This western started fairly slowly as a Southern woman named Jennifer Ballard and three men travelled across Arizona on a stage coach. She is heading west to meet her fiancé, Ben Warren, and is surprised to find that he has ridden out to meet her at an over night stop. He joins the stage but soon afterwards it is ambushed by its own escort; it turns out the soldiers meant to be guarding the coach had been killed and replaced by a group of former Confederates who had turned to banditry after the war ended. Their leader is Frank Slayton, one of the passengers. During the struggle Ben is apparently shot and killed and the gang take Jennifer with them. The gang soon start to argue about the wisdom of taking Jennifer and when one of them tries to stop Slayton keeping her he is tied up and left to die. At this point we learn that Ben is not dead; he follows after the gang and soon finds Tom Burgess, the man left to die, he tells him that Jennifer is still alive and the two of them continue after the gang; they are later joined by an Indian whose sister was killed by Slayton and a Mexican woman who was abandoned by him... all four have a good reason to kill Slayton but only one of them will!
Despite the slow start this was a decent western with several exciting scenes. Rock Hudson did a good job as the heroic Ben however Philip Carey had a greater presence as the villainous Slayton. Actresses Donna Reed and Roberta Haynes were also pretty good as Jennifer and the feisty Mexican Estella Morales. Lee Marvin, who would later go on to become a major star has a role as one of the gangsters; he seems to have played many such parts at this point in his career. Filmed amongst some spectacular Arizona scenery the film looks great although the moments that were designed to show off the films original 3-D release were not too subtle... although it might just seem that way because I'd read it was shot in 3-D shortly before viewing it! The story went pretty much as one would expect although we were allowed to think that Ben had died for an impressively long time... if he hadn't been played by the star I'd have assumed he he'd been killed... I'm not sure why the villains thought he was dead though; after regaining consciousness he acted as though nothing had happened to him! If you like westerns this one is well worth your time.
Despite the slow start this was a decent western with several exciting scenes. Rock Hudson did a good job as the heroic Ben however Philip Carey had a greater presence as the villainous Slayton. Actresses Donna Reed and Roberta Haynes were also pretty good as Jennifer and the feisty Mexican Estella Morales. Lee Marvin, who would later go on to become a major star has a role as one of the gangsters; he seems to have played many such parts at this point in his career. Filmed amongst some spectacular Arizona scenery the film looks great although the moments that were designed to show off the films original 3-D release were not too subtle... although it might just seem that way because I'd read it was shot in 3-D shortly before viewing it! The story went pretty much as one would expect although we were allowed to think that Ben had died for an impressively long time... if he hadn't been played by the star I'd have assumed he he'd been killed... I'm not sure why the villains thought he was dead though; after regaining consciousness he acted as though nothing had happened to him! If you like westerns this one is well worth your time.