My expectation couldn't have been lower for this Western - it's obscurity, the fact it was the only film made during Anthony Steel's Hollywood sojourn that produced all those drink driving arrests, its the only teaming of Steel and then wife Anita Ekberg. It's also shot very much like an episode of a TV show. But I found it surprisingly engrossing.
It starts with a bang, literally: Sterling Hayden entering a homestead, a shoot out eventuating; later on it turns out his ex wife Ekberg is gravely wounded and her parents are dead. We hear about events leading up to it: Anthony Steel is a local reverend fresh off the boat who may or may not have been having an affair with Ekberg who may or may not be a slut and Hayden may or may not have been a devoted husband and/or tortured people in the Civil War. Plus there's Hayden's dodgy brother and assistant.
It's not a classic: any movie which ends with a convenient confession-by-taking-someone-hostage loses points (a device used a lot in Westerns); the acting is a bit iffy (they don't give Steel too much to do - he was the perennial "second male lead", Ekberg is beautiful but simply wasn't much of an actor, Sterling Hayden glowers); it looks cheap. But it had ambition and at least tries.
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