Although I am a big fan of Westerns, the totally unfamiliar crew behind this production had me worried that it was going to be a listless affair and the routinely-staged prison riot at the beginning did not help matters any! While the end result is nothing to write home about, it is a sufficiently interesting and satisfactory mix of age-old and newly-emerging traits in the genre to keep one watching.
What we have here is a typical story of a convict released after a long term in jail and being met by hostility and challenge once his true notorious identity is discovered; having said that, since he had spent 18 years in jail, I wonder how some of the characters he came across once outside managed to recognize him! The central role is played by Clint Walker who, after a beating inside a mine, gets looked after by painter Anne Francis(!) and hired as a performing gunfighter by traveling showman Vincent Price; this was his second Western outing after the inferior THE JACKALS (1967; which had been a plodding remake of William A. Wellman's 1948 classic YELLOW SKY).
So far so old-fashioned: however, things get less predictable upon the introduction of the youthful characters of Walker's hot-headed, trigger-happy predecessor in Price's tent (who eventually guns down his employer in an unheralded bloodbath) and a mysterious stranger who keeps following Walker around and, shockingly enough, executes him right in front of Francis' eyes for the murder of his father (one of Walker's much-touted 12 victims). Even if the film is (surprisingly) available on DVD, I got to see it via a pan-and-scan transmission on the MGM Cable TV channel.
What we have here is a typical story of a convict released after a long term in jail and being met by hostility and challenge once his true notorious identity is discovered; having said that, since he had spent 18 years in jail, I wonder how some of the characters he came across once outside managed to recognize him! The central role is played by Clint Walker who, after a beating inside a mine, gets looked after by painter Anne Francis(!) and hired as a performing gunfighter by traveling showman Vincent Price; this was his second Western outing after the inferior THE JACKALS (1967; which had been a plodding remake of William A. Wellman's 1948 classic YELLOW SKY).
So far so old-fashioned: however, things get less predictable upon the introduction of the youthful characters of Walker's hot-headed, trigger-happy predecessor in Price's tent (who eventually guns down his employer in an unheralded bloodbath) and a mysterious stranger who keeps following Walker around and, shockingly enough, executes him right in front of Francis' eyes for the murder of his father (one of Walker's much-touted 12 victims). Even if the film is (surprisingly) available on DVD, I got to see it via a pan-and-scan transmission on the MGM Cable TV channel.