B-pic vets Lesley Selander, director, and John C. Higgins, writer, bring their A-game to this Western programmer with unexpectedly tasty results. It’s a character study, but with most of its cast of characters working against type and story expectations. The effect downright destabilizing. Check out the opening: a dirt poor sharecropper is short on back payments; the Mexican collection agent working for the Great White Land-owner, cleans him out, secretly watched by top-billed Deputy Marshall Howard Duff. He moves in, chats up the oddly reasonable Mexican before calmly shooting him dead and grabbing the eight thou hidden in the office.* All stealthily watched by a silent Apache who hides from Duff before running to town. Other than the farmer, every person on screen is acting against type. And so it goes all thru the story, even that White Land-Owner not such a bad guy; the do-nothing Chief Marshall does something; the Mexicali girlfriend (her theme song, ‘I Hate You.’) engaged to Deputy #2 (Bill Williams, pleasantly plain) who’s Duff’s BFF and who gets the big heroic two-on-one fight sequence you expect Duff to handle. The more you think about this one, the odder it becomes. Alas, other than in character development, it’s a drab looking thing with minimal action outside a pair of fights, but nuanced story beats and characters refresh the old Western tropes.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *See Duff work more typical/more congenial dramatic territory while also meeting future wife Ida Lupino on set in WOMAN IN HIDING/’50. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/woman-in-hiding-1950.html
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