Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Well followed Samuel Fuller writes and directs this borderline corny sagebrush melodrama. Very apt cast with dialogue a bit sappy, but not without sexual innuendo. Barbara Stanwyck plays Jessica Drummond, a prominent landowner, with her own posse of forty hired henchmen and a theme song. (Really). With a milquetoast sheriff, Ned Logan(Dean Jagger), Drummond has made herself the law of Cochise County, Arizona. The sheriff and whole town knuckles under to her whims and demands as they thunder through the territory. A former gunslinger turned United States Marshall, Griff Bonnell(Barry Sullivan)rides into town with two of his brothers to restore law and order. Jessica becomes smitten with the new lawman, all the while he has eyes for an attractive young female gunsmith(Eve Brent).In a scene where Drummond is to be dragged down the middle of the street behind a horse, a stunt woman refuses. Miss Stanwyck, in her mid 40's, did the scene herself suffering a few minor lacerations. Also featured: John Ericson, Gene Barry, Robert Dix, Sandra Wirth and Chuck Roberson.

One of the most independent of Directors, Sam Fuller is much more popular today among movie buffs and critics than he ever was as a working film maker. He constantly fought studio execs and was in and out of the system more than Sam Peckinpah.He often worked with low budgets but that never restrained him from delivering interesting, Avant-Gard, surreal, personal films that are most often a different take or a clear-lens look at some of the subjects that Hollywood sidestepped and ignored.This existential Western should be examined as a precursor to what was to follow in the coming decades. A distorted view of the genre that stands out among the glut of 50's TV and Big Screen Westerns. It is pulp fiction, a paperback like, sultry, lurid, in your face style that is fun, sensitive, brutal, and so direct that it is stunning. The "High-Ridin Woman with a Whip" song is so breathtakingly irritating and so intensely promiscuous that it sets the stage for what is to come. One of the most offbeat, stylish and entertaining offerings of any genre. One cannot view this one with indifference. You will notice it and remember it.

I often record films off TCM or other film channels and I'll nearly always record westerns. Often I don't get past the first few minutes but every now and then I come across a real classic. I wasn't aware of this film or its cult status when I watched it so I was able to form an opinion without a prior bias. Firstly I was impressed by the opening scene of Barbara Stanwyck and her forty horsemen thundering across the screen and richness of the black and white cinematography. The film itself immediately grabbed my interest and the dialogue was at times cheesy, at times full of sexual innuendo, but always interesting. It was only when it came to a scene where the Bonnell brothers are walking through Tombstone that I realised I was watching a single shot that went on and on and on. There's no merit in doing long tracking shots just for the hell of it but this was something that worked beautifully.The composition of many shots and their realisation was quite magnificent and I would love to see this on a big screen now. One scene where a widow is shot from below and there is a long pan past the hearse to a singer under a tree and back again puts most modern music videos to shame. It has to be said that this is also one of the silliest and campest films ever made with its emphasis, not to mention song, on a "high riding woman with a whip". The general fondling of firearms and sexual references are so blatant that it seems surprising that this film wasn't universally condemned by the usual suspects on its release. I was also impressed by the cast who weren't what you might expect for a western. I especially liked Barry Sullivan's pre-Leone, pre-Eastwood portrayal of the gunslinger. All in all a complete delight. I'm looking forward to watching it again.

"Forty Guns" (1957) is an excellent Western, directed, produced and written by cult director Samuel Fuller, who made such classics as "The Big Red One" (1980) among others. The plot of it is unusual, which is about a powerful rancher, played by Barbara Stanwyck, who rules an Arizona county with her private posse of hired guns. When a new Marshall called Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) arrives to set things straight, the cattle queen finds herself in love with the avowedly non-violent lawman. Both have itchy-fingered brothers, which ends in some surprising deaths.For a movie made in America during the fifties, when the censors where still in full force, it is quite a violent film with more than your average number of deaths. Interestingly, at one point, the camera focus's only on Sullivan's eye's, in a style not dissimilar from what Leone dd in his Spaghetti Westerns years after. The photography is splendid, with long, long tracking shots and high contrast black and white photography. The script is more than a little odd, but it does the movie no harm, apart from an annoying happy ending.In conclusion, this is a very different Western than from what was being made at the time with a number of hugely enjoyable stylistic touches. A must for all fans of the Western genre.