Gunslinger (1956)

the audience applauded

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

'Gunslinger' is strange little western - unique and experimental where 'King of B's' Roger Corman went against usual western rules and the main gunslinger is a woman - town marshal Rose Hood (Beverly Garland) who is as fast with her thinking as with her hands, and as coldblooded as her male counterparts. And her cruel scheming sworn enemy Erica Page (Allisson Hayes) is as evil and dirty as one greedy villain should be. As the director himself said, that he was tired of using same formulas, so he came up with an idea about woman gunslinger and hired Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna to write the screenplay.After her husband, the marshal of of Oracle City is murdered, Rose Hood is appointed as new marshal and she plans to take the law into her own hands. With that she starts feud with saloon keeper Erica Page who is ready to use every method to get rid of the new law-woman. She hires gunslinger form out of town (super cool John Ireland whose performance seems even too good for this unpretentious cheap entertainment) to kill Rose. Romance, double games, deceptions and a lot of blood shedding follows. Although unconventional in casting and with many interesting and original twists and turns mixed with lousy clichés, and enough entertainment value, the film is still uneven mess which proves that western wasn't Cormans forte. Not to mention those fast-motioned horse chasing scenes that felt unnecessary and more like self parody.'Gunslinger' might not be up par with Cormans finest works (or even with some of his previous westerns like 'Five Guns West') the film is still worth enough to give it a chance, even for the sake of the inventiveness of it.

The idea behind this movie - a woman in the wild west taking on the responsibilities of a marshal - was a promising one. It could have worked both in a realistic light, or one that was aimed more at an exploitation audience. However, the end results will more likely than not be unpleasing to any audience. I could live with the cheap nature of the production, from the tacky sets to the poor color photography. The biggest problem is that the movie is surprisingly boring. It's mostly talk talk talk, and none of the talk is particularly interesting or lively. There seems to be no particular effort to exploit the idea to the maximum potential. I think that audiences even in 1956 would have found the movie to be deadly boring. Even in a modern age of poor remakes, I am sure that a remake of this movie would be much more interesting than this version.

Gunslinger is directed by Roger Corman and written by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna. It stars John Ireland, Beverly Garland, Allison Hayes, Martin Kingsley, Jonathahn Haze and Chris Alcaide. Music is by Ronald Stein and cinematography by Frederick E. West. When the sheriff of Oracle, Texas, is murdered by outlaws, his widow Rose Hood (Garland) takes over as Marshal and sets about cleaning up the town... As Roger Corman started out directing, a few years before he would turn his hand to the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that would find him respect and leave his mark on cinema, he ventured into the realm of the Western. None of these Westerns were particularly good, in fact they are some of the lowest rated Westerns on IMDb, with Gunslinger currently at the bottom of the pile with a 2.8/10 weighted average! Yet, and it's really not a movie you would want to revisit often - if at all, there's a quirkiness and feminist angled bravery about the whole thing that earns a tiny bit of respect. The problems are many. It's over talky and slow, and what action there is is so badly staged it comes off like an amateur playhouse production. Then there's the acting. Ireland kind of escapes criticism because he walks around in a dazed state, it's like he can't believe what he is doing there, you can see him thinking to himself that he was working for Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann not long ago! Garland is OK, spunky and at least correct in line deliveries and visual reaction to situations, and Hayes is sexy enough to get away with the incredulity of it all. The rest, however, are desperately poor, with some of them resorting to auto-cue type acting. Visually it's also poor, with barely dressed sets looking as fake as fake can be, especially when they shake as actors bump into them. Filmed in Pathecolor, the exteriors are sadly lifeless, the colours bland, and this in spite of the decent DVD print that I viewed. The sped up horse riding sequences raise a chuckle, while goof spotters will have a field day here. All told, with a weak and preposterous finale sealing the deal, it's a well below average "Z" grade Oater. One that's fun for the wrong reasons, but still! The sight of Garland blasting away with shotgun in hand, with star badge on chest, is a sexy image I shall not forget in a hurry! 3.5/10

Gunslinger (1956) * (out of 4) Rumor has it that director Corman had this film shot in 7-days and you can pretty much tell that's probably the case and you can look at any scene in this thing and tell that not too much care went into it. The film tells a pretty simple story of a woman, Rose Hood (Beverly Garland) who sees her sheriff husband shot down so she buries him and takes his place behind the badge so that she can seek vengeance against those who killed him. It seems that a local bar owner (Allison Hayes) might have had something to do with it and then there's the loving new man (John Ireland) who might be hiding a few secrets as well. The career of Roger Corman is certainly an amazing one but no one could deny that he's made quite a few bad ones in his day and this here is certainly among the worst. I really, really had a hard time sitting through this one even though it only runs 78-minutes but more than likely you could have cut this down to 8-minutes and it still would have felt too long. As you'd expect, everything seems quite rushed, which is understandable considering how short of a shooting time they had. We even get some Ed Wood like moments including the early scene where the husband is shot. We see Garland go outside in the daylight to get the men who did it but when she turns to walk back in the office you can see that it's now dark. We even get a couple shots where you can see Jeep tracks in the dirt. The amazing thing about this "C" Western is that we've got a very familiar cast of Corman regulars. Garland isn't too bad in her role but don't expect Oscar quality. Ireland is always fun to watch but even here is a bit too lame here. Hayes gives the typical type of performance that you'd expect from her but at least we get a few laughs. Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze also appear in small role. The entire story is just so bland that even a better quality film would have struggled to be entertaining. Considering how poorly made this is it's even harder to sit through and one can only be happy that the director would eventually stay away from this genre.