At Gunpoint (1955)

Simply Perfect

Fresh and Exciting

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Who saw Alfred Werker 's two remarkable westerns "The Last Posse" and Three Hours to Kill" will not be deceived by "At Gunpoint", which basically has the same story as High Noon, but in a totally different style. And the difference in style is huge; High Noon used the myth of the west, from the cinematography to the hero and the ballad, everything was keyed to what we would expect in a standard western, but this time done better. Werker, on the opposite, uses a realistic style, his hero is a shopkeeper who just wants to live a decent life. He is no Wiil Kane. By showing typical town people, their fears, and their decisions when faced by a crisis, Werker manages to make a good western, without the clichés of the fifties. But he throws down the drain the beauty of the myth of the West. We can adapt John Ford's theory and say "When the legend is bigger than the truth, film the legend" and wonder if Werker would have followed he would not have improved the film. But he also might have ruined it.. You will enjoy At Gunpoint as long as you don't compare it to High Noon.

I'm not a huge Fred MacMurray fan when it comes to Westerns, I guess, but he could do a credible enough job as he did in At Gunpoint. The basic storyline involves a store clerk who shoots one of an escaping band of robbers. Only by a lucky shot does the clerk actually hit and kill one of the robbers; the dead guy's brother who is also in the gang makes it his personal business to get revenge, especially when the newspapers glorify the action of the clerk in shooting down the bad guy.This movie has one of my all-time favorite Western character actors, Skip Homeier, who is the bad guy seeking revenge. (Homeier and MacMurray are also a protagonist / antagonist pair in another Western, "Day of the Bad Man", where MacMurray plays a judge.) In this movie, MacMurray's son is played by Tommy Rettig of the 'Jeff's Collie' (i.e. 'Lassie') TV show and he is rather annoying in the role. Maybe the director wasn't paying as much attention to him, as Rettig was really very good in 'River of No Return' with Robert Mitchum. (The lucky kid had Marilyn Monroe's hands all over him during that movie!) Walter Brennan, another great, is in this movie and as a testy old doctor, he has some pretty funny acidic observations to make. When his best friend and checkers-partner gets shot and killed, Brennan underplays the scene where he sees that his friend is dead - and he does so masterfully. He gives only the slightest view of his anguish but you can tell he's devastated. Brennan was a giant of the Westerns and he's great in this movie as always.I think the premise of a story is all important and this movie has a great one - take an ordinary guy, give him beginner's luck at accidentally beating the bad guy, then have the rest of the bad guys come back seeking revenge. Don't compare this movie to High Noon as one other person did, because it's really not the same theme. Frankly if I had a choice of which one to watch right now it would be this movie, At Gunpoint. (And I do like High Noon very much, but this is also a darned good film.) You won't waste your time by watching this one. If you like Westerns, this is one you will enjoy.

Director Alfred L. Werker's frontier drama "At Gunpoint," with Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Malone, and Walter Brennan, qualifies as one of the best post "High Noon" horse operas. Just as Gary Cooper had to defend himself against three ruthless gunmen in "High Noon" (1952), Fred MacMurray incurs the wrath of an entire outlaw gang for killing their bandit leader. In both films, the hero must stand alone because his friends had abandoned him. Although this western appears blandly routine, "At Gunpoint" emerges as a sturdy, realistic western with a first-rate cast and an imaginative storyline with a surprise ending. Compared with traditional westerns where the gun-toting hero is a lawman or an outlaw, the "At Gunpoint" hero looks definitely non-traditional. Rarely do we see storekeepers elevated to a status of heroic prominence from the obscurity of the periphery where such characters are confined."At Gunpoint" opens with the five-member Dennis gang riding into the sleepy little town of Plainview, Texas, where they rob the bank. During the robbery, an overzealous bank teller tries to thwart them and they gun him down. As they are riding out of town, the bank robbers kill elderly Marshal MacKay (Harry Shannon of "The Tall Men") before he can get off a single shot. Amid all the gunfire, storekeeper Jack Wright (Fred MacMurray of "The Texas Rangers") retrieves MacKay's six-gun and miraculously nails gang chieftain Alvin Dennis (John Pickard of "Black Horse Canyon")with a single shot. Another courageous citizen George Henderson (Frank Ferguson of "Rancho Notorious") knocks Dennis out of the saddle with a couple of extra shots. The remainder of the gang has to high tail it rather than get caught in a crossfire. Not only does the Dennis gang lose their leader, but also Alvin Dennis was carrying the bag with the bank's loot in it when Wright and Henderson plugged him. Naturally, everybody in Plainview is proud of Wright's sharp shooting and both Wright and Henderson get their faces on the front page of the local newspaper. When Alvin's hot-blooded brother Bob (Skip Homeier of "Tomorrow The World") learns the identities of the two men who shot and killed his Alvin, he vows vengeance. Meanwhile, Plainview holds a celebration at the saloon to honor their heroes. In one of the film's best lines, Wright jokes about the circumstances of his shooting: "You're looking at the man who shot the notorious Alvin Dennis from a distance of half a mile... with a slingshot." Initially, the townsfolk want Jack Wright to follow in Marshal MacKay's footsteps as their next lawman, but he refuses because he owns and operates the only general store in town, so they persuade family man George Henderson to accept the badge. On the way out of town after the celebration, George runs into Bob and his fellow gang members and they gun him down in cold blood.After Henderson's murder, the townspeople live in fear that the Dennis gang will return and kill Jack Wright. They are so afraid of this prospect that they don't want to be around Jack any more than they must so they stop shopping at this store and they forbid their children from playing with his son. Things calm down for a couple of weeks while a Federal marshal (Harry Lauter of "Three Outlaws") arrives in Plainview to write a report about the bank robbery and to see that Jack received his reward money for killing Alvin Dennis. Despite the repeated requests of the town fathers for the Federal marshal to stick around, the lawman dismisses their anxiety and suggests that the Dennis gang has probably left the state. After all, he points out that posses are scouring the countryside for them. Late one evening, Bob Dennis rides into town, knocks insistently at the door to Jack Wright's store and shoots the man who comes to the door. Unfortunately, the man who answered the door was Jack Wright's brother-in-law Wally (James O'Hara of "Death of a Gunfighter") and Jack's wife Martha (Dorothy Malone of "Basic Instinct") is traumatized because she realized that the gunman thought that Wally was Jack.What sets "At Gunpoint" apart from most westerns is its sense of realism. Nothing happens here that couldn't happen in real life. Jack Wright knows that he made a lucky shot, despite the congratulations that he receives from his fellow citizens who insist that he is a crack shot. In the end, when the Dennis gang comes after Jack and he has a gun in hand, every bullet that he fires misses them. Jack was an everyday person before the shooting and he is still the same after the shooting. Most films would have made him a crack shot with no practice after he shot the outlaw. The cowardly town citizens who begin to shun him after they realize that the gang is waiting for the opportune time to shoot him resemble the pusillanimous citizens in "High Noon" who refuse to help their lawman that requests their help after the three gunmen begin to stalk him. The ending in "At Gunpoint," however, differs considerably from "High Noon" and that is one of the film's saving graces. The Fred MacMurray character never considers himself an accurate shot, but he realizes that he cannot run from the Dennis gang. The suspense and tension that Werker generates in this modest but top-notch western between the time that Henderson is shot and the gang returns is a tribute to his talent as a director.

About 30 years ago, I was on vacation in Florida with my family. One rainy night in our motel we settled down to watch this movie, and it stuck with me forever. Even today, I can watch a movie, and a month later, I can't remember it - usually because it had terrible acting, an awful (or non-existent) plot, or both. But I will never forget, "At Gunpoint." I suppose another reason I remember this movie is because I was so young, and the movie had adult themes. But I understood the themes. I liked how MacMurray, the common man, became an unlikely hero. To me, this was a movie about heroism being thrust upon a person, and how MacMurray's character awkwardly dealt with the responsibilities that came with that heroism. In kind of a backwards way, the heroism came first, then the courage, but only after a long, drawn-out, sweaty palms, interim battle with his own fears. I also liked the way the movie juxtaposed accidental heroism with the real, earned heroism in the same character--it defined heroism. This was also a movie about how a hero sometimes has to stand alone amidst a community of cowards, even if it means certain death, and that, sometimes, honor is more important than life itself. The suspense in this movie was gripping. When watching it, I felt MacMurray's nearly incapacitating fear as he waited for the dead bandit's friends to return and get their vengeance. Everyone should be able to easily relate to the universal themes in "At Gunpoint." I didn't comment on the details of the scenes of this movie for fear of getting them wrong - it has been over 30 years since I saw it.