Yvonne de Carlo leaves Universal and heads over to Paramount to make a film that is pretty much exactly like the kind of films she made at Universal. It's a Western, with de Carlo as the feisty daughter of a crusty old timer who has a valuable mining lease. Rich Barry Fitzgerald wants to get his mitts on it but mining surveyor Edmond O'Brien intervenes. O'Brien has a Past... he was once corrupt, turning Richard Arlen against him.
Arlen used to star in a bunch of Pine Thomas movies and this is a little like the more expensive films of that company - its produced by Nat Holy who made a lot of Westerns.
There's some exciting action sequences - a chase on a train at the beginning and a fight in a saw mill at the end. (Though in both O'Brien is up against a random dude instead of the main villain).
The cast is good. Edmond O'Brien really has no business being a leading man in a Western - too chunky looking, not tough, not good looking enough for De Carlo - but he can act. Richard Arlen is decent in a surprisingly complex role. Actually come to think of it, it's probably too complex - I couldn't follow what was going on with that story or the filmmakers stuffed it: how much Arlen knew vs what O'Brien actually did, etc etc.
The guy who plays the evil gunslinger was good (Michael Moore, an insolent type) and Barry Fitzgerald's cutesy Irish schtick works as a nasty tycoon. The girl who played O'Brien's ex was a bit undercast.
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