Very superior B-Western. It is well cast. The posse is made of heterogeneous, well fleshed-out characters --more so than the usual Western. I enjoyed everything about the film, even stolid, amiable star Audie Murphy, who seemed tolerable. Most of the time, in an understated way, he seemed to keep from laughing out loud or reprimanding his inept posse crew. It must amuse most fans that while Murphy was the most decorated American soldier in WW II (maybe US history) in real life, his movie presence is often milquetoast.

I want to mention three very unusual things about this movie, all commendable in my opinion: One, in most Westerns the bad guys hold up the bank, quickly race out of town, and an instant posse takes off after them. But here there was an amazing scene that I found believable and in tune with the movie. The bad guys killed the marshal and some others and DIDN'T rush out of town. Instead they took over the saloon, sat down at some tables and gave orders and threats and killed some as examples, for an extended period of time. It made some sense to me. The townsfolk were not soldiers or gunmen. They didn't want to die, so they didn't fight back.

Two, when the posse came across one fatally wounded outlaw (Van Cleef), he lie on the ground telling them that they had a duty to care for his wounds, but Murphy said they couldn't spare a man to take Van Cleef back to town or to tend to him on the spot, so they had to leave him to die there.

Three, most Westerns would end with the death of the last outlaw, but not this one. After the last outlaw is killed, Murphy carries John Saxon (good as a posse member) a few miles back to town in triumph to be congratulated. But the film refuses to end there. There is a lot of talk about the dead marshal who had recommended bad boy gunfighter Murphy for the job, about Murphy possibly becoming the new marshal and talk with the girl (Zohra Lampert, a favorite of everyone) about her future.

Audie Murphy fan or not, one needs no other reason to watch this Western than to catch all the cool supporting players. Not all of them are on screen much or last very long, but there's a bit of a who's who list of veteran character actors in the bunch, guys like Harry Lauter (the first to go actually in an early violent scene), Royal Dano, Lee Van Cleef, Ray Teal, Rocky Lane and I. Stanford Jolley among the cast list. And that's without even mentioning the great support from John Saxon, Vic Morrow and Rodolfo Acosta.

This one has Murphy in the role of a conflicted hero. I'd be curious to know how many times he appeared in films as a villain and as a good guy; he seemed to pop up in these B Westerns on both sides of the law as it were. One thing I thought the story could have done a better job with was with Cole Banner's (Murphy) back story, as we're given some sort of a hint by the dying Sheriff Webb (Ward Ramsey), but those details never materialize.

Leading a rag-tag posse in pursuit of four bank robbers from the town of Paradise, Banner takes some meager satisfaction in acknowledging that most of it's members aren't worth their salt. Probably the best element of the story deals with elite New York banker Kern (Saxon) and Indian guide Johnny Caddo (Acosta) proving their worth out on the trail, while hell bent for leather gunslinger Wiley (Paul Carr) freezes up during his very first, real live gunfight. That was a tough exit for Wiley.

There's also the uncomfortable theme of rape occurring off screen that provides moments of angst for Helen Caldwell (Zohra Lampert), kidnapped by the Crip Gang and left to fend for herself in the desert. Desperate to the point of suicide over her fate, Banner manages to convince her to return to Paradise and deal with her abuse constructively. I was relieved the story didn't try to take her relationship with Banner in the direction of a romance, it would have been all wrong for the dynamic of the picture.

Over all I'd rate this as one of Audie Murphy's better Western efforts, a notch below my personal favorite, "No Name on the Bullet". The one you really need to see though is his true life story depicted in 1955's "To Hell and Back", depicting Murphy's World War II service. As far as this picture goes, it seems to me there was one plot element left dangling at the end of the story, and that would be - how did Johnny Caddo's body make it back to Paradise for burial in the town cemetery?

Four men scheduled to be hanged escape, kill the sheriff and three other men, and kidnap Zohra Lampert for their personal amusement. Deputy Audie Murphy forms a posse of untried men to pursue them.

It's an Audie Murphy western, and so most of the scenes center around him. Happily for the movie, he's up to it, with a grim attitude and a lack of concern for details in how he gets the job done. John Saxon is an easterner stuck out west for some reason. Drafted into the posse, he is at first more concerned with what it's going to do to his clothes and his inexperience at riding a horse; nonetheless, he's game. Other performers are also good, as the movie western slides from the simple tropes of the classic B western towards the darkness of the violent spaghetti western. There's still a veneer of law and order, but it's more about order at any price.

DP Clifford Stine spent more of his career doing second-unit work than main photography, but he shoots the Alabama Hills as grimmer than any other movie I've seen. They're not just a backdrop, they're physically oppressive.