Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

What the world anyone truly sees in Roger Corman movies is at loss to me. While this one may be part of his early days - he never improved all that much for my tastes - his appeal is surley limited to those who have a bent towards BAD movies. This one offers us a female lead in the lovely and talented Beverly Garland who clearly deserved far better material but, with stinkers like 'Gunslinger' on her résumé she never had a chance. She plays a 'female sheriff' who has to look for her holster each time she puts her gun away - then there's the saloon with all of three small tables and less than a dozen clients who sit around watching all three (3) dance hall gals doing their best to keep in time (in a Randolph Scott Picture, any less than 23 song and dance ladies would have been cheap). John Ireland is OK in his limited way but the script gives him nothing to work with - same goes for the whole cast of a dozen or more. MGM/UA who has given us some fine rare gems - must have far more deserving movies to transfer to DVD than this penny pinching, idea stealing, dog eared oater. For the very easily pleased, if even they want to bother.

Disappointing Roger Corman western about a woman (Beverly Garland) who becomes marshal after her husband, the previous marshal, is killed. She clashes with saloon owner Allison Hayes and falls for hired gun John Ireland before her hubby's cold in the ground. This should have been great but, unfortunately, it isn't much fun. It needs more scenes like the cat fight between Garland and Hayes near the beginning. Basically it's just a routine oater with the novelty of a woman being the marshal. If you really want to see a western from the 1950s with badass female characters and significant cheese appeal, see Johnny Guitar. This one is pretty boring.

One of Roger Corman's first films is this lively and involving little western that has a gender role-reversal going on as a grieving widow (Beverly Garland) becomes the marshal of a violent town in which at least one of the inhabitants is going on a murderous rampage of land-grabbing. I was at first surprised to see that this film was in colour given that the rest of Corman's B-movie sci-fi and horror films of the 1950s are in black and white, and then pleased to see that this was just as entertaining as those genre movies.GUNSLINGER is fast-paced and fun, and even the romance scenes don't feel slow or dragged out. Garland makes for an enthusiastic heroine given decent support by John Ireland as a hired gun who has a change of heart. You know it's a Corman movie when you spy Dick Miller in a low down supporting role. GUNSLINGER is no masterpiece, that's for sure, but for a film which must have been made for a fraction of the budget of acclaimed classics like HIGH NOON, it's a nice surprise.

I guess this wasn't one of his worst movies, but that really is saying very little. The main problems with this film are that it tries to do too much at the same time. I can't help but think that maybe the reason I couldn't follow it is because I simply didn't care about what was going on. Was this his first color movie? It seemed like some step up for him. I just found it difficult to understand what was going on. There's kind of an interesting romantic story, but it really goes nowhere. At least the Old West isn't a place where you'd have to have a lot of good special effects.This was mostly just boring and uninteresting. Most of the characters are annoying and contribute little to the story. Everything happens too fast, but even then it seems like a slow moving movie. We get to see a cat fight, but they managed to make even that boring. It's probably the worst Western I've ever seen. I'm not even that big a fan of them, but I do realize they've given us lots of great movies. There's a reason John Wayne was the most prolific movie star. He just made these movies and he wasn't here. The dialogue is forced and it just isn't fun because it's confusing to the point where you don't want to understand it. *1/2