alfred Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54), and Hollywood studios in contraction, Ray Milland shook up his career with a tv series and a long cherished move into directing. Playing safe with a modest Western as debut, he’s both conventional and a little bit odd. Conventional in that he plays the ubiquitous stranger in town, wrongly fingered for a series of recent murders; odd in that three-fourths of the film stays indoors, a Housebound Western. Not a bad choice for a novice helmer with little aptitude for outdoor staging. (Milling crowds in small town streets a particular challenge.) The story eventually puts Milland in literal handcuffs, thanks to Sheriff Ward Bond, and in figurative handcuffs all thru the pic, thanks to Mary Murphy, the Sheriff’s daughter & love interest who comes to believe in his innocence. She's bad enough to undermine the film, even looks a bit off in the restored TruColor print on this fine Kino Lorber DVD. But nice support for a little Republic Pictures pic, with early sightings of Lee Van Cleef and Alan Hale Jr., plus Raymond Burr in an alarming maroon jacket as the hissable villain. Nothing to write home about, though. Maybe if the film were just a little bit odder . . . ?
DOUBLE-BILL: Milland's next directing gig, LISBON/’56, is mighty flat, but #3, THE SAFECRACKER/’58, if no third time charm, does show some improvement.
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