Intelligent little western coming at the end of the great B-movie era (1959). Unfortunately, this is the kind of cheap b&w project that was soon swallowed up by TV. Nonetheless, the movie has an intelligent script with a good premise, grounded I believe in fact. Greedy land grabbers want to divide up Cherokee tribal land so they can buy it off piecemeal. So they concoct a scheme to remove the resistant tribal chief (de Corsia). But the local DA (Williams) puts justice before greed and tracks the scheme looking for guilty parties.
Bill Williams (Barbara Hale's real life husband) never had the career his talent deserved. He could be convincingly tough, as he is here. All in all, he's a fine actor, deserving of more breaks than he got. Sorry to say cult actress Gloria Talbott is little more than comely window dressing, but I'll take her anyway. Happily, it's a better-than-average supporting cast, which helps, since the shoot-outs are pedestrian as heck. And what would these cheap westerns do without Iverson Ranch as a location. So, you cheap western fans (myself included) be prepared to see scrubland backdrops you've seen a hundred times before. (In passing—if a location is less than 50 miles from LA, the producers don't have to pay higher location rates to the crew, etc. At least that was the case back then.) Anyway, the movie's a worthwhile little oater.
Bill Williams (Barbara Hale's real life husband) never had the career his talent deserved. He could be convincingly tough, as he is here. All in all, he's a fine actor, deserving of more breaks than he got. Sorry to say cult actress Gloria Talbott is little more than comely window dressing, but I'll take her anyway. Happily, it's a better-than-average supporting cast, which helps, since the shoot-outs are pedestrian as heck. And what would these cheap westerns do without Iverson Ranch as a location. So, you cheap western fans (myself included) be prepared to see scrubland backdrops you've seen a hundred times before. (In passing—if a location is less than 50 miles from LA, the producers don't have to pay higher location rates to the crew, etc. At least that was the case back then.) Anyway, the movie's a worthwhile little oater.