Directed by Sam Peckinpah
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)
Sam Peckinpah's first directorial effort is a fascinating character study of flawed individuals in the wild west, a theme which he would explore the rest of his career. Brian Keith is a former Rebel officer who has taken up with a couple of gunslingers. They decide to go to a dusty western town with a "new bank and an old sheriff". Other robbers beat them to the bank, but Keith accidentally kills a young boy in the ensuing shootout. His mother is Maureen O'Hara, a saloon hall girl with a bad reputation. Keith tries to make amends by accompanying her across the dangerous countryside to bury the boy next to her husband's grave in another town. He also has to deal with his gunslinger pals, one of which is after O'Hara and the other with which he has a long-simmering personal vendetta. Filmed against a stark background, often at night, with a haunting, moody soundtrack by Marlin Skiles, it unfolds like a feverish dream. The spaghetti western genre was still a few years away, but this sure feels like one.
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