I stumbled upon this movie at my local library, and I decided to take a chance on it with no previous knowledge about it. On the whole, I found the movie to be fairly satisfying. At just eighty four minutes in length, the whole package runs smoothly and with no dead spots, and there is some genuine excitement and tension here and there. The cast also does a pretty good job in their roles. Most interesting, even though the movie's ending is to a degree predictable (this was made during the Production Code era, after all), I was surprised that to a larger degree the movie ended on quite a sad note; you could sense that the Widmark character had some deep guilt in his bringing trouble to his former home town.
The movie is good, but could have been better. There are some unanswered questions and things that don't make some sense. For example: Wouldn't the Widmark character know what the area around the town he grew up in would be like? After killing the first deputy, why didn't the bad guys then kill Widmark and the others when they stumbled upon the deputy's body? And how did the bad guys know to grab and hold hostage the Tina Louise character? These and other nagging questions do hurt the movie to a degree. It's probably best to hold off watching the movie until you are in a forgiving mood.
The movie is good, but could have been better. There are some unanswered questions and things that don't make some sense. For example: Wouldn't the Widmark character know what the area around the town he grew up in would be like? After killing the first deputy, why didn't the bad guys then kill Widmark and the others when they stumbled upon the deputy's body? And how did the bad guys know to grab and hold hostage the Tina Louise character? These and other nagging questions do hurt the movie to a degree. It's probably best to hold off watching the movie until you are in a forgiving mood.