This really isn't such a bad movie. A solid cast makes it more entertaining than it might have been otherwise. It just has a "throw away" sort of quality because, for a movie that's supposed to a mystery-Western, it's quite easy to predict. Also, it can't overcome the hilarious miscasting of Roddy McDowall, who can't quite suppress his English accent.
It's essentially an Agatha Christie sort of deal: during a card game, a man is caught cheating, and the players impulsively decide not just to punish the cheat, but to hang him. Soon after, these same men die mysteriously. A gambler named Van Morgan (Dean Martin) who'd tried to prevent the hanging knows that he could still be on the hit list. Soon, a gun toting stranger, Jonathan Rudd (Robert Mitchum), comes to town to preach.
This is worth sticking with for some things. First of all, both Martin and Mitchum exude their trademark cool. Mitchum, doing a variation on his role in "The Night of the Hunter", is especially amusing. Second, a young Yaphet Kotto gets a rather good role as the bartender in one of two competing saloons. Third, there are some very lovely ladies in the cast, Inger Stevens as Lily Langford, and Katherine Justice as Nora Evers. Finally, there's a first rate assortment of character actors on display: John Anderson, Denver Pyle, Whit Bissell, Ted de Corsia, and Roy Jenson.
McDowall, cast as Pyles' son, manages to be pretty good at playing a worthless weasel sort of man, but he simply looks too out of place here.
The theme song crooned by Dino may not be one of his best, but it *is* kind of catchy.
Six out of 10.
It's essentially an Agatha Christie sort of deal: during a card game, a man is caught cheating, and the players impulsively decide not just to punish the cheat, but to hang him. Soon after, these same men die mysteriously. A gambler named Van Morgan (Dean Martin) who'd tried to prevent the hanging knows that he could still be on the hit list. Soon, a gun toting stranger, Jonathan Rudd (Robert Mitchum), comes to town to preach.
This is worth sticking with for some things. First of all, both Martin and Mitchum exude their trademark cool. Mitchum, doing a variation on his role in "The Night of the Hunter", is especially amusing. Second, a young Yaphet Kotto gets a rather good role as the bartender in one of two competing saloons. Third, there are some very lovely ladies in the cast, Inger Stevens as Lily Langford, and Katherine Justice as Nora Evers. Finally, there's a first rate assortment of character actors on display: John Anderson, Denver Pyle, Whit Bissell, Ted de Corsia, and Roy Jenson.
McDowall, cast as Pyles' son, manages to be pretty good at playing a worthless weasel sort of man, but he simply looks too out of place here.
The theme song crooned by Dino may not be one of his best, but it *is* kind of catchy.
Six out of 10.