Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The site summary says that Kit Banion(Barbara Stanwick) was dubbed The Maverick Queen because in her early days around Rock Springs, she would round up all the unbranded cattle she could find and brand them. Of course, never having married and not foreseeing the possibility of such, she was a maverick herself. Considering the 2 female characters(Kit, and Mary Murphy , as Lucy Lee), this can be deduced as an iconic 'good' girl vs. 'bad' girl film, although they aren't visibly competing for the attention of the lead male: Barry Sullivan, masquerading as Jeff Younger, nephew of the infamous Younger brothers. In fact, toward the end, they sometimes cooperate as partners with Jeff against the Hole in the Wall Gang, which Kit has been an indispensable part of......If you remember the ending of the Anthony Mann western "The Far Country" Ruth Roman, as the young middle-aged 'bad 'girl, and Corinne Calvert, as the young 'good' girl both had their eyes on Jimmy Stewart, who was fighting for his life against the villain, played by John McIntire. Ruth died trying to defend Jimmy against the shooting of McIntire, leaving Corinne as the apparent winner, by default. Well, a rather similar thing happens here. Kit dies trying to defend the wounded Jeff against a variety of gang members, leaving a cute Lucy as the apparent winner. In both cases, the younger 'good' girl won, although this is not always the case in westerns("Abilene Town" comes to mind as a clear counter example).......Eventually Jim Davis, dubbed 'The Stranger' in the credits, shows up, looking dapper in his all black outfit. He claims he is the real Jeff Younger, and whips out a newspaper photo to prove his identity. He would like to meet the outlaw gang, and goes riding off. I don't remember seeing him again. He had served his purpose in confirming rumors that Sullivan wasn't the real Younger, and might be a lawman. Later, it's confirmed that he is a Pinkerton man. Kit would like him to replace The Sundance Kid(Scott Brady) as her primary lover, but recommends that he relocate far from the gang, which she considers doomed, in the long run. She seems to think she's stuck in her now ambiguous situation. ......The drawn out climax, near the end, seemed largely unrealistic, with characters supposedly safely escaping from a burning cabin, with gunslingers all around.......Spectacular mountain scenery usually composed the on location background. This was around Durango, Royal Gorge, and Silverton, CO...... The film was produced by Republic, not long before the demise of this studio, with the phasing out of B westerns.......This was one of the last Hollywood films Barbara would star in. It was also near the beginning of her emphasis on westerns, which would culminate in her "The Big Valley" TV series, that ended about a decade later. She would again costar with Barry Sullivan the following year in the western "Forty Guns". If this sounds promising, see it at YouTube.

Long before Barbara Stanwyck worked with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" star Katharine Ross on "The Colbys", she had her own encounter with Butch and Sundance in this colorful western made by Republic Pictures in the mid 1950's. She's the colorfully named Kit Banion, the proprietress of a Wyoming saloon. In her encounter with Sundance (Scott Brady), she tells him "Somewhere along the way, sometime, I'll meet a better man like the ones I used to know, and when I do, I'll drop you like a poisonous snake!" A rail thin Stanwyck shows what she does best, standing up to sinister men, and being just as ruthless in getting what she wants. Stanwyck rides, shoots and fights with the toughness of the fiercest western hero (heroine). She finds her match in Jeff Younger (Barry Sullivan), telling him "That's a great name to slung around carelessly" upon their first meeting, indicating to Sundance that she has found the better man.The film makes reference not only to the Younger Brothers ("You might be Younger, but you won't be older if you don't watch out!"), Butch and Sundance but "The Wild Boys" (a violent western made the same year as the Newman/Redford pairing). Pretty Mary Murphy is perhaps younger and more feminine than the still striking Stanwyck (nearing 50!), but she more than holds her own in her scenes with the female master of melodrama. "The only way you leave the wild bunch is feet first", Stanwyck explains as she shows shows Kit's softness in a romantic scene with Sullivan, who is not as he appears to be. This leads to an exciting sequence on a speeding train with bandits aboard, only made better with the color photography of the natural backgrounds including the breathtaking mountain scenery.The title song, sung by Joni James, is gorgeous, as is the score by Victor Young and the photography by Jack Marta. This is one of those westerns that is probably more impressive on a big screen; Its photography almost screams 3-D. Familiar actors such as Wallace Ford and Jim Davis appear in smaller roles, giving this quite an incredible ensemble. Stanwyck's tough, slightly villainous femme fatale is an amazing characterization, and you can see why she was attracted to parts like this whether out in God's country or in the Asphalt Jungle. No other actress has defined what parts women really had in the old west than the great Barbara, and even in the weakest of these films, she made them so much more memorable.

When Barbara Stanwyck's era of Hollywood superstardom came to an abrupt end in the early fifties, she refused to quit and became the star of a number of feminist westerns which cast her as a tough yet sensuous aging woman in tight pants and a cowboy hat, oftentimes the leader of an outlaw gang. She'd make one minor classic of this variety, Forty Guns for Sam Fuller. The Maverick Queen has a bigger budget (and was shot in color) but lacks the energy and magnetism of that later film - both, however, co-star he with Barry Sullivan, a highly underrated leading man who enjoyed far greater success on TV (including a two year stint as Pat Garrett on The Tall Man) than in the movies. Babs struts around in tight pants and we're not supposed to notice that she could easily pass for her boyfriend's mother. And as the badguy, her former boyfriend the Sundance Kid, there's Scott Brady - who played The Dancing Kid in JOHNNY GUITAR, the very best of the odd westerns that cast visibly aging former big name female stars in cowgirl roles. (Joan Crawford, in that film's case). This is handsomely produced by strictly minor stuff. We're supposed to cry when Babs "gets it" in the end, but I can still recall kids in the Rialto theatre in Patchogue, Long Island laughing out loud at the end way back when.

Perhaps the first thing to note about this film is that the Maverick Queen herself, Kit Banion - cattle trader, saloon proprietor, hand in glove with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, and the richest woman in Rock Springs - doesn't actually appear until ten to fifteen minutes into the action! Even then, we initially assume she must be a minor character; surely the lady of the title song must be Lucy Lee - sweeter, younger and far less hard-faced - the girl the hero has already rescued in the first scenes? (Mary Murphy, just two years into her career, as opposed to Barbara Stanwyck, at this point a full twenty-five years into - and almost at the end of - hers.)But Kit soon takes charge of the situation; and she can look after herself. There is a scene which cleverly subverts the audience's expectations, in which she is attacked and her lover rides to the rescue - only, before he can arrive, she saves the situation single-handed by deliberately sending her opponent over a cliff. When her would-be saviours arrive, they find her already bruised but triumphant. And in the final gun-battle, it is she who takes an active part when her lover is wounded, forcing him to keep moving, shooting without hesitation to protect him and taking a bullet in his defence.The outlaw gang in this film are not the usual brutal but dim-witted cannon fodder provided for the hero's benefit, either. As it turns out, they've spotted the plot twist long before the audience (or before me at least!) When the fugitives hole up in a cabin, the pursuers actually take advantage of their superior numbers to surround the cabin and force their way in - and later on, instead of obligingly shooting it out, they simply set fire to the building in order to smoke out their quarry. The hero's ruse to lead them off fools them for a while - but as soon as they see through it, they jump to the right conclusion and head back in time to foil the planned escape.The casual amorality of the outlaws is also well depicted. Sundance's disappearance after he gets the worse of a struggle with Kit is greeted by Cassidy with no more than "Well, I guess he deserved it", and his subsequent return is accepted with an equal shrug: "Thought you were dead, but I'm glad you ain't." There is no question, for example, of the rest of the outlaws hesitating for a moment to attack when they ride up just because Kit happens to have two of their number held at gunpoint.My main problem with this film is that none of the principal characters seem to have any real motivation for what they are doing. Jeff at least has a plot rationale for his inconsistent actions - and for why we never see beyond his surface - but neither Kit nor Sundance seem to have sufficient justification for acting clean against their own best interests. In both cases, they are presumably intended to be in the grip of an overwhelming and unreciprocated affection - but Sundance spends the entire film chasing Lucy Lee rather than the woman who has supposedly prompted him to wild jealousy, and the Maverick Queen also displays an unjustified and distinctly surprising concern towards her. After all, not only did we see Kit cold-bloodedly engineering this same girl's bankruptcy for her own profit earlier in the film, but she also has to know by this stage that Lucy is her rival for Jeff's affections!But whether due to bad acting or a poor script, Kit doesn't really give the impression in any case of having fallen passionately enough for Jeff to make it plausible that she should give up everything for him. Kit Banion is no lovable rogue with a heart of gold; she is depicted as a ruthless and hard-headed businesswoman - albeit with a slightly unusual turn of trade - who is deliberately toying with a young newcomer in order to pay out the lover of whom she has tired. At some point this is presumably supposed to betray her into genuine affection, but for all the kissing in evidence, it somehow fails to convince - particularly when faced with Jeff's lack of response.Lucy too remains something of a cipher. Her early appearance, when we naturally assume she is the title character, leads us to expect that she is going to have a much larger role than ultimately transpires, but in fact, that initial scene more or less sums up her entire function - to act as a (repeated) plot device so that Sundance's pursuit of her can allow Jeff to get the better of him, and to provide the token 'good woman' required as the hero's love interest. There is no convincing relationship of any kind established between her and Jeff, any more than there is between Jeff and Kit - or Kit and Sundance.All these characters come across as masks, without little or nothing real going on behind their faces. There is quite an intelligent plot going on in the background, but I simply couldn't find it in me to care very much about what happened to any of them. That lack of engagement on the part of the audience is, I think, the fatal flaw in this film.I gather it is a Zane Grey adaptation. The virtues of the plot - such as they are - are owed entirely, I would guess, to the source novel. Any essence of the original characters would seem to have got lost in the translation from page to screen. Given its intelligently-drawn villains, morally ambiguous title character and cleverly set-up twist, the material might have made even a great off-beat Western...I'm afraid, however, that this isn't it.