The Gun That Won the West (1955)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Don't Believe the Hype

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

"The Gun that Won the West", the Springfield Rifle, was an advanced breech loading single shot gun that was introduced in order to help the U.S. Army have the upper hand in battles with the Indians. It was yet another Sam Katzman/ William Castle production using an historic figure, in this case Jim Bridger (Dennis Morgan).Jack Gaines (Richard Denning) is running a Wild West Show but has been drinking heavily. His wife Maxine (Max) Gaines (Paula Raymond) pleads with him to stop. His friend Jim Bridger is equally concerned. At one performance, General Carreth (Howard Negley) and Colonel Still (Kenneth MacDonald) recruit Bridger and Haines to lead an expedition to build forts along the rivers of Wyoming. The Wild West show is sold by Max without Gaines' consent.Bridger believes a peace treaty with Sioux Chief Red Cloud (Robert Bice) is possible. However, Red Cloud is against the Whit man building forts on his lands. At a peace conference, in a drunken stupor, Gaines discloses the coming of a new advanced rifle that will out perform any thing to date. Max finally fed up, leaves Gaines and joins Genersl Carrington's (Roy Gordon) expedition to search for fort locations.Red Cloud realizes that his tribe cannot out battle the army with the new Springfield Rifles and decides to attack Carrington's group before they can be re-armed with the new rifle. Gaines meanwhile has come to his senses and takes one of the new guns to Red Cloud to demonstrate its power. When Red Cloud leaves to attack Carrington, Gaines is wounded.General Pope's troops carrying the new weapons decides that they can "head Red Cloud off at the pass" and attack them before they can reach Carrington's group and......................................................It is odd that Pope's troops do not use the new rifles in the film's climatic attack. They use sabers and hand to hand combat instead. The film uses a multitude of stock shots from other productions, particularly the large attack scenes. And oh yes, the Buffalo Hunt.The best performance is turned in by Denning as the drunken Gaines. Morgan doesn't make a very creditable Jim Bridger, the legendary trapper. He had been a popular musical comedy star in the 1940s.The stock footage provides the best of the action scenes.

After building the entire plot and several key scenes around the introduction of the breech-loading Springfield "trapdoor" rifle, this movie fails to show a single round fired from the new rifles in the climactic battle with the Indians. Instead, the cavalrymen charge with sabers and wrestle in hand-to-hand combat, much too close to get off any shots. This is inexplicable in light of the general accuracy of the firearm details in the film: the cap-and-ball revolvers and 1860ish muzzle loading percussion rifles are period correct, as are the unadorned gun belts and of course the Springfields. I was even impressed with the Indians' reasonably dignified dialog, which was notably free of the "me see um" and "ugh" variety. Maybe the misleading title should be changed to "The Gun That Won the West Right After This Movie Ends."

William Castle who directed some interesting if gimmicky fright films is at the helm of The Gun That Won The West. This account of Red Cloud's war with the USA in the post Civil War years is one cheap production with some very bored actors giving some very pedestrian performances.The same criticism I had of the film Tomahawk where Van Heflin played Jim Bridger applies here as well. Dennis Morgan plays the famous frontier scout and mountain man whose best days in the 1860s were far behind him. Bridger was in his sixties suffering from a variety of health issues of which arthritis was the most prominent. Hardly a western hero at that point of his life. Nor was he ever involved with Wild West Shows which started a decade or so after the years this film was set in.Morgan and married friends Richard Denning and Paula Raymond are busy with a wild west show where the drunken and dissolute Denning is unable to perform in any number of ways. Still they get a mission and drop the wild west show and go to Dakota Territory to help the army conduct a string of forts. That does not sit well with Red Cloud and the Sioux and war breaks out.Denning's character is poorly written. For the first half of the film he's a drunken bum. Then for no apparent reason he becomes the real hero of the piece. As for Paula Raymond she follows Tammy Wynette's advice and stands by her man even though Morgan is more appealing.The title refers to the army's new Springfield Rifles. But The Gun That Won The West has lost its audience long before the film ends.

This movie, although shot in widescreen and color, is as cheap as a Bowery Boys adventure, features no appealing actors, typically racist characterizations of Native Americans, poorly staged fight scenes, and just about everything else that is poor and forgettable in the American Western. Surprise, surprise -- it was directed by the notorious William Castle, whose main talent was not direction but rather in-house cinema tricks like electrocuted seats and flying skeletons. For an example of how poorly the film is directed, take a look at the two big fight scenes with the film's lackluster leading man, Dennis Morgan -- in the first, he's ambushed by a single "indian" as he's out in the woods for no good reason with his best friend's wife (Paula Raymond who, incidentally, he earlier offered to "make love to"). The "indian" takes one poor shot at Morgan and Company, then we see Morgan apparently maneuver around a rock to take a crack shot at the "red skin" (yes, this film liberally uses that term), who we see die in a close-up. In other words, never were the two combatants actually on screen together, and never is there a single shot that situates them in such a way that there is any suspense and sense of physical location in the combat. In another example of Castle carelessness, during the big final confrontation, Morgan and a "red skin" are mud wrestling rather ineffectively while everybody else seems to be hacking and shooting each other. It's as if Morgan and his foe are in another movie. The action scenes in this film are done in such a way that there is no excitement and no drama whatsoever, just a cartoonish killing spree.It's a cheap, ugly film and it has nothing at all to offer a modern viewer. Richard Denning is the only actor who can hold any weight, and after his initial half-convincing drunk scenes, he becomes a boring self-sacrificing hero. The most exciting scene in the film is a hunt for wild buffalo. It's not worth taking time out of your life to see this.