A brilliant film that helped define a genre

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This western opens with a man, later identified as gunslinger Wes Steele, riding through the Arizona desert; after his horse takes a tumble he is forced to shoot it and continue on foot. Eventually he comes across the site of a massacre; everybody aboard the stage, including a woman and child is dead. He unhitches the horses and rides one into the nearest town. The deputy sheriff pulls a gun on him and he shoots back injuring the man. Fleeing from the angry mob that emerges from the saloon he hides in the bank... here he hears the bank's owner, Stanley, arguing with his men; they were the ones that robbed the stage and one of them is upset about the deaths. They hear Steele moving about and use his presence as an excuse to shoot the dissenting gang member. Steele flees once again this time he takes shelter in a cellar. The next day he learns that he is in the house of the sheriff! The Sheriff is in bed with yellow fever but Steele is found by his daughter; if he is to survive the mob that is searching for him he will have to convince her of his innocence.This B Western has a decent story and is well acted; Ray Milland does a fine job, both as protagonist Wes Steele and as the film's director. Mary Murphy does a decent job as the Steele's love interest, the sheriff's daughter, Nadine Corrigan. Other notable performances come from Raymond Burr and Lee Van Cleef as Stanley and one of his henchmen. The opening scenes in the desert gave a real sense of how hot and dry it was making Steele's predicament seem real. This didn't let up when he got to town as most of the action took place in the sheriff's house creating a sense of claustrophobia. The film's strength is this claustrophobic atmosphere; in fact there is surprisingly little real action; just a few shootings and a fist fight but that isn't a fault to my mind. The are some faults of course; it is stretched credibility to believe that Steele would take shelter in the bank just as the real crooks were discussing the crime, then that he would hide in the house that just happened to belong to the sick sheriff... also he claimed that he was trying to get away from his reputation as a gunfighter but he kept telling people who he was! Still if you can ignore these faults it is a good way to pass the time if you like westerns.

The first 30 minutes of this film are very gritty, with Wes Steele in trouble from the start, discovering the stage with its murdered passengers and then becoming a fugitive trapped in a town. Then the film tapers off a bit, and it's a little hard to accept that Nadine comes to trust him so quickly.I'm conscious of my own pedantry, but have to note that Milland here joins Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott in playing a middle-aged Westerner who has little trouble in attracting a much younger woman - he was 50 when the film was released. And if being the notorious Wes Steele is such a handicap, why not assume a false name - it would have been difficult for the authorities to disprove a false identity. (Richard Egan in "Tension at Table Rock" was another notorious Wes - Tancred in this case and in the ballad that accompanied the film - who diligently signed his real name in hotel registers, only for the clerk to react in distaste.) The "Time Out" review describes Milland's direction as "sometimes a little too ponderously deliberate, but - like the performances - eminently watchable", and I agree with this. The plot made a pleasant change from the run-of-the-mill Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s.

Notorious gunman Ray Milland comes upon the scene of a stagecoach massacre. Outlaws had robbed the stage and killed six people, including a mother and child. Milland frees the horses and rides one of them into town for help during a sandstorm. The sheriff is laid up and a lout of a deputy, Alan Hale Jr., comes at Milland gun in hand without identifying himself. Milland starts shooting and wounds the deputy. After that it's a hunt for Milland in the town.Of course he takes refuge in the one place no one is going to look, the house of the sheriff, Ward Bond and his daughter Mary Murphy. The house is under quarantine because Bond is down with yellow fever. Milland helps Murphy nurse Bond back to health. During which news of the stagecoach massacre reaches town. And the hunt is renewed.Milland gives a fine performance in this very grim western of a man on the run, mostly due to his bad reputation. Ray Milland also directed this film for Republic Pictures in its last days. Director Milland got some good performances out of such in the cast as Raymond Burr, Lee Van Cleef, Arthur Space, and Thomas Brown Henry.A Man Alone has similar plot premises to both The Oxbow Incident and John Payne's Silver Lode that came out the year before. All three had to do with the terrible consequences of mob violence when due process is abandoned. Very telling stuff indeed coming out as it did at the tail end of the McCarthy era.The film holds up very well after over 50 years and is recommended for western and other movie fans.

Milland, besides acting also directed this western with excellent results. His role is of the gunfighter who hides in Barbara Steele's house where she lives with her father, the sheriff(Ward Bond).The relationship of this trio is the high point of the film, Steele the repressed daughter, Bond the father who will do everything to make sure she will never be poor and Milland the man who comes to liberate her. Raymond Burr is the corrupt boss who rules the town and Lee Van Cleef is a mean guy who works for him. Things get so desperate for Milland that is hard to think how he is going to get out of it. He was a witness to all the dirt and murder that went on, so they must kill him.