This is a deep, dark, western about a man who tries to fight the devils in his psyche as a gunfighter and a man who wants to settle down with a wife in a small town.....Mark Stevens gives a solid performance as Slade, a man who grew up with violence and lives with it on a near daily basis.....Slade as a kid accidentally kills a man and lives with the demons of the mans death.....as a man growing up he lives with a man who was a stagecoach driver and became his mentor....trying to go straight he takes over the running of a stagecoach line in the west and has to make his mark...the stagecoach line has a problem with stolen horses depleting it ranks....Slade goes after the gang stealing the horses and blows away several bad guys...the killing keeps going on as Slade becomes a target for every gunslinger in and around the town....Barton McClane a staple as a bad guy in those old black and white westerns plays Slade's nemesis.... Mclane swears to kill Slade and in the end in a saloon with his partner holding a gun on Slade tries to humiliate and belittle Slade.....his partner holds a gun while Slades is on the bar...Slade's wife enters through a side door and shoots down McLane's sidekick while Slade blows away McClane. Again, this a deep, dark western with Mark Stevens giving a very solid performance as Slade...a man who looks greasy and dirty throughout the whole film....sort of goes with his personna.....for one thing Stevens is not the most handsome guy around who could have played this role, maybe Kirk Douglas or Robert Mitchum...In fact Mitchum played a very, very similar role to this film in "Man with the Gun" a 1955 oater about a dark, sinister sheriff blowing everyone away who gets in his way. Both films remarkably similar.....Dorothy Malone is a real beauty in this film as Jan Sterling was in "Man with the Gun".......both women much younger in those 1950 days....Both Stevens and Mitchum both shot down laying on the ground in the final scenes in both films.... This is a western that will not disappoint for a 1950s B film.
Review of Jack Slade
