This attractive looking western concerning both the logging industry and silver mining in the old west suffers from too much verbal exposition and too many bar fights or sequences of one person destroying an office in an act of sabotage. When the visual description of the industries come in, it is towards the end of the film, and by that time, it is too late. The story surrounds the silver claim made by gruff Edgar Buchannan and his rough and ready daughter, Yvonne DeCarlo, and the various characters who may or may not be out to get a claim in it. Among the good guys are Edmund O'Brien, and the leading bad guy is none other than that "Going My Way" Oscar Winning Priest Barry Fitzgerald, here anxious to get his Irish paws into the claim with the help of various henchmen who have their own interests.
DeCarlo is basically the whole show here, tearing everything else apart with the heat she uses to sizzle up the screen. The amateurish acting of Laura Elliott as the typical society dame who has the manners of a cat on the prowl for mice becomes painfully obvious when in the company of DeCarlo. Like Barbara Stanwyck and Maureen O'Hara, she proves that a woman could be just as handy in the west as a man and stand up to any foe. Poor Gladys George, one of the great character actresses of the golden age of Hollywood, is totally wasted here, as are veterans Buchannan, Fitzgerald and Richard Arlen.
After 80 minutes of mostly mediocrity, the film finally begins to take off with a scene in the logging factory as huge trees are sliced into planks like steaks from a cow. This leads into the type of action the entire film had been screaming for when DeCarlo was off the screen. At least they filmed it in gorgeous Technicolor. Without that and the future Lily Munster, this would have been another "B" grade western that would have sunk as part of a double bill.
DeCarlo is basically the whole show here, tearing everything else apart with the heat she uses to sizzle up the screen. The amateurish acting of Laura Elliott as the typical society dame who has the manners of a cat on the prowl for mice becomes painfully obvious when in the company of DeCarlo. Like Barbara Stanwyck and Maureen O'Hara, she proves that a woman could be just as handy in the west as a man and stand up to any foe. Poor Gladys George, one of the great character actresses of the golden age of Hollywood, is totally wasted here, as are veterans Buchannan, Fitzgerald and Richard Arlen.
After 80 minutes of mostly mediocrity, the film finally begins to take off with a scene in the logging factory as huge trees are sliced into planks like steaks from a cow. This leads into the type of action the entire film had been screaming for when DeCarlo was off the screen. At least they filmed it in gorgeous Technicolor. Without that and the future Lily Munster, this would have been another "B" grade western that would have sunk as part of a double bill.