A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Mild mannered Peter Brocco as the town pharmacist makes an unlikely villain in this Allan Lane western Gunmen Of Abilene. But he's the brains behind a very murderous gang who wants no less than to wipe out a town. And the rash of crimes has the townspeople wanting to replace Sheriff Eddy Waller. Into this rides Allan Lane, a deputy US Marshal who is traveling incognito, so much so that Waller hires Lane for his deputy. It's a plot gambit taken right out of the Bing Crosby/Barry Fitzgerald films at Paramount, the younger man trying to gently ease the old guy into retirement, but ends up helping him.Doing the heavy villain work is Roy Barcroft whose credentials in western villainy are well known. It's a tough job, but you know Lane and Waller will round up the bad guys. In fact this is one explosive climax.Why all this villainy, it's because Brocco and Barcroft know there's a mother lode vein running from the shaft of an old mine to the town Main Street running right under it. A whole lot of people own property, but Brocco wants it all.Good Allan Lane western, don't miss it if you like B westerns.

There is really nothing to recommend this movie other than an example of Alan "Rocky" Lane, a western star with over 125 films to his credit. The cast is so undistinguished that they even credit the horse! If you've seen more than a couple of westerns, then this one is familiar. The bad guys find gold/silver/whatever, and they want to get it before anyone else knows it is there. So, they start running people out of town. In rides the sheriff/Marshall/whatever and saves the day, but not before he is arrested himself or has to fight his way out of impossible situations.Yawn!