The Quick Gun (1964)

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

With all due respect to Audie Murphy the war hero, I'm going to wind up repeating myself here as in my other reviews of his films. He just doesn't have the looks or charisma to appear in a Western, either as an outlaw or a hero. And when the story itself isn't very exciting, the end result leaves you with just a ho-hum experience.I don't really want to be that critical of "The Quick Gun", as the premise was a decent one. Murphy's character Clint Cooper returns to the town of Shelby, Montana a couple of quick years after killing a pair of brothers in self defense. Apparently the citizens of Shelby were never in on that secret, or else Tom Morrison (Walter Sande), father of the dead men, did a pretty good job of keeping the murder angle alive. I guess it didn't help Clint's cause when he winds up killing Morrison and his nephew Rick (Rex Holman) in another throw down while the good folks of Shelby were preparing to defend themselves against the Spangler gang, intent on robbing the bank, ravaging the women and then burning it down for a night cap.You know, I was thinking about something after Clint knocked off two of Spangler's (Ted de Corsia) henchmen in the early going. If only a couple more villains gave chase and caught up to him, Clint would have been toast. It's not like he had a real easy time with the first two.The other thing that bothered me in a way was how quick and easy sheriff Scotty Grant was taken out by Spangler himself. James Best might not be the best character actor, but I always enjoy seeing him show up in a picture. In this one, he had the unenviable assignment of being engaged to Clint Cooper's former gal Helen Reed (Merry Anders), so they had to find a way for Clint to get back together with her without destroying the friendship between the two men. But having him gunned down was just a bit too convenient.Oh well, if you're a Western movie junkie like me you'll give this one a go and move on I guess. If I had to come up with a recommendation for an Audie Murphy flick, try 1959's "No Name on the Bullet" for a better than average one. Of course there's always his real life story, one in which he plays himself in 1955's "To Hell and Back".

Dating from 1964, the latter Audie Murphy western is a routine B filler littered with continuity errors (most notably, the church building in which all the windows are dark from the outside but inside the lights are on full pelt), stunt doubles and poor tactics (when attacking the town the villains don't decide to use dynamite to destroy the barricade until about half of them have been killed in a pointless full-frontal attack). It does have a high body count and Ted De Corsia overacts enjoyably in a role he previously played only 4 years before in Noose for a Gunman. (this film is a remake of that from the same production company).With these 1960s colour B westerns it is noticeable how ridiculously clean everything is. One guesses the film was shot on standard TV sets during the season break.I was intrigued by the member of outlaw De Corsia's band who seemed to be at least 70 years old. This guy says nothing the whole time and must have been cast because he was a friend or relation of someone. His moment of fame comes when the outlaws lay siege to Murphy who is in a hotel. Throughout the sequence, this OAP stands next to De Corsia gurning, looking around for no obvious reason and pointing his gun at his boss.

Audie Murphy is one of my favorite actors, in westerns he's real good. Clint Cooper returns to the town he was run out of, 2 years prior to the start of the movie, and he Audie, tells a flash back-like story. He returns because he wants to redeem himself, and in the beginning it's tense, but as per usual, the town begins to let Clint Cooper know, everything isn't as it seems. So, without giving the plot away and telling how well lit the scenes are, I will just end by saying if you like to root for the good guy turned bad guy, turned good guy, then you might like this film. One funny thing is seeing a rough tough rancher with a bright purple shirt on. Something tells me, that wouldn't have happened back in the day. The trouble starts when Tom Morris finds out that Clint Cooper is back in town! Tom want's revenge for Clint killing his two sons in a gun fight while Tom Morris and his sons were trying to steal Clint's families land. So the towns people hate Clint and want him gone! But the town doesn't have time to run him off this time. Spangler's on his way with his gang to rob the town and burn it to the ground if "I feel like it, nobody could stop us". Clint's been thinking about the cute little school marm he left behind, figures he can come home and pick up where he left off! But she's gonna marry Clint's old buddy the Town Sheriff. So watch and see how all this untangles! But be careful 'couse Clint's gun "got to fast"

Director Sidney Salkow made quite a few westerns over the course of his career, and the one thing they have in common is that none of them are particularly good. If you want to see why, then watch this picture. Salkow has no sense of pacing whatsoever (a trait even more evident in his "Sitting Bull" from 1954, which has to be among the most disjointed pictures ever made). Stuff happens, then nothing happens for a while, then stuff happens again, then nothing happens for a while again, and so on, and so on, and so on. That describes this picture pretty much to a T, and what's even worse is that, unlike many of Salkow's other westerns, this one actually has a cast of experienced western actors in roles both large and small: James Best, Frank Ferguson, Rex Holman, Rick Vallin, Frank Gerstle and Mort Mills, among others, have done good work in other westerns, and Audie Murphy is earnest as always, but there's not much they can do with this. They try hard, but Salkow's limp direction and the drivel they're forced to recite kill whatever small chances there may have been of making something out of nothing. Even though the plot is somewhat tired, good--or even halfway competent--writing could have made this picture at least watchable. The writing here is laughable hack work, just cliché piled on top of cliché, overheated dramatics, eye-rolling villainy--it seems more like a William S. Hart western from 1915 than an Audie Murphy western from 1964. The last part of the picture picks up a bit--"picks up" being a relative term, considering that virtually nothing has happened up to that point--when the outlaw gang attacks the town, but even that isn't in the least exciting. Salkow's tenuous skills as a filmmaker completely evaporate when the "action" starts (again, check out his 1954 "Sitting Bull") and this picture is no exception--a few desultory gunshots and a bad guy falls off his horse, another gunshot or two and a townsman falls down (it's hard to tell if it's because he was "shot" or if he just dropped from exhaustion--the outlaws and the townsmen in this picture have to be among the OLDEST people to engage in a gun battle in the history of westerns) and the same thing is pretty much repeated for the next eight or ten minutes. There's no sense of excitement, danger, or anything other than boredom. In the end, of course, everything works out exactly as you knew it would, but it's not really worth sitting through this dull, lumbering mess to have your suspicions confirmed.