Sadly Over-hyped

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Jerry Thorpe may have been something of a lightweight director but even lightweights can hit pay-dirt once in awhile and "Day of the Evil Gun", which he made in 1968, is a fine and somewhat unusual western. The story is not dissimilar to such earlier westerns as "The Searchers" and "Two Rode Together", (two men searching for a woman abducted by the Apaches), but it takes a few diversions along the way. The men in question are played by veterans Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy and the slightly grizzled cast also includes Dean Jagger, Paul Fix and John Anderson as well as a young Dean Stanton sans the Harry. It's no classic, I'll grant you but it's sufficiently different to be of interest and fans of the western won't be disappointed.

Like Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter Glenn Ford in Day Of The Evil Gun is a gunfighter who deserted his wife and two daughters and has now come home. But on arrival discovers that they've been taken by the Apaches and he sets off to find them.Unlike Peck's wife though, Barbara Babcock has grown inpatient for her man and has given up. She's taken up with her neighbor Arthur Kennedy who declares himself in on the hunt. These two form one uneasy alliance.But they have to stay allied because they do come across a whole lot of low lifes on their journey into Apache country. On the way there they come into a charming, but coldblooded Mexican bandit in Nico Minardos, a cholera epidemic in a town with an avaricious store owner in James Griffith and some army deserters who are an outlaw gang with John Anderson in charge.During all this time Kennedy who has lorded his moral superiority over Ford develops into quite a killing machine himself. Makes for an interesting climax.In his recent biography of his father, Peter Ford who played one of the army deserters said that this was one cursed production. Some kind of malady was going around in Durango, Mexico where the film was shot and everyone in the cast came down. The most serious was Dean Jagger who nearly died. Jagger has only one scene in the film, but he plays an itinerant peddler who pretends he's crazy so that the Apaches will deal with him. He looked somewhat ravaged in his appearance. The malady whatever it was also affected the crew on Guns For San Sebastian shooting at the same time.Peter Ford who played one of the army deserters also said his father was pleased to be working with Arthur Kennedy again, they had been together on one of Ford's best films Trial. Day Of The Evil Gun is a competently made western does drag a bit in spots. Still fans of the horse opera and Glenn Ford should like it.

Presumed dead, aging Gunslinger Warfield (Glenn Ford) returns to Adamsville to find that wife Angie and two young daughters have been kidnapped by the Apaches. Owen Forbes (Arthur Kennedy) is the man giving out the news and also claiming Angie was to marry him after giving up on Warfield ever returning. An uneasy alliance forms as the two men set off to find the missing girls.Directed by Jerry Thorpe and scripted by Charles Marquis Warren, Day Of The Evil Gun is a low budget mixture of more notable genre pieces. Tho the production value is low, it is however boosted by two enjoyable lead performances and the story is never less than interesting as our duo run into a number of feverish like encounters. In fact the film very much feels like a spaghetti Western at times, such is the odd ambiance that accompanies the men on their perilous odyssey. Fine support comes from Dean Jagger & John Anderson, while Harry Dean Stanton also weighs in with an appearance.No great film by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly one that has a little more to it to keep it above average. 6/10

A watchable flick with decent performances by the leads and supporting cast, using some striking desert photography from Durango as background. Ford is a tired gunfighter who returns home to find his wife and two children kidnapped by Apaches. Kennedy is his rival who claims that she was just about to marry him.The mismatched pair team up to retrieve Ford's family, but it's allmighty hard a-trackin' them through this here desert. Along the way they must pry information out of a handful of truculent witnesses, natural challenges, and assorted miscreants. The first group includes Dean Jagger as a filthy, mentally challenged desert dweller. The second set includes cholera and vultures. The third includes a group of self-styled renegade deserters from the Army.Ford is forceful enough but burned out from the mayhem he's created in the past. Kennedy is by far the more ruthless of the two.In the end they manage to reach the Apache camp and escape with the prisoners, but a cathartic showdown between Ford and Kennedy is unavoidable. Our sensibilities demand that Kennedy die. (I wonder why? Our ostensible hero, Glen Ford, the man we admire so much, wouldn't have demanded it, yet we in the audience wring our hands in expectation of seeing Kennedy shot full of holes.) At the climactic moment, Kennedy turns into not merely a brutal man but a conniving and cowardly murderer, which he has not been before, in order to justify his killing. It's an "evil gun," as the storekeeper comments, but it's a bullet from that gun that satisfies the viewers. Some might call it hypocrisy, since the ending violates the principles that the movie itself has been preaching all along, but I'd just put it in the "commercial interests" basket and let it go, just another movie that rejects violence except when doing so would lead to less pelf.Sorry. Carried away there. Will someone help me down from this soap box? Thank you. Thank you very much.Ford is his usual cool and savvy Westerner, wearing his usual small-brimmed hat, and is outfitted in earth colors suggestive of nature. Kennedy is always in a black hat and dirty shirt. Dean Jagger is absolutely FILTHY. I suppose there's no water in the desert, just plenty Alacron de Durango.The Apaches are treated reasonably for a Western. They are human enough to retrieve their dead and hold funeral ceremonies. They may violate our laws by kidnapping -- kidnapping and adoption and such things were traditionally acceptable -- but they're neither treacherous no inherently evil. Not like that gun.