It's always cool for me to catch one of my favorite TV Western cowboys show up in a movie like Rory Calhoun did here. His run as 'The Texan' during the 1958/1960 season would have overlapped Scott Brady's tenure as 'Shotgun Slade' airing from 1959 to 1961. 'The Texan' was the better of the two shows and had that rousing theme music at the end of each episode. Stephen King must have thought so too because he wrote Rory Calhoun into his novel 'The Regulators'.
Right out of the box though, I had to wonder about the name of Santee's (Calhoun) first bounty target. The Mexican outlaw was called 'El Pescador', which translates as The Fisherman, so I was a little puzzled by that. That doesn't sound very villainous to send shivers up your spine. But his character had those black spurs that gave meaning to the title, which Santee confiscated to bolster his image and reputation.
The picture reminded of the 1959 Audie Murphy Western "No Name on the Bullet" in as much as when Murphy's character Gant arrived in town, it aroused a lot of town folk suspicion that they were the one he was after. There sure were a lot of guilty citizens in Kile, Kansas when Santee came on the scene. With 'No Name', Gant was content to let the town people take each other out over their suspicions, so his work there was made that much easier.
I guess the turning point for Santee here had to be the revelation that old flame Anna's (Terry Moore) son was his as well. You can see the gears slowly turning in Santee's mind about what's important in life and what's not, like turning the civil society in Lark into a hotbed of sin and debauchery. The tar and feathering of Anna's sheriff husband Ralph Elkins (James Best) also played it's part, but you know, I had to laugh when Ralph wanted to lend a hand during the gunfight against the baddies. He looked like The Mummy in one of Lon Chaney's earlier films in which he portrayed the bandaged one ("The Mummy's Tomb" and "The Mummy's Ghost"). It was really kind of comical.
Well besides the principals already mentioned, there was cool support here from the likes of DeForest Kelley, Bruce Cabot and Linda Darnell in a final film appearance, although her second billed status is questionable since she only appeared in a handful of scenes and wasn't really prominent in the story. Oh, and can't forget little Manuel Padilla Jr. who gave Santee something to think about when he told him - "It's sad to be a bad man".
Right out of the box though, I had to wonder about the name of Santee's (Calhoun) first bounty target. The Mexican outlaw was called 'El Pescador', which translates as The Fisherman, so I was a little puzzled by that. That doesn't sound very villainous to send shivers up your spine. But his character had those black spurs that gave meaning to the title, which Santee confiscated to bolster his image and reputation.
The picture reminded of the 1959 Audie Murphy Western "No Name on the Bullet" in as much as when Murphy's character Gant arrived in town, it aroused a lot of town folk suspicion that they were the one he was after. There sure were a lot of guilty citizens in Kile, Kansas when Santee came on the scene. With 'No Name', Gant was content to let the town people take each other out over their suspicions, so his work there was made that much easier.
I guess the turning point for Santee here had to be the revelation that old flame Anna's (Terry Moore) son was his as well. You can see the gears slowly turning in Santee's mind about what's important in life and what's not, like turning the civil society in Lark into a hotbed of sin and debauchery. The tar and feathering of Anna's sheriff husband Ralph Elkins (James Best) also played it's part, but you know, I had to laugh when Ralph wanted to lend a hand during the gunfight against the baddies. He looked like The Mummy in one of Lon Chaney's earlier films in which he portrayed the bandaged one ("The Mummy's Tomb" and "The Mummy's Ghost"). It was really kind of comical.
Well besides the principals already mentioned, there was cool support here from the likes of DeForest Kelley, Bruce Cabot and Linda Darnell in a final film appearance, although her second billed status is questionable since she only appeared in a handful of scenes and wasn't really prominent in the story. Oh, and can't forget little Manuel Padilla Jr. who gave Santee something to think about when he told him - "It's sad to be a bad man".