As Randolph Scott Westerns go, this isn't bad, but neither is it exceptional.
Scott is a bounty hunter, despised by us regular kind of folks who don't hold with huntin' a man down for the reward money. Little do us regular folks know that Scott is troubled by Oedipal guilt, having seen his father shot down by two thieves when he was just a boy -- Scott, that is, not his father.
Here, he's after three dangerous men who killed and crippled a number of people in the course of a hold up, after which they made off with the ten thousand in loot. A careful study of the map shows Scott they couldn't have gotten farther than Two Forks, not on the supply of water they had with them.
In Two Forks, Scott tries to pose as a Mr. Collins but his alias is soon exposed and he gets the suspicious treatment full blast. He doesn't know who the three miscreants are but he knows they're in town here somewhere, hidden like sharks among the innocent fat groupers, but either the townspeople are ignorant or unwilling to cooperate. "We've got a good town here, Mister," and so on.
There's no real reason to go on with the plot. A couple of people come across as mighty suspicious, though. There's the hotel clerk, for instance. That would be the grinning, nosy, limping Ernest Borgnine. Could he be a murderer? Or, more to the point, could he possibly be INNOCENT? Of ANYTHING? Dolores Dorn is the obviously virginal blond who engages Scott's interest. Marie Windsor does her doe-eyed good girl/ bad girl number and is very appealing in a B-movie sort of way.
Scott himself is more affable than usual. He has manners, smiles a lot, doesn't give much away but isn't openly hostile either. I think I liked him better in the Bud Boettiger movies, where he was always the grim, taciturn spoilsport -- turning down drinks, rebuffing even the mildest advances from his leading ladies, a hilarious wet blanket at every party.
Direction, dialog, photography, performances, all are pedestrian. Except, I guess, that the town doctor is given almost a minute to talk to his daughter about a medical textbook that came out just after the Civil War and introduced all kinds of new ideas based on the experiences of field surgeons. You know, I could almost believe that that book actually existed. "Cecil's Textbook of Amputation," or something.
Scott is a bounty hunter, despised by us regular kind of folks who don't hold with huntin' a man down for the reward money. Little do us regular folks know that Scott is troubled by Oedipal guilt, having seen his father shot down by two thieves when he was just a boy -- Scott, that is, not his father.
Here, he's after three dangerous men who killed and crippled a number of people in the course of a hold up, after which they made off with the ten thousand in loot. A careful study of the map shows Scott they couldn't have gotten farther than Two Forks, not on the supply of water they had with them.
In Two Forks, Scott tries to pose as a Mr. Collins but his alias is soon exposed and he gets the suspicious treatment full blast. He doesn't know who the three miscreants are but he knows they're in town here somewhere, hidden like sharks among the innocent fat groupers, but either the townspeople are ignorant or unwilling to cooperate. "We've got a good town here, Mister," and so on.
There's no real reason to go on with the plot. A couple of people come across as mighty suspicious, though. There's the hotel clerk, for instance. That would be the grinning, nosy, limping Ernest Borgnine. Could he be a murderer? Or, more to the point, could he possibly be INNOCENT? Of ANYTHING? Dolores Dorn is the obviously virginal blond who engages Scott's interest. Marie Windsor does her doe-eyed good girl/ bad girl number and is very appealing in a B-movie sort of way.
Scott himself is more affable than usual. He has manners, smiles a lot, doesn't give much away but isn't openly hostile either. I think I liked him better in the Bud Boettiger movies, where he was always the grim, taciturn spoilsport -- turning down drinks, rebuffing even the mildest advances from his leading ladies, a hilarious wet blanket at every party.
Direction, dialog, photography, performances, all are pedestrian. Except, I guess, that the town doctor is given almost a minute to talk to his daughter about a medical textbook that came out just after the Civil War and introduced all kinds of new ideas based on the experiences of field surgeons. You know, I could almost believe that that book actually existed. "Cecil's Textbook of Amputation," or something.